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Comment by igetspam | Hacker News Reader

I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because the package is too large and they picked the wrong carrier and they give me a $5 credit. I tell USPS I'm not circumnavigating a lake to pick up the package and they can send it back. I border again and go through the same thing. I've told Amazon that they can't ship large items to me via USPS but they can't seem to figure out how to handle it. I even asked them to not use USPS (they're unreliable anyway) but they're stick in a loop. I'm openly and publicly doing this and they don't care. It's stupid. Thankfully it's a low priority item and I don't actually need it. Some day it will show up... maybe.

Walmart, if you can figure out that problem, you'll have my money.

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I am in the same boat. I have called and begged and pleaded and escalated to get Amazon to stop using USPS but it just doesn't work. Here in Brooklyn if anything is unusually large they just punch in "attempted delivery" a couple days in a row and send it back. They don't even bother trying, I'm pretty sure it never even leaves the regional sort facility and gets on a truck.

I'm not sure I blame them. Amazon once used USPS to send me half a dozen office chairs. I called Amazon as soon as I saw the shipping update and said there's zero chance whatsoever they will ever reach my door. Nothing they could do. I just ordered from another vendor the same day and waited the inevitable 2-3 weeks for the Amazon order to work its way through the system and back to Amazon without delivery ever attempted.

It's one of a few things that perplex me about Amazon. Like why can't I just flag a shipping method as unusable. Why can't I search for stuff only sold by Amazon. Why can't you fucking stop selling fake chargers and headphones?

But what do I know about running a multi billion dollar business right?

Technically you can flag a shipper. After recording delivery drivers stomping across my landscaping and literally throwing packages at my door, I got them to stop using that particular gig economy delivery service for my packages. Getting them to do feels like pulling teeth though. It seems you can't do it for a single incident but interestingly they'll gladly give you the number to the local shipping logistics company, so you can call and yell at them.

Was it lasership? I've had packages never delivered by them. I'm assuming the courier is just stealing them since the package will say "out for delivery" multiple times that day and then never show up. They don't respond to emails or calls so anytime a package is set to come through them, I know that I'm probably not going to get it. Nobody has questioned my reports that the packages aren't getting delivered most of the time. I guess the vendor already knows how much they suck but for some reason is ok with the spillage? Maybe the cost savings for using one of these gig economy delivery services is so cheap that its still worth it after having to replace customer orders that get stolen. Maybe it's like doing business with the mob, there's just a certain amount of money you're going to have to lose due to rampant theft but the money you save by getting around the normal business costs makes it worth it.

Lasership is the worst. Last time they were my carrier, it was marked as delivered with a note it was left on my deck. I don't have a deck.

I had a Lasership package found on the street by a stranger (thankfully he sent it to me with a note).

I got Amazon to avoid shipping things to me using their own execrable AMZL (Amazon Logistics) service, by emailing Jeff Bezos. They said from now on they would only use AMZL if there is no other way to ship (e.g. for same-day shipping). So far this has been a good solution.

You can search for stuff only sold by Amazon, at least in the UK. You can run a search and then filter the vendor to "Amazon.co.uk" only.

>It's one of a few things that perplex me about Amazon

Their price match policy is pretty silly too. I bought a robo vacuum that got a $150 off promotion a week later. They were unwilling to refund me the difference but are willing to let me return the old one for a full refund while buying a new one at the discounted price.

That may make sense if the inverse of percentage of people that actually go to the trouble of returning a bulky item multiplied by the margin is higher than the shipping cost of a new item.

It's pretty easy. I've done this with hard drives that I had already installed.

Just printed the return label for the higher priced item, and slapped it on the box and gave it right back to the carrier when he delivered the same, lower priced item.

Yes, but it doesn't matter if you do it, it matters if most people do it. His argument (which I believe) is that notably fewer people will do it if they have to return the item and get a new one.

When those are the only two options presented to them, a lot of people won't be arsed to return the item, which will save Amazon $150.

I once bought a book from them and while it was in shipping, the price dropped due to a sale. I called and asked if they would reduce the price on my book and they said no but they said I could order it again at the new price and and then mail back the previous book once it reaches me.

There is a startup called Paribus that was doing automated claims for Amazon price drops. Amazon locked down the policy after a while.

There's actually several companies offering this service, Earny is another one.

Bad delivery is a huge annoyance over here in The Netherlands too. My experience is that the big webshops (Coolblue, Bol.com) are excellent with their deliveries, but as soon as you order from some of the smaller stores or via the brand-sites, it's a mess. DPD in particular is absolutely atrocious, and that's been my experience in multiple cities in Europe.

The problem seems to be that the local webshops work with the more local delivery services, whereas the brand-site-stores and a bunch of others use delivery services that work across Europe. Those seem to be awful everywhere (the aforementioned DPD, but I've heard similar things about FedEx and DHL).

DPD is the worst. They almost returned my package to the origin because they couldn't call me to deliver once, I asked why couldn't they knock, ring the doorbell or leave a notice and while trying to excuse themselves they accidentally told me the number they tried to call - it was the package shipping number. :facepalm:

Unfortunately, in my case, they've switched from being mostly UPS to mostly a combination of USPS and, increasingly, their own trucks. USPS is fine for smaller envelopes and packages and I even bought an extra-large mailbox to accommodate somewhat larger boxes. But USPS hates to come down my driveway (long and rough) so bigger packages often get hung off my mailbox, the mailbox door is left open, or sometimes just sent back to the post office for pickup.

The USPS is all shenanigans. I had something shipped to my office and they told me they "couldn't access the building." There's a USPS location inside the building.

Funny thing is ordering out of the USA to Canada is way better with usps because they turn the package over to Canada post, which if anything only charges gst. Everyone else rips you off with huge brokerage fees

I had the same experience in Brooklyn (Atlantic Ave post office) and didn't think anything was getting sent out for delivery. One day I went to get a package and they said "we don't know where it is, it might be on a truck somewhere."

Same, I encountered that problem maybe a dozen times with the Atlantic Ave post office when I lived around there from 2009-2014. Sad to hear they haven't improved since then, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised!

Ironically, after moving a few miles northwest to the NJ side of the Hudson, my preferred shippers have completely reversed. USPS is by far the best option here, since they have lobby keys to apartment buildings and leave packages with no problems at all. (Even though USPS clearly has lobby keys to deliver non-package mail in Brooklyn too, somehow their package delivery people don't have them?)

Meanwhile, Amazon's contractors have become the worst option for me. Frequently they'll silently leave a package with a neighboring building or business, with no indication whatsoever that they've done so, and with no initial attempt at actually ringing my unit's intercom. Or sometimes they'll call my cell phone, but again without ever trying the intercom first. After a few years of this, I gave up and cancelled Prime.

I had a similar experience with FedEx until I filed a BBB complaint. That got things sorted out quick.

I am still amazed that people take BBB complaints seriously. It’s just like getting a bad Yelp rewiew.

I think the fact that they're so popular is, ironically, why they're so effective. They're not a government organization, they have no enforcement arm, yet complaints there can and have resulted in satisfaction when other avenues fail.

Yelp, on the other hand, is where "let me speak to your manager"-types go to bitch about restaurants screwing up their orders. BBB complaints seem a bit more fleshed out.

Me too, I don't even know any younger people that know what BBB is.

Hah, exactly the opposite situation for me with USPS in Brooklyn - they've got a key to my (large) residential building, and are the only carrier who can reliably deliver when my super is busy with something and can't accept a package. I'd opt out of Lasership in a heartbeat if I could, they're wholly useless.

Realistically, I just buy a month of Prime if I know I'm going to be needing lots of things soon (spring cleaning season or whatever), and don't keep an active subscription for the rest of the year. I found myself not using most of the new perks, becoming increasingly skeptical of product authenticity, and not enjoying the prices going up and up every renewal. Its a lot easier to walk over to Target or sit on the train for 15 mins to get to Bed Bath and Beyond / Home Depot than it is to sit around at home all night because Lasership marked my package as "delivered" 6 hours ago but doesn't intend to show up until 10pm.

Bezos has moved on.

Unfortunately I'm convinced that the only thing this will achieve is getting your account suspended for suspicious activity(a lot of created and then cancelled orders).

Possibly but it's no big loss to me. For years I've been a customer more because of my spouse and my now toddler. As she's getting older, driving to the store (she hates cars) is less of a problem. Amazon, on the other hand, has grown increasingly worse in just about every aspect (quality of service, customer service, employee/contractor treatment, civic duties, etc).

You are probably on a list now:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/retailers-are-tracking-...

Probably one of many but to be clear, I'm not actually returning anything. The packages are _being returned_ as "undeliverable." Having never actually had possession of the item, I'm incapable of actually returning it. I've asked Amazon to ship it another way but they can't seem to figure it out. Since I do eventually want the item, I'm hoping it makes it some day.

That effort does not at all sound worth a $5 Amazon gift card

There's almost no effort. It takes less than five minutes each time, to both order and request a credit. I've wasted a lot more time than that on trying to get them to remove USPS as a shipping option. At this point, it's just a game for me.

A dollar a minute == $60/hr

Or around 120k/yr @ 40hr/wk over 50 weeks, pre-tax.

I'm not sure you'd report that as taxable income, so it would probably be closer to 'post-tax'.

So you're saying this a pretty good investment of my time, right? On top of my salary, I can effectively make an additional $120k/yr? You know the opportunity cost argument you're making is false, don't you? You're arguing that I'm risking doing something else while doing this and there's a cost associated with that risk. In reality, I risk nothing because I'm a salaried employee whose time isn't 100% filled with must-do tasks. If that were true, the time you spent replying would be actually be worth even less than the time I spend getting Amazon credits because it has no return on investment. Or are you saying I should make this my full time job?

It's a different poster, he's agreeing with you by calculating that those 5 minutes are quite lucrative.

Whoops. Misread. Thanks for pointing that out. :)

Or the gas wasted on each trip.

That's covered by Amazon in the shipping cost they pay to move from their warehouse to the USPS sorting facility. USPS isn't making any additional trips to not deliver packages. They drive out to the mailbox cluster every day except Sunday (a day which Amazon also said they'd deliver a package via USPS...) and go no further.

You have a cite for that waste? That's not remotely correct. The marginal cost to ship one package across the world is literally pennies, that's why our junk is so cheap. The cost to drive to one store for one shopping trip is two orders of magnitude higher.

Buy online and save the planet. I'm serious.

You still get stuff through USPS? Everything I've ordered has been through AMZL, which means 100% of my orders are left at a neighbor's house, marked as delivered and then show up a few days later, or marked as lost after 5 days and refunded.

The $5 credits they give me are only good on stuff sold by Amazon, which seems to be getting slimmer. I got three things last week figuring I'd get $20 off, and it was only after I checked out that I realized none of them were by Amazon.

It completely depends on where you are. Bigger cities are more likely to use the AMZL system than smaller towns.

Here in Nevada, my experience is that Walmart's online business and delivery is strongly superior. It has been a refreshing thing to see a massive global company turn around and do something very right.

I'm also in flyover country and have found the same to be true, aside from selection. But the products they do directly offer (it's easy to remove 3rd parties from your searches) come from their own supply chain which they really care about, the prices are almost always better than Amazon's, the shipping is fast, and free if you buy at least $35 per purchase, and they pack the boxes with a fair amount of care.

The latter detail was the last straw for me and my Prime membership due to Amazon switching to pro forma padding by just throwing in a few air pillows. Between that and all the last mile delivery issues others are reporting, its clear Amazon is seriously pinching pennies in fulfillment without caring how much business and extra expense that costs them. Add in the counterfeit problem and it's hard to imagine how much damage the brand is suffering.

I didn't renew my Amazon Prime after they pulled this "one-day" BS on me more than once:

https://i.redd.it/p816orvkrr021.jpg

Hopefully Walmart will have better shipping logistics.

Yeah; I learned early on to always change the delivery from "1 day" to standard 2 day prime shipping. 1 day delivery always ends up with some joker trying to deliver a package at 9PM and marking it as "attempted delivery" without knocking or calling the number in my delivery notes. I've never had a problem with 2 day shipping, but 1 day always ends up being a nightmare.

Not to point out the obvious but your example is an order placed on Cyber Monday...so the biggest online shopping day of the entire year...you might experience a slight delay that week.

I don't have a problem with delays... I have a problem with them being deliberately misleading about delivery times on their product pages.

It happened several times where they used the term "same/one-day" delivery yet at checkout the delivery time was 2-3 days out. So... in other words... they knew damn well what the time frame was, but deliberately chose to use "bait-n-switch" like methods.

Parent was not complaining about slow shipping.

Parent was complaining about misadvertized shipping.

Sam's has been offering free 2 day shipping to plus members for awhile. My order never fails to be marked delivered by Fedex on day 2.

It doesn't actually arrive until day 5...

Amazon has ten to twenty thousand new trucks for delivery and yet I am getting split deliveries from orders still. Example, ordered three items recently and UPS used one package in the morning and Amazon delivered the rest later. Wal Mart has improved but their use of Fed Ex has seen an order split as well between Fed Ex and Fed Ex Home all on the same day.

I am just amazed Amazon ran the numbers and determined spinning up an entire last mile delivery process was cheaper than using the previous setup.

It's all related to where the merch is sitting when you order. There is an online auto parts store called RockAuto that will let you know across the site which items are sitting in the same warehouse as other items in your cart. A lot of the stuff is standard auto parts so there will be like eight identical gas caps made by different vendors that are all priced within a few cents of each other. They all are located in different warehouses so I'll usually pick the parts I don't have as much choice over and then go back and pick the jellybean parts that happen to be in the same warehouse. They don't do free shipping so it really helps reduce shipping costs when you only have one box coming. It's also nice just getting all of your parts at once instead of having to wait for different ones to come in and not being able to work on anything until you get them all anyway. I'll play around with which identical parts I choose just to make sure I'm picking all the parts I need from the same, closest warehouse.

Some how my wife got them to stop doing USPS on her account and she gets either UPS(which I rarely get from Amazon) or Amazon's own delivery. For a while she was getting quoted less next day and Sunday delivery dates since she was UPS only, but now that Amazon is doing a lot more deliveries in my area, she's about to about the same shipping days as me again(mine being split between USPS and Amazon).

Amazons own last mile has now consistently failed to deliver my sub $20 items several times in a row now. You can say the same for amazon.

I've had the same experience but their last mile deliveries at least have a chance to make it. USPS will _never_ deliver to my door.

I suspect that the number of people that have to travel long distances (or across a lake) to get something from USPS are pretty rare, so Amazon's just eating the cost.

Also, the number of people that actually call/IM customer support for a credit is probably fairly low- until everyone starts holding their feet to the fire Amazon will continue to eat the cost.

The only way likely for this to be resolved is for Amazon to 100% own the supply chain end to end, which means an Amazon owning last mile delivery company which it seems where most of these delivery issues like. I'm sure Amazon is looking how it can own this part of the chain (along with everything else), maybe someday soon...

About 50% of my Amazon packages are delivered by Amazon at this point (Boise, ID area).

Yeah, I would say 90% of mine are (Los Angeles)

Owning the supply chain end to end and paying employees enough to maintain a quality of life which supports good customer service

Amazon doesn't need to own the last mile. They just need to ensure whoever does meets their standards. USPS has rules for what size packages they will deliver. Amazon either needs to get USPS to follow their rules and deliver that package, or they need to read the rules and ship via someone who can deliver. (I don't know the rules or package in question so I cannot say who is at fault). Of course Amazon might be too small a player in the eyes of USPS, but there are other choices for delivery if USPS doesn't meet their needs.

They own it in a handful of cities: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonFresh

Amazon Fresh is not full vertical integration, merely seems like Costco's ordering program or similar.

Amazon Fresh used to be quite popular in Seattle a half decade ago, but I barely see their empty containers anymore. I think Amazon saw their volume falling with Amazon Fresh and was threatened by their vendors and wholesalers with higher prices, thus purchasing Whole Foods to attempt to stabilize their cost on goods.

> Amazon Fresh used to be quite popular in Seattle a half decade ago, but I barely see their empty containers anymore.

Amazon has been cannibalizing Fresh by including (a smaller selection of) grocery items in Prime Now, which (unlike Fresh, which is a premium upgrade) is included in the base cost of Prime.

That's a tough one - considering the blurry definition of "grocery item", they'll end up with a lot of frustrated customers who find they need a premium upgrade for the privilege of buying from Amazon.

For example, you can buy a Philips electric razor through Amazon Prime, but refill cartridges are only available through Amazon Fresh. The result: I made my first online order with Walmart and will probably make many more in the future.

Amazon Fresh had its own (timely and reliable) delivery network and reusable plastic storage crates (often insulated). It seemed like a more eco-friendly & premium service compared to Amazon Prime.

Amazon does own a last mile delivery company, Amazon Logistics (AMZL). For deliveries to my house (Seattle area), AMZL was so bad that after many complaints, Amazon offered to block/disable that delivery method for my account.

I had really bad experiences with USPS recently, got multiple packages weren't delivered for unknown reasons and two were actually lost and their tracking were always like "Awaiting delivery scan".

Have you tried calling the post office and asking them to deliver large packages to your door? Our carrier does this for us.

They called me while I was in a meeting and said I could drive 15 minutes out to them. They don't deliver to houses here.

This is probably one of the many reasons why Amazon has started shipping their own products with their own fleet.

So...you need a bigger mailbox?

Not an option for everyone obviously but it's actually not a bad idea. I got an "extra large" rural mailbox a few years back and it's been great. Not everything fits of course but most basic book and small to medium parcels do. It also means I don't need to get my mail held even if I'm out of town for 10 days or so. My postal carrier even thanked me for getting it at one point.

Unfortunately it's a mailbox cluster at the entrance of a rural subdivision. The sizes are fixed and I believed they're property of USPS. An oversized package locker would be a great idea but it's not something I could do as a private citizen.

Well, it seems this here is the root of your problem.

And given the amount of difficulty and delay it causes, would be worth serious investigation into a solution.

the funny thing is a lot of times they will us something like ups or fedex(even though those services will do it) and then locally let usps deliver to door. i have had issues with usps as well though.

Is that an ethical thing to do?

Why wouldn’t it be?

He's "gaming" the system, he even said so himself.

That depends who you think is in the right. In return for money, a merchant guaranteed a specific delivery date. I paid my money, they failed to to deliver. I contacted them and told them they needed to pick a new shipper. I ordered again. Again I paid money and they guaranteed a delivery date. Again they failed to deliver. Again I contacted them saying they needed to pick a new shipper. Each time they fail to live up to their side of the agreement, they pay me a token amount in restitution. All they have to do is pick a shipper that will actually deliver (or cancel my subscription, which wouldn't pain me in any way) and the cycle will be over.

Who's in the right?

Amazon, since you used the words "gamed the system".

Lol

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