Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

thesuperbigfrog

"Transportation By Amazon" (TBA) has been a concept at Amazon since around 2010 or so. Originally the concept was that Amazon would accept shipments from business customers and inject those shipments into Amazon's sorting and shipping network using the rates negiotated with various carriers.

Since most of Amazon's negiotated rates with carriers are lower than what carriers offer to consumers directly, customers get lower prices and would benefit from Amazon's scale and customer service.

Now with Amazon's own transportation network finally taking off, Transportation By Amazon has gone from a concept that would have relied exclusively on third-party carriers (e.g. UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.) to a likely reality with primary reliance on Amazon's infrastructure and supported by third-party carriers where Amazon does not have a robust prescence.

Given how often I've had packages thrown haphazardly by Amazon drivers, I will gladly pay extra to have USPS handle my packages with slightly more care. It's an interesting idea, but their drivers are destroying their image before they've entered the market.

Additionally, I have yet to ever have a driver ring the doorbell. They throw it at the house, mark it as complete, and trust that I’ll stumble across it later.

I would recommend signing up for the Amazon TextTrace delivery notifications. There is a prompt to sign up whenever you place an order.

The notifications will send you a text message to your mobile phone or a push notification to the Amazon app on your smartphone as soon as your shipment gets delivered.

I don’t mind text notices, but it will always have a higher latency than ringing my doorbell. The best though is getting alerts about a delivery and then going on a scavenger hunt to find the package. Will it be on the front porch? Will it be tucked behind a bush? Maybe I left my garage door open so the driver helpfully left it there...

Poor behavior by delivery drivers happens across all carriers, USPS included.

If your package is damaged, I would recommend contacting Amazon customer service and let them know. Based on the way they do scans and metrics, they know who the delivery driver was and it will reflect in the delivery driver's customer satisfaction score.

If there are enough compliants against a given delivery driver, they will probably not remain a delivery driver for long. Amazon wants to keep customers happy at all costs and will quickly sack employees and contractors who fail to meet their standards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com