Amazon to suspend delivery service that competes with UPS, FedEx

Great if you don't have access to a printer.

I recall (perhaps incorrectly) that Royal Mail once offered a service where you could buy an "online stamp", then you would write a long string of letters and numbers above the address on the envelope to send it. It was distinct from freepost.

There's just no reason to waste the energy, the coordination effort or take on the risk.

Also it would seem it’s not an energy efficient way to deliver goods to people, but who knows. Paradoxically it would make sense for high value/low mass items like medicines (or narcotics too), but that would make them a more enticing target.

Delivering tacos or sushi on the other hand... maybe years hence.

> We assume that operating costs for personnel, loading, and monitoring will be approximately the same per package for truck as for drone delivery.

but at least they included

> There are additional drone costs such as: setting-up and running the drone delivery stations, the investment in research and development, and lobbying the FAA. Other costs include: buildings and land associated with the drone stations, computers and monitoring software systems for drone flights, computer technicians and drone monitors on site, robotics engineers for maintenance and upgrades to drones on site, utility costs of running the building, logistics management team to oversee operations, potential insurance and legal fees associated with drones, and potential air and/or radio frequency rights for drones, etc. There is also the potential for legal costs in some of the following situations: drones are found operating in unauthorized airspace, drones are shot down by civilians, a drone lands in an unauthorized space, etc

There's also mention that the drones can only deliver up to 5lb packages.

Emergency medical supplies (the twitter mentions "Lifesaving deliveries by drone") is quite different than delivering packages. That you can get something up and running for lifesaving stuff is one thing. Doing the same for my 0.50 EUR AliExpress package is different though, I'm not going to be home. If it's lifesaving I'd imagine you need it asap and someone will ensure that they'll be waiting for the package.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Amazon makes up 50% of UPS’s business, and those packages are shipped by UPS at a 10% loss. If the other 50% of their business averages a 20% profit, then they’re averaging a 10% profit across the board.

Without the Amazon packages, let’s say UPS can cut their operating costs by 25%. Now they’re shipping 50% as many packages, though, so the per-package operating cost has increased by about ~33%. Those customers that were generating 20% profit when the network was larger are now a losing proposition. UPS then faces the choice of downsizing their operation or raising prices. Both of those options are about equally bad when you consider that their competitors are not impacted by the loss of Amazon’s business (well, to be totally correct, their competitors have already absorbed the disruption to their operations when Amazon pulled their business to move it to UPS in the first place).

To be clear, I’m not saying the above numbers are correct - or even close to being representative. I’m merely illustrating why it makes sense for transportation companies to take large-volume customers even at a loss.

Surprisingly Amazon has done the best in this situation because they incorporate a distinct step in their delivery protocol: the driver calls me if they can't find my door. I don't understand why FedEx and UPS can't do this.

But, for home shipping, I've always lived in 2-3 flat apartment buildings, and Amazon's delivery service has been like a breath of fresh air. They always deliver to the correct location, they're usually conscientious about placing the package in an inconspicuous location if possible, and then you get a push notification on your phone. USPS does the same, but loses points for notifying us by ringing every single doorbell in the building and then walking away, typically during someone's baby's nap time.

UPS, for their part, will generally drop the package at the bottom of the steps, essentially right on the sidewalk. FedEx, not to be outdone, likes to leave it on the sidewalk in front of some random building a block down the street.

But if you can cut off the last mile, Amazon's "pick-up point" service beats UPS's or FedEx's hands down.

Amazon Lockers are 24hrs; never have line-ups; there's one outside every grocery store near me; and in a pinch, my own post office can be used as one, too. (Though I don't do that, because my post office is not 24hrs, and because there's a Locker directly on the way between my home and my office.)

FedEx and UPS, meanwhile, both bounce my packages to a warehouse at the airport (40 minutes away) or in a neighbouring exurb (50 minutes away), and only after first attempting to deliver them to my house (which will never work), with no option to send them straight to the pick-up location. (Yes, I can get the packages redirected from the airport warehouse to a pick-up location once they're already at the airport warehouse, but that means an extra two days of waiting for my package, and then I have to go to a pick-up point that's 20 minutes away from me anyway. I may as well go to the airport!)

I live in an apartment building with a flaky buzzer entry system and no lobby mailroom. "Pick-up from a nearby location" is the only viable option for me. Amazon nails it. Everybody else is way behind.

The last time it happened it was a Christmas gift and I didn't even know about it until the person it was delivered to IM'ed my wife using one of the neighborhood contact services. Turns out the delivery company even knew they delivered it to the wrong address because they put "delivered to XYZ instead of ZYX" in the delivery notes.