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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

This implies that "things like this" are somehow bad, though.

What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

I know Amazon already don't bother to process their own returns, instead selling those off in bulk lots for potentially far below the market value of the items (sort of like creditors selling off bad debts rather than trying to collect on them themselves.)

Both situations suggest a paradigm where human labor is by far the most expensive part of any logistics process, such that margin can always be increased simply by replacing workflows that involve even a little bit of human labor with fully-mechanized/externalized workflows, even when that brings service quality down.

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> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon

Maybe it does, but isn't this because of a _negative externality_, i.e. the "indirect cost to individuals" (1) who deal one way or another with the pile of abandoned packages?

So Amazon is like an river polluter in that regard, dumping the problem because it's cheaper _for them_. It should be clear that this is not a net good thing.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Definitions

I suppose in most cases, for most people, this would be a positive externality. You get free stuff. Amazon should just do a better job communicating this.

I've more than once got complete garbage through somebody getting hold of my shipping address (not credit card, just shipping address!) and exploiting Amazon using it.

I get 'free stuff' except it's absolute garbage. Somebody else gets to abuse Amazon reviews, hyping that stuff under my name for the purpose of jacking up its review scores. Once I looked and the thing was rated #1 in its category.

Don't assume you've figured out the true costs of externalities: anything that is clearly a broken system is also going to be harming people in its brokenness.

The only time that I got someone else's amazon package, likely due to a labelling or packing error, it was utterly useless to me, I mean like "book 4 of an anime series that I had never heard of, not in a language that I understand" level of junk-ness (to me).

It's typically not "free stuff" to the recipient, it's junk, a hassle, and in the way.

The "spam parcels" from review-brushing scams have negative externalities, yes; but, unlike regular spam, these spam parcels don't make up the majority (or even a non-negligible minority) of Amazon deliveries. So, on net, a random abandoned parcel pallet is going to have net-positive ROI to whoever claims it. Probably highly net-positive ROI.

(Compare: the liquidation stores that run entirely off of a business model of buying Amazon returns lots, tossing out the broken crap, and selling the rest. Those stores make a profit, and they're receiving pallets where half the stuff is unusuable. If they were receiving pallets where everything is new from the warehouse [valuable or not], they'd likely cry for joy.)

Remember, whoever gets this stuff doesn't have to personally have a use for it. They could just call up their local charitable thrift store to drive over and pick up the whole lot, if they wanted. But that's still net-positive ROI — they get a warm feeling of having donated a bunch of stuff; and the charitable thrift store gets a lot of free stock that they know how to resell, to turn into money for their charity; and a bunch of people who each wanted one particular thing, can now find it at that thrift store for much less than they would have paid for it on Amazon. It's exactly the same as if Amazon donated a bunch of random crap directly to the charitable thrift store, save for the necessity of making one phone call, and the possibility of the caller skimming whatever nice items they like off the top before they make that call.

All of these comments are from the perspective of a consumer rather than the perspective of the amazon employee (driver) who is likely poorly treated and paid. I doubt the driver is happy about their situation, is that positive?

Presumably the driver is as poorly treated and paid for delivering to the right address as to the wrong.

Minimally paid, so again probably not happy. You think people in low wage delivery jobs are doing it because they love delivering things? No, they likely don't have many other options, if any at all

> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

This is the sort of situation which happens so infrequently that literally the solution is you ask whoever calls about it to "read me off the TBA number off the tracking label", look up which DSP was responsible, and tell them to divert someone to go pick those up. Any DSP worth its salt always has some number of drivers on rescue or, failing that, one of their dispatchers will go pick it up. In short: DSPs are incentivized to maintain personnel to handle problems on route, and this is exactly the sort of thing they can and should handle. Either way those packages are going to be marked missing/undelivered and the DSP will get dinged for that driver's fuckup, so they might as well send someone out to pick them up and get them properly delivered.

Excuse me? There's like a pile of boxes in the way. Amazon should clean this up, quickly. So you say it's better that random people living there should be made responsible for getting rid of a pile of boxes instead of Amazon who put them there?

What if I "abandon" a sh*tload of poo in your front garden because that's cheaper for me?

You might be overreacting. This is free stuff for whoever picks it up - yes Amazon shouldn't be littering, yes it might inconvenience something but it isn't that bad.

This is someones property not "free stuff". Its theft if you take it. These packages will actually have names and addresses of the actual owners written on them so you can't even say you didn't know who the owners are.

No, in this workflow, Amazon generates a replacement package and sends that out for the recipient. The recipient is entitled to one item that they paid for—and that would be the replacement item. The original item is still owned by Amazon, who is free to declare it abandoned, and so property of whoever finds it.

Remember, these parcels aren't being sent through the postal system (where you legally release ownership of mail to the Postmaster General by sticking something in a mail slot, which is how it can be a federal offense to tamper with their mail—undelivered mail is the government's legal property!)

Instead, these are parcels going through Amazon's own logistics carriers. Amazon never released ownership of these items—they don't do that until the item hits the recipient's door. These items are legally Amazon warehouse stock, that happen to have shipping labels printed on them.

I’m actually curious about the legality of this. Potentially those shipments contain personal information (from the invoice to the package contents). Is Amazon actually allowed to release them like that? Lost packages are one thing, but intentionally forgetting about them, idk.

It's still amazon's property until they deliver it I suppose, so charge Amazon rent.

In this case Amazon apparently advised the finders to open the boxes and donate the stuff. Sounds like free stuff to me.

Technically. Nobody is going to prosecute them for it if they just take it though. It is abandoned.

But Amazon isn't going to just abandon the people who bought stuff. They're going to get a different item. This is just Amazon signalling that it is cheaper to deliver a new item than to collect a lost item.

Though there are privacy considerations. You have the name and address of the person on a box that may contain something embarrassing or private.

What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon

What if killing the natives just has plain-old higher ROI for an oil company than trying to work with them? What if operating an illegal taxi business just has plain-old higher ROI than following the laws in place? What if kneecapping the competition just has plain-old higher ROI for an ice skater?

Those things are negative externalities. In this case, apartment buildings are receiving e.g. a carton of free new laptops that they could sell or donate. Yes, in some sense it's "littering", but it's not littering of valueless trash that costs more than it's worth to dispose of. It costs Amazon more than it's worth, but to pretty much any regular human being, it's like Amazon "littered" a stack of $20 bills in their apartment lobby.

And, because this stuff has value, it will very likely all get reused (i.e. resold or donated into the secondary market), not thrown away. Which will satisfy some of the demand for the products Amazon is selling, replacing an order someone would have made for a new product. Which means this act doesn't even have any externalities for the environment—nothing is going to landfill that otherwise wouldn't.

So I honestly don't get your comparison.

Then killing natives, running illegal taxi businesses and kneecapping will happen.

If the government doesn't like it, then provide sufficient incentive not to do it.

What if killing senators and representatives offers higher ROI than complying with laws (or bribing the senators more than other companies are bribing them)?

Amazon's not the first one I'd look at for this, but still. At some point you have to look at how things actually function. Not unlike critical theory. You ask, 'this is the rule, what's it like in practice though?'

It's not. Delivery works with a hub and spoke model. Simply get it back to the nearest local distribution point and it will be dealt with.

However, the loss just isn't tracked by Amazon. "Unable to recover packages due to atrocious processes" will be indistinguishable in their reporting to "van flooded/burnt, packages lost". So they don't see the problem and can't see any reason to fix it.

How I can tell - the customer service couldn't even figure out how much the packages were worth. No cost benefit calculation was performed.

Cost isn’t necessarily linear with complexity. And customer service wouldn’t be the ones tasked with those calculations. Amazon knows how many packages they lose in delivery once the intended recipient notifies them as such.

Letting people leave their scooters obstructing the sidewalk apparently has a higher ROI for Lime/Uber/Whoever than promptly collecting them, setting up docks, etc. The scooter riders seem to find it convenient, too. But it annoys this pedestrian.

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