5 ms·

Man I couldn't care less who hands me my package if it arrives intact and on time. I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".

digikata 11y ago
Isn't the probability of something going wrong higher if the delivery infrastructure isn't staffed with full time people? I would guess that mishandling, loss, misdelivery, theft would all be more likely under the flex model.
- TranquilMarmot 11y ago
  But it would also be a lot easier to track what happened to that package and pinpoint a specific individual for the loss/theft/misdelivery, since Amazon has the driver's personal info, GPS location, and list of packages that they are delivering.
  - digikata 11y ago
    How is that tracking different for a full time person vs a person who works for flex? Basically full time employment makes the workforce more sticky, and whatever performance quality process you run with the workforce will retrain or remove people who don't perform. With flex, it's likely the same quality process, only the workforce is larger and more likely to churn. So no matter what the performance of the quality process it has some non-zero time to detect and correct worker performance, so I don't see how one avoids a larger rate of delivery faults just from the workforce dynamics.
- murbard2 11y ago
  Amazon will most likely cover such problems, no questions asked. They will be defrauded more, for sure, but they gain a possibly gigantic network of distributors.
  - digikata 11y ago
    But the customer 'hassle' rate just went up, your internal efficiency also went down by whatever it cost to fix the problem, so there had better be some big benefits to this method showing up in other areas.
- tzier 11y ago
  The issue rates aren't as high as the media leads you to believe. For example, Airbnb has a policy with Lloyds for any catastrophic events, but they actually don't have that many issues and so just pay for them themselves when they happen. (Or at least this used to be the case.) The media just sensationalizes it when something goes wrong, so you fall into availability bias. Plus, your costs are offset by having labor cost be variable instead of fixed, not paying benefits, etc. So if your margin is 10% higher as a result and you have a 5% increase in issues, you still come out better.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare-no-end-in-sight.html http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare... > If the “her” he is referring to is me, then the first part of this statement is false (the second I cannot attest to). During the first week of my nightmare, the customer service team at Airbnb was - as I stated in my June 29 blog post – helpful, caring and supportive. In particular, one customer service manager - and the company’s freelance photographer - were wonderfully kind to me, and both should know how grateful I am. > And since June 30? On this same day, I received a personal call from one of the co-founders of Airbnb. We had a lengthy conversation, in which he indicated having knowledge of the (previously mentioned) person who had been apprehended by the police, but that he could not discuss the details or these previous cases with me, as the investigation was ongoing. He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the story”. > Look, despite what some of you are saying, I am not an idiot. I understand why Airbnb called me and asked me to bring this story to an end; it is in their best profitable interest to do so. Unfortunately for me – 5 weeks and counting – there is no end in sight. Too much about this case remains unknown and unresolved, and according to both the District Attorneys and the police, it could be many more months before the criminal investigation moves forward. > And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that instead, you keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel. You’ll be glad you did. I'll just leave this here. https://www.airbnb.com/host-protection-insurance https://www.airbnb.com/host-protection-insurance > Effective January 15, 2015, if a guest is injured in a listing or elsewhere on the building property during a stay, the Host Protection Insurance program provides coverage for Airbnb hosts and, where applicable, their landlords under a general commercial liability policy. There are a variety of gaps, and have been, where AirBnb and/or its insurance failed to cover things. It isn't until this year that insurance coverage was anywhere close to what I'd consider acceptable and basic. It still isn't "complete" as far as what I'd use for my rental property.
- andreasklinger 11y ago
  i want to agree with you but a lot of "professional" "fulltime" delivery companies i had trouble with provided more than sub-par customer care. i even have a black list of delivery companies i try to avoid (when purchasing from amazon vendors)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vhold 11y ago
  I think Amazon already operates on a risk-taking model for package delivery. When I first started using Prime it was very conservative about requiring signatures, and overtime that became relaxed and I'd come home to find packages on my doorstep. Now sometimes they aren't even at my door, but instead downstairs away from my apartment. I think they'll just keep taking more risks to save money until they start losing packages.
  - twistedpair 11y ago
    Amazon (ala UPS) requires signatures for the most random things. I get a $500 phone left on the porch, but a $2 cat toy requires a 2mi drive to a local quickie mart drop of facility because it needs a sig. From what I've heard, the signature requirement is driven my Amazon's merchants, not by them, so it's a crap shoot.
  - works_remote_ 11y ago
    There has been more than once where a package will fail to be delivered in a timely manner (the website indicates its been out for delivery for 5+ days), and they have always overnighted a replacement without charge or expectation that if the original shows up that I return it to them. These missing packages have been primarily from when UPS/FedEx decides to use a last mile delivery service, instead of delivering it themselves, which is primarily staffed by low wage workers with frighteningly high turnover.
    - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
      I find it far more frustrating when one of the last mile delivery services says they have delivered the package, and then it shows up a day or two later. Amazon hasn't honored the two day guarantee for me in these instances.
      - kornholi 11y ago
        FedEx marked one of my packages as delivered but it didn't show up until 6 days later (the replacement arrived on the same day...). I assume someone just forgot about it on the truck, since the other one was actually delivered on time.
- makomk 11y ago
  Yodel (formerly the Home Delivery Network) used this model in the UK for years and were infamously bad. This may well be why they changed their name.
  - chipperyman573 11y ago
    That's just one company, though. It might be awful because of their specific policies.
- manigandham 11y ago
  Why? What are you basing this on? Why would part-time people be any less responsible? They have less to deal with, more time to deliver, use their own car, choose their schedule, and set the radius and familiarity of their route. I'd expect them to make better deliveries and more accurately. Uber/Lyft have shown this model works fine.
  - Steko 11y ago
    Because problems inevitably occur and with full time staff it's more likely the delivery person has seen the problem 1000 times and knows exactly how to handle it optimally. In addition to knowing the ins and outs of your office or apartment, perhaps even recognizing you by name. > I'd expect them to make better deliveries and more accurately. I wouldn't. I'd expect the additional supply would get you faster, cheaper delivery at the expense of accuracy and a slight increase in other problems. I'm not against that trade off but there's no need to pretend it doesn't exist. > Uber/Lyft have shown this model works fine. Uber/Lyft and particularly Lyft where you're less likely to get an experienced professional, have shown that the model is not without it's tradeoffs.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      What is the tradeoff with uber/lyft? I still get where I'm going but it's often cheaper, more comfortable and just as fast (or faster) than previous options. I don't see how accuracy is going to be a problem. These people aren't driving across the country with hundreds of items and it would be very much in their interest to make sure the right thing is delivered to the right person. I think the "experienced professional" of a shipping carrier driver is vastly overrated here. Just what, exactly, do they do that can't be done by another part-time person?
  - digikata 11y ago
    I'm basing it on a rough mental model. Let's assume there is zero difference between the quality of full time people and part time people, but, being people there is distribution of people that a) need to be trained over time to handle certain on-the-job situations (e.g. dog in yard, etc...), and b) the system needs time (or some number of deliveries) to discover that some people are basically not fit for the position - including people signed up with the intent to scam the system. Let's compare two groups of employees, a full-time group and a part-time group. The first thing that might surface in this model is that the part-time group requires more people to fill the same number of deliveries that the full time group can fulfill. So, in terms of numbers of bad deliveries, you'll have more failures just because you had to draw a larger number of individuals for the part-time pool vs the full time - even if quality of individuals for the full time vs part-time are exactly the same. Adding further assumptions doesn't improve things. Maybe one might assume that part-time employees are more likely to move on to other jobs and leave the Flex workforce - well that's more churn and you get more people in category b, and more people temporarily needing training/experience. Maybe the distributions aren't exactly the same between full time and part time - one might theorize that scammers are more likely to take jobs under flex (maybe even under multiple aliases to keep from getting caught)... again this makes the performance under Flex worse... Maybe even given the quality differences, it only ends up making sense to offer Flex delivery on the periphery of where it doesn't make cost sense to install or expand full-time infrastructure.
dorward 11y ago
It's the "on time" bit that is important. I've spent whole weekends waiting in at home for a delivery from Amazon Logistics only to get emails at 7pm each evening telling me they tried to deliver and failed.
hkmurakami 11y ago
The OnTrac experience is already so bad that I can't imagine it really becoming that much worse.
blazespin 11y ago
It's an issue or some wacko can come to your door pretending to be a delivery person.
- tedks 11y ago
  Uber tells you the license plate of the car assigned to you; this seems like a good way of preventing someone driving up and saying "I'm your Uber" if they sniff you using Uber on your phone. Amazon might not do this yet but they could and obviously should. People who are totally unconcerned about someone totally random showing up at their door carrying a potentially large(!) package are a whole different level of naive. Most of the world is not like your suburban home culdesac or Silicon Valley.

digikata 11y ago

Isn't the probability of something going wrong higher if the delivery infrastructure isn't staffed with full time people? I would guess that mishandling, loss, misdelivery, theft would all be more likely under the flex model.

TranquilMarmot 11y ago
But it would also be a lot easier to track what happened to that package and pinpoint a specific individual for the loss/theft/misdelivery, since Amazon has the driver's personal info, GPS location, and list of packages that they are delivering.
- digikata 11y ago
  How is that tracking different for a full time person vs a person who works for flex? Basically full time employment makes the workforce more sticky, and whatever performance quality process you run with the workforce will retrain or remove people who don't perform. With flex, it's likely the same quality process, only the workforce is larger and more likely to churn. So no matter what the performance of the quality process it has some non-zero time to detect and correct worker performance, so I don't see how one avoids a larger rate of delivery faults just from the workforce dynamics.
murbard2 11y ago
Amazon will most likely cover such problems, no questions asked. They will be defrauded more, for sure, but they gain a possibly gigantic network of distributors.
- digikata 11y ago
  But the customer 'hassle' rate just went up, your internal efficiency also went down by whatever it cost to fix the problem, so there had better be some big benefits to this method showing up in other areas.
tzier 11y ago
The issue rates aren't as high as the media leads you to believe. For example, Airbnb has a policy with Lloyds for any catastrophic events, but they actually don't have that many issues and so just pay for them themselves when they happen. (Or at least this used to be the case.) The media just sensationalizes it when something goes wrong, so you fall into availability bias. Plus, your costs are offset by having labor cost be variable instead of fixed, not paying benefits, etc. So if your margin is 10% higher as a result and you have a 5% increase in issues, you still come out better.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- fweespeech 11y ago
  http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare-no-end-in-sight.html http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare... > If the “her” he is referring to is me, then the first part of this statement is false (the second I cannot attest to). During the first week of my nightmare, the customer service team at Airbnb was - as I stated in my June 29 blog post – helpful, caring and supportive. In particular, one customer service manager - and the company’s freelance photographer - were wonderfully kind to me, and both should know how grateful I am. > And since June 30? On this same day, I received a personal call from one of the co-founders of Airbnb. We had a lengthy conversation, in which he indicated having knowledge of the (previously mentioned) person who had been apprehended by the police, but that he could not discuss the details or these previous cases with me, as the investigation was ongoing. He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the story”. > Look, despite what some of you are saying, I am not an idiot. I understand why Airbnb called me and asked me to bring this story to an end; it is in their best profitable interest to do so. Unfortunately for me – 5 weeks and counting – there is no end in sight. Too much about this case remains unknown and unresolved, and according to both the District Attorneys and the police, it could be many more months before the criminal investigation moves forward. > And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that instead, you keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel. You’ll be glad you did. I'll just leave this here. https://www.airbnb.com/host-protection-insurance https://www.airbnb.com/host-protection-insurance > Effective January 15, 2015, if a guest is injured in a listing or elsewhere on the building property during a stay, the Host Protection Insurance program provides coverage for Airbnb hosts and, where applicable, their landlords under a general commercial liability policy. There are a variety of gaps, and have been, where AirBnb and/or its insurance failed to cover things. It isn't until this year that insurance coverage was anywhere close to what I'd consider acceptable and basic. It still isn't "complete" as far as what I'd use for my rental property.
andreasklinger 11y ago
i want to agree with you but a lot of "professional" "fulltime" delivery companies i had trouble with provided more than sub-par customer care. i even have a black list of delivery companies i try to avoid (when purchasing from amazon vendors)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vhold 11y ago
I think Amazon already operates on a risk-taking model for package delivery. When I first started using Prime it was very conservative about requiring signatures, and overtime that became relaxed and I'd come home to find packages on my doorstep. Now sometimes they aren't even at my door, but instead downstairs away from my apartment. I think they'll just keep taking more risks to save money until they start losing packages.
- twistedpair 11y ago
  Amazon (ala UPS) requires signatures for the most random things. I get a $500 phone left on the porch, but a $2 cat toy requires a 2mi drive to a local quickie mart drop of facility because it needs a sig. From what I've heard, the signature requirement is driven my Amazon's merchants, not by them, so it's a crap shoot.
- works_remote_ 11y ago
  There has been more than once where a package will fail to be delivered in a timely manner (the website indicates its been out for delivery for 5+ days), and they have always overnighted a replacement without charge or expectation that if the original shows up that I return it to them. These missing packages have been primarily from when UPS/FedEx decides to use a last mile delivery service, instead of delivering it themselves, which is primarily staffed by low wage workers with frighteningly high turnover.
  - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
    I find it far more frustrating when one of the last mile delivery services says they have delivered the package, and then it shows up a day or two later. Amazon hasn't honored the two day guarantee for me in these instances.
    - kornholi 11y ago
      FedEx marked one of my packages as delivered but it didn't show up until 6 days later (the replacement arrived on the same day...). I assume someone just forgot about it on the truck, since the other one was actually delivered on time.
makomk 11y ago
Yodel (formerly the Home Delivery Network) used this model in the UK for years and were infamously bad. This may well be why they changed their name.
- chipperyman573 11y ago
  That's just one company, though. It might be awful because of their specific policies.
manigandham 11y ago
Why? What are you basing this on? Why would part-time people be any less responsible? They have less to deal with, more time to deliver, use their own car, choose their schedule, and set the radius and familiarity of their route. I'd expect them to make better deliveries and more accurately. Uber/Lyft have shown this model works fine.
- Steko 11y ago
  Because problems inevitably occur and with full time staff it's more likely the delivery person has seen the problem 1000 times and knows exactly how to handle it optimally. In addition to knowing the ins and outs of your office or apartment, perhaps even recognizing you by name. > I'd expect them to make better deliveries and more accurately. I wouldn't. I'd expect the additional supply would get you faster, cheaper delivery at the expense of accuracy and a slight increase in other problems. I'm not against that trade off but there's no need to pretend it doesn't exist. > Uber/Lyft have shown this model works fine. Uber/Lyft and particularly Lyft where you're less likely to get an experienced professional, have shown that the model is not without it's tradeoffs.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    What is the tradeoff with uber/lyft? I still get where I'm going but it's often cheaper, more comfortable and just as fast (or faster) than previous options. I don't see how accuracy is going to be a problem. These people aren't driving across the country with hundreds of items and it would be very much in their interest to make sure the right thing is delivered to the right person. I think the "experienced professional" of a shipping carrier driver is vastly overrated here. Just what, exactly, do they do that can't be done by another part-time person?
- digikata 11y ago
  I'm basing it on a rough mental model. Let's assume there is zero difference between the quality of full time people and part time people, but, being people there is distribution of people that a) need to be trained over time to handle certain on-the-job situations (e.g. dog in yard, etc...), and b) the system needs time (or some number of deliveries) to discover that some people are basically not fit for the position - including people signed up with the intent to scam the system. Let's compare two groups of employees, a full-time group and a part-time group. The first thing that might surface in this model is that the part-time group requires more people to fill the same number of deliveries that the full time group can fulfill. So, in terms of numbers of bad deliveries, you'll have more failures just because you had to draw a larger number of individuals for the part-time pool vs the full time - even if quality of individuals for the full time vs part-time are exactly the same. Adding further assumptions doesn't improve things. Maybe one might assume that part-time employees are more likely to move on to other jobs and leave the Flex workforce - well that's more churn and you get more people in category b, and more people temporarily needing training/experience. Maybe the distributions aren't exactly the same between full time and part time - one might theorize that scammers are more likely to take jobs under flex (maybe even under multiple aliases to keep from getting caught)... again this makes the performance under Flex worse... Maybe even given the quality differences, it only ends up making sense to offer Flex delivery on the periphery of where it doesn't make cost sense to install or expand full-time infrastructure.

dorward 11y ago

It's the "on time" bit that is important. I've spent whole weekends waiting in at home for a delivery from Amazon Logistics only to get emails at 7pm each evening telling me they tried to deliver and failed.

hkmurakami 11y ago

The OnTrac experience is already so bad that I can't imagine it really becoming that much worse.

blazespin 11y ago

It's an issue or some wacko can come to your door pretending to be a delivery person.

tedks 11y ago
Uber tells you the license plate of the car assigned to you; this seems like a good way of preventing someone driving up and saying "I'm your Uber" if they sniff you using Uber on your phone. Amazon might not do this yet but they could and obviously should. People who are totally unconcerned about someone totally random showing up at their door carrying a potentially large(!) package are a whole different level of naive. Most of the world is not like your suburban home culdesac or Silicon Valley.