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It’s to the point where I can’t blame Amazon for actions like these. The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping. When they don’t ge

It’s to the point where I can’t blame Amazon for actions like these. The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping. When they don’t get that, they get really upset. Amazon doesn’t want its customers to get upset, and it can’t trust its shipping partners because they don’t have the burden of the consumer sentiment. No one blames FedEx for their late package these days, they blame Amazon. Heck, you don’t have to look hard to find product reviews that only gripe with the shipping time or condition. Amazon is going to vertically integrate shipping, no question. The market demands it, and Amazon will probably eventually ship more packages than any of its competitors. And, Bezos isn’t dumb, so he’ll build and sell this capacity to others. Amazon is reaching further and further into the economy, and I don’t see much stopping them.

kelnos 7y ago
> No one blames FedEx for their late package these days, they blame Amazon. As they should. FedEx's customer in this instance is Amazon, not the receiver of the package (who is a customer of Amazon, and Amazon alone). If anyone has the clout these days to hurt FedEx economically if they don't improve, it's Amazon. Amazon should be pushing FedEx (and their other shippers) to be more accountable for late, damaged, and lost packages. These days both FedEx's and UPS's preferred delivery method seems to be to rake their hands over every single door buzzer to my apartment building, dump the packages outside (insanely unsafe), and run off before anyone has a chance to respond to open the door. They even do this for signature-required packages on occasion, forging the signature. I get that drivers' incentives are completely screwed up regarding how their performance is evaluated, but it's a terrible experience from my perspective.
- sithlord 7y ago
  > Amazon should be pushing FedEx (and their other shippers) to be more accountable for late, damaged, and lost packages. sounds like, they are - by taking a LOT of business from them.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Fedex mentions this is not a material amount of business. How Amazon operates it's last mile logistical network is unsustainable. These people will eventually churn out of the open air sweatshop that is delivering last mile for Amazon (Fedex's requirements are much less onerous on the ground/home delivery side, based on my conversations with both Amazon delivery drivers and Fedex ground and home delivery drivers). Very similar to the high churn Uber and Lyft experience with drivers. It lasts only as long as you can find people desperate enough to work in these roles.
    - jermaustin1 7y ago
      After running the numbers from Amazon's presentation on starting your own delivery company, I came away thinking its a nice JOB. In order for it to be a good profitable business that allows you a life of leisure, you end up having to manage around 400 drivers and 200 trucks, and I'm not sure if that is possible to scale that high with their model.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Do a run with an Amazon driver and see the kind of job it is. I have, and it is not a job I'd have versus a traditional retail job. Agree with your point though that you're buying a job, not a business. Lots of better businesses to buy, lots of better jobs one could have.
    - xeromal 7y ago
      The difference with Amazon running that way and Fedex/UPS is that Amazon has AWS to prop up other services that run at a loss. They can run their shipping service at very low or negative profit and use AWS to make up for it.
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      If they can find enough now, with unemployment at multi decade lows, then it seems that you could find them anytime.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  We (my employer, Refund Retriever) has caught them just outright lying about deliveries before. https://www.refundretriever.com/blog/FedEx-Tracking-Error https://www.refundretriever.com/blog/FedEx-Tracking-Error
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    In probably a dozen instances in the last two years, I've had premature "Delivered" statuses, with windows of an hour before it showed up, to two days. 2 have been FedEx, 2 USPS. The rest were Delivered by Amazon deliveries.
    - fooey 7y ago
      The only outright lie I've had lately has been USPS where the package didn't show up until the day after they said it had been. OnTrac used to be horrible, but I haven't gotten stuck with them in quite a white.
  - loeg 7y ago
    Yeah, I've also had FedEx lie to me multiple times. Both times they claim delivery was attempted while I was home the whole day (and it was not, obviously). I've even noticed it within an hour of it happening, mid-day. I think sometimes if the drivers get behind they just skip houses and mark it as "attempted."
  - AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
    I've had plenty of flat-out lies from Amazon delivery before (e.g. they claim delivery attempted at HH:MM PM, while I was in the living room five feet from the door, and yet somehow I must have "missed" their knock), FedEx and UPS alike, although I've never been able to prove it. With the proliferation of people with Ring video doorbells, however, I am surprised that someone does not send footage. "Oh, you tried to deliver at 3:13 PM? Well gee, my front door camera sure doesn't seem to show anyone approaching my door at that time!" But again, you're already dealing with people that will lie to your face, so I can't imagine why video proof would compel them to change their strategy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- axaxs 7y ago
  Amazon doesn't seem much better. Last week, they 'delivered' an item, marked it delivered. The problem with that is that I didn't get it, and the picture proof was not my house. I have no idea whose house it was. When I called to ask for a refund, they first told me to wait as sometimes they mark things delivered before they are. I told him about the picture. Then he asked me to go door to door in my neighborhood because maybe someone else has it. I told him in a not so nice way that was their job, not mine. In the end I -did- get a refund, but seriously, I can't imagine UPS or Fedex saying things like this.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    Yeah, after the second time this happened I stopped ordering anything from Amazon.
  - rogerbinns 7y ago
    Fedex keeps delivering other people's stuff to my mother in law's house. The correct addresses are within a few blocks. I can assure you that Fedex really doesn't care or help in this case, over several instances of it happening. I suspect that this issue like others being described can come down to the driver that does a route, and what they do. I would be surprised if Amazon is not using their Ring doorbell cameras to check on deliveries. They will provide evidence of what really happened when customers and delivery dispute it. For example it is clear if the doorbell was rung, or in some cases if the vehicle even went down the street.
  - SalmonCannon 7y ago
    My Amazon delivery was pretty strange. I had an unknown number call my phone 2-3 times in a row (dumped to voicemail) then a few minutes later a frantic knocking on my door. It's two guys who were out of breath, they handed the package to me, and then jogged away down the apartment hallway. I think I ordered socks or something... I couldn't care less. It was jarring, just leave the package in the lobby and send me a delivery notification... geez. Prefer FedEx over that experience.
  - lsaferite 7y ago
    Funny you should mention the door to door thing. I literally just got this email from a merchant that shipped via FedEx. The package went from being delivered on the 13th to lost in limbo at the regional hub. Yay me. > In the meantime, I would recommend checking around neighbors and with any other potential members of your household to ensure the package was not incorrectly delivered.
- InitialLastName 7y ago
  I got a notification today that a signature-required package had been received by "signature not required".
Avshalom 7y ago
>>I can’t blame Amazon for actions like these. >>The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping Amazon created that expectation.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  And that expectation is a key reason why many people use Amazon more often nowadays, in situations where they'd previously have gone to a retail store.
- badrequest 7y ago
  True, but UPS/USPS/Fedex all helped to enable that expectation. It pains me (almost physically) to give the benefit of the doubt to Amazon, but if the carriers couldn't reasonably fulfill the 2-day delivery expectation the way Amazon wanted, they wouldn't have attempted it, and the expectation wouldn't be set.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Yes Amazon has upped the game and everyone has to match them. You seem to think it's a bad thing?
  - sidlls 7y ago
    The bad thing is their market position and ability to negotiate rates makes it much harder for independent business operators who must charge more for shipping or else lose money. The situation isn’t sustainable. Eventually, unless something drastic happens, we’ll be faced with asking whether they should be permitted to provide their own delivery services or not due to concerns about competition.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Ah I see - they’re too good and should be hobbled so people who aren’t as good can keep up. Consumer looses out.
      - 7y ago
thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
"Transportation By Amazon" (TBA) used to be a pipe dream and was envisioned as a way to use Amazon's cheaper shipping rates to ship packages of all types. With the build out of Amazon's own transportation network, Transportation By Amazon is poised to become a reality. The biggest part that remains is the pick-up of packages for shipping / reverse logistics. This should not be too hard, especially as Customer Returns is integrated into Amazon's transportation network. After Customer Returns is done, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get accurate shipment parameters (box size, weight, type of goods being shipped) and then building a website front-end to advertise and slowly ramp up the capability and learn how to handle different types of exceptional conditions.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
Amazon is reaching further and further into the economy, and I don’t see much stopping them. As much as I'm concerned about monopoly and the potential for anti-competitive behavior... I'm impressed by how effectively Amazon operates at the scale that it does. It's not like Comcast or AT&T which operate horribly at scale. I wish they would get disrupted by Starlink or something and go out of business. Amazon is an incredibly effective business.
- thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
  It's all about Amazon's focus on customer service and customer satisfaction. By keeping customer happiness as a top priority, customers will continue to return for future business and trust Amazon in new categories. They prioritize customer happiness above profit and put any profits made into growth, so they will continue to grow by making more customers happy and opening new categories.
- sartethought 7y ago
  AT&T are established utility monopolies. There is simply no comparison here. When Amazon owns the roads, or when they put UPS & FedEx out of business, then we can start making these comparisons.
- int_19h 7y ago
  An efficient monopoly is that much more concerning. The efficiency with which it can squeeze FedEx applies to its customers, as well.
  - ryanmarsh 7y ago
    Yes, I'm really going to hate those lower prices on overnight shipping for my business.
paulmd 7y ago
Amazon isn't helping anything by their "just in time" delivery model. If there is a truck going out that will allow 8-hour delivery, they will deprioritize the package for 40 hours and then mail it out on that truck. In turn, that leaves Fedex and UPS absolutely no margin for error. Package shipping errors happen, especially in the weeks before christmas when volume goes through the roof. But Amazon has wasted all the safety margin so if even one error occurs they blow their delivery window. It's hard to say whether UPS/Fedex have a problem without looking at their metrics, but Amazon sure isn't helping by pushing everything to the bleeding edge. Anecdotally over the last year or so I have noticed an increase to the point where virtually all (let's say at least 75%) of my "2 day delivery" (or even amazon day/no-rush) packages are being shipped like 11 at night on day before delivery and they just beeline it to me same-day.
- fooey 7y ago
  Fedex has their own margin of error. If they can't deliver it within their margin, they shouldn't claim they can.
  - cornishpixels 7y ago
    FedEx ground does not have a guaranteed delivery time.
    - killface 7y ago
      which is why it's insane that it was ever an option for people selling under the prime label. If it's ground, FedEx manages to take the longest possible time they can, even if it's only going a few miles.
      - twothamendment 7y ago
        I had faster delivery of a pallet on FedEx Freight than I've ever seen from FedEx Ground. Ground is my least favorite (but Amazon doesn't do their own deliveries here).
- 7y ago
at-fates-hands 7y ago
>> Amazon is reaching further and further into the economy, and I don’t see much stopping them. Once the government makes them liable for the actions of their 3rd party delivery services, it will. Until then? I agree, there's not much standing in their way. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/amazon-delivery-drivers-accidents.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/amazon-delivery-driver... I've stopped buying from them in light of all the articles detailing the horrendous working conditions and people getting killed because of their contract delivery drivers.
AgloeDreams 7y ago
Amazon is going to vertically integrate shipping, no question. The market demands it, and Amazon will probably eventually ship more packages than any of its competitors. And, Bezos isn’t dumb, so he’ll build and sell this capacity to others. It AMAZES ME how unreported it goes that they are doing this right now. They are doing it hilariously upfront and clearly. They bought massive amounts of Sprinters for Amazon Delivery to non urban areas, they are rolling out (classically urban only) Amazon delivery to areas near warehouses right now. And then.. then. They went out and made an order for 100K Rivian delivery vehicles, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. The headlines were all focused on the Tesla factor and how they are electric and nobody bothered to ask.. 'Why?'. That's like the number of trucks UPS Owns, PERIOD. That should have been the headline 'AMAZON ORDERS OWN FLEET TO REPLACE UPS, FEDEX' But nope 'Bezos bets on electric with Rivian order'
- badgers 7y ago
  WSJ reported on Amazon's expanding delivery ambitions 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600094
  - AgloeDreams 7y ago
    "Ambition" rather than 'They are just killing off UPS and FedEx' Its a huge billion dollar story that's been incredibly soft, just look at UPS's stock, this will result in them losing their largest partner, no movement at all.
    - SubuSS 7y ago
      I am super sure there is an acquisition of one of convoy et al by amazon very soon to build the AWS for trucking as well because they're going to have so much extra capacity in a matter of 2/3 years.
      - koboll 7y ago
        If there's extra capacity, why would they need to make an acquisition?
bobongo 7y ago
> reviews that only gripe with the shipping time or condition I was thinking of just this (i.e. who is held responsible nowadays by customers of mishandled deliveries) while I was watching, a few days ago, a UPS worker actually throwing boxes out of the back of his truck onto the concrete ground while it was raining. Hopefully none of those boxes were electronics, which would not have survived such poor handling unscathed.
- killface 7y ago
  and according to nearly every ups/fedex/usps shipping center worker, that doesn't compare to the abuse they suffer before they're on the truck. it's why apple put tilt sensors and shock sensors in their bulk iphone shipments overseas. they can't trust the shipping companies to not do that, unless they know they can be caught.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping. Amazon doesn't even offer overnight shipping anymore. This is a big step backward from the days when you were allowed to get one-day shipping as long as you were willing to pay for it. I am totally baffled.
- killface 7y ago
  just like most items are prime shipping after a 2-3 day delay in "order processing" ... 2 day prime coming 5 business days later is not cool.
azylman 7y ago
> Amazon is going to vertically integrate shipping, no question. The market demands it, and Amazon will probably eventually ship more packages than any of its competitors. Amazon already delivers half of its own packages. Currently they're about 85% of the size of FedEx. https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020938/amazon-logistics-prime-air-fedex-ups-package-delivery-more-than-50-percent https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020938/amazon-logistic...
petra 7y ago
I'm not sure it's just about vertical integration. Amazon is trying to to become better, of course. But it seems they are focusing on things that customers notice, things that are habit forming, while neglecting other areas where, maybe, most customers(maybe not here at HN), don't notice problems. So fast, effortless delivery(at a price Amazon can afford) is one. And private brands are also another. And TV. And Alexa. And i think that's where the main focus of their future investments will go, and not as news portrays - towards making themselves more efficient.
cornishpixels 7y ago
The problem is that Amazon Logistics is systemically far less reliable than FedEx or UPS.
mattrp 7y ago
Are there any anti trust experts here that can comment on whether this constitutes illegal tying?
- bradleyjg 7y ago
  Only monopolies aren't allowed to utilize a tying strategy. Every other company is free to. Amazon hasn't been found to be a monopoly in any market AFAIK.
  - mattrp 7y ago
    Yeah so I just was searching on that and saw this too... like they would need to be nearly 70% of a market for coercive strategies to be antitrust (although I take it % isn’t the only test). Hard to see how one would define a market where that would be true.
jrs235 7y ago
>Amazon doesn’t want its customers to get upset, I wish this was true but it's obviously not seeing that they haven't fixed the commingling and fake/imposter product issues.
- alanh 7y ago
  awful logic. they know full well that customer loyalty is their bread and butter. not doing a great job solving one cause of unhappiness does not prove they do not attempt to solve any or all causes of unhappiness! your logic is equivalent to saying, "since the South did not win the Civil War, it’s obvious they did not really care if they were under Union rule or not"
rhizome 7y ago
All of those timeframes were Amazon's promises that they decided to make as a result of many meetings and many people being involved in the decision. Who else should be blamed? I feel the elephant in the room is the question of whether Amazon should be allowed to vertically integrate shipping.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
So Amazon is concerned about shipping but not counterfeit goods? This isn't about customers and expectations. It's about Amazon's bottomline. It's a great way to get ppl who already have their wallets open to add Prime.
bronco21016 7y ago
What blows me away is that frequently my expected delivery date for Prime orders is next day. More often than not that leaves my packages handled by Amazon or one of their third party contractors. Greater than 75% of the time the package does not come on time. Often times it even turns into 3 days. If using the established players means the buy button says arrives in 2 days and it arrives in 2 days then I would be SIGNIFICANTLY more satisfied with Prime. I haven’t read enough of the other comments yet to know if my experience is the norm but I really think Amazon would be better off abandoning this whole scheme and letting the pros handle it. It wouldn’t kill American consumers to wait another day. Side rant: I’m absolutely sick of the armada of rented panel vans from Enterprise blasting random circles through my residential neighborhood. Make them take the earbuds out and for the love of god give them some kind of routing that makes sense.
- katbyte 7y ago
  Maybe it’s my city but that’s not the experience I have here.. but Vancouver also does seem to have a lot of loading areas in front of and alleys for them to use

kelnos 7y ago

> No one blames FedEx for their late package these days, they blame Amazon. As they should. FedEx's customer in this instance is Amazon, not the receiver of the package (who is a customer of Amazon, and Amazon alone). If anyone has the clout these days to hurt FedEx economically if they don't improve, it's Amazon. Amazon should be pushing FedEx (and their other shippers) to be more accountable for late, damaged, and lost packages. These days both FedEx's and UPS's preferred delivery method seems to be to rake their hands over every single door buzzer to my apartment building, dump the packages outside (insanely unsafe), and run off before anyone has a chance to respond to open the door. They even do this for signature-required packages on occasion, forging the signature. I get that drivers' incentives are completely screwed up regarding how their performance is evaluated, but it's a terrible experience from my perspective.

sithlord 7y ago
> Amazon should be pushing FedEx (and their other shippers) to be more accountable for late, damaged, and lost packages. sounds like, they are - by taking a LOT of business from them.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Fedex mentions this is not a material amount of business. How Amazon operates it's last mile logistical network is unsustainable. These people will eventually churn out of the open air sweatshop that is delivering last mile for Amazon (Fedex's requirements are much less onerous on the ground/home delivery side, based on my conversations with both Amazon delivery drivers and Fedex ground and home delivery drivers). Very similar to the high churn Uber and Lyft experience with drivers. It lasts only as long as you can find people desperate enough to work in these roles.
  - jermaustin1 7y ago
    After running the numbers from Amazon's presentation on starting your own delivery company, I came away thinking its a nice JOB. In order for it to be a good profitable business that allows you a life of leisure, you end up having to manage around 400 drivers and 200 trucks, and I'm not sure if that is possible to scale that high with their model.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Do a run with an Amazon driver and see the kind of job it is. I have, and it is not a job I'd have versus a traditional retail job. Agree with your point though that you're buying a job, not a business. Lots of better businesses to buy, lots of better jobs one could have.
  - xeromal 7y ago
    The difference with Amazon running that way and Fedex/UPS is that Amazon has AWS to prop up other services that run at a loss. They can run their shipping service at very low or negative profit and use AWS to make up for it.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    If they can find enough now, with unemployment at multi decade lows, then it seems that you could find them anytime.
bdcravens 7y ago
We (my employer, Refund Retriever) has caught them just outright lying about deliveries before. https://www.refundretriever.com/blog/FedEx-Tracking-Error https://www.refundretriever.com/blog/FedEx-Tracking-Error
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  In probably a dozen instances in the last two years, I've had premature "Delivered" statuses, with windows of an hour before it showed up, to two days. 2 have been FedEx, 2 USPS. The rest were Delivered by Amazon deliveries.
  - fooey 7y ago
    The only outright lie I've had lately has been USPS where the package didn't show up until the day after they said it had been. OnTrac used to be horrible, but I haven't gotten stuck with them in quite a white.
- loeg 7y ago
  Yeah, I've also had FedEx lie to me multiple times. Both times they claim delivery was attempted while I was home the whole day (and it was not, obviously). I've even noticed it within an hour of it happening, mid-day. I think sometimes if the drivers get behind they just skip houses and mark it as "attempted."
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  I've had plenty of flat-out lies from Amazon delivery before (e.g. they claim delivery attempted at HH:MM PM, while I was in the living room five feet from the door, and yet somehow I must have "missed" their knock), FedEx and UPS alike, although I've never been able to prove it. With the proliferation of people with Ring video doorbells, however, I am surprised that someone does not send footage. "Oh, you tried to deliver at 3:13 PM? Well gee, my front door camera sure doesn't seem to show anyone approaching my door at that time!" But again, you're already dealing with people that will lie to your face, so I can't imagine why video proof would compel them to change their strategy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
axaxs 7y ago
Amazon doesn't seem much better. Last week, they 'delivered' an item, marked it delivered. The problem with that is that I didn't get it, and the picture proof was not my house. I have no idea whose house it was. When I called to ask for a refund, they first told me to wait as sometimes they mark things delivered before they are. I told him about the picture. Then he asked me to go door to door in my neighborhood because maybe someone else has it. I told him in a not so nice way that was their job, not mine. In the end I -did- get a refund, but seriously, I can't imagine UPS or Fedex saying things like this.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Yeah, after the second time this happened I stopped ordering anything from Amazon.
- rogerbinns 7y ago
  Fedex keeps delivering other people's stuff to my mother in law's house. The correct addresses are within a few blocks. I can assure you that Fedex really doesn't care or help in this case, over several instances of it happening. I suspect that this issue like others being described can come down to the driver that does a route, and what they do. I would be surprised if Amazon is not using their Ring doorbell cameras to check on deliveries. They will provide evidence of what really happened when customers and delivery dispute it. For example it is clear if the doorbell was rung, or in some cases if the vehicle even went down the street.
- SalmonCannon 7y ago
  My Amazon delivery was pretty strange. I had an unknown number call my phone 2-3 times in a row (dumped to voicemail) then a few minutes later a frantic knocking on my door. It's two guys who were out of breath, they handed the package to me, and then jogged away down the apartment hallway. I think I ordered socks or something... I couldn't care less. It was jarring, just leave the package in the lobby and send me a delivery notification... geez. Prefer FedEx over that experience.
- lsaferite 7y ago
  Funny you should mention the door to door thing. I literally just got this email from a merchant that shipped via FedEx. The package went from being delivered on the 13th to lost in limbo at the regional hub. Yay me. > In the meantime, I would recommend checking around neighbors and with any other potential members of your household to ensure the package was not incorrectly delivered.
InitialLastName 7y ago
I got a notification today that a signature-required package had been received by "signature not required".

Avshalom 7y ago

>>I can’t blame Amazon for actions like these. >>The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping Amazon created that expectation.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
And that expectation is a key reason why many people use Amazon more often nowadays, in situations where they'd previously have gone to a retail store.
badrequest 7y ago
True, but UPS/USPS/Fedex all helped to enable that expectation. It pains me (almost physically) to give the benefit of the doubt to Amazon, but if the carriers couldn't reasonably fulfill the 2-day delivery expectation the way Amazon wanted, they wouldn't have attempted it, and the expectation wouldn't be set.
chrisseaton 7y ago
Yes Amazon has upped the game and everyone has to match them. You seem to think it's a bad thing?
- sidlls 7y ago
  The bad thing is their market position and ability to negotiate rates makes it much harder for independent business operators who must charge more for shipping or else lose money. The situation isn’t sustainable. Eventually, unless something drastic happens, we’ll be faced with asking whether they should be permitted to provide their own delivery services or not due to concerns about competition.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Ah I see - they’re too good and should be hobbled so people who aren’t as good can keep up. Consumer looses out.
    - 7y ago

thesuperbigfrog 7y ago

"Transportation By Amazon" (TBA) used to be a pipe dream and was envisioned as a way to use Amazon's cheaper shipping rates to ship packages of all types. With the build out of Amazon's own transportation network, Transportation By Amazon is poised to become a reality. The biggest part that remains is the pick-up of packages for shipping / reverse logistics. This should not be too hard, especially as Customer Returns is integrated into Amazon's transportation network. After Customer Returns is done, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get accurate shipment parameters (box size, weight, type of goods being shipped) and then building a website front-end to advertise and slowly ramp up the capability and learn how to handle different types of exceptional conditions.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

Amazon is reaching further and further into the economy, and I don’t see much stopping them. As much as I'm concerned about monopoly and the potential for anti-competitive behavior... I'm impressed by how effectively Amazon operates at the scale that it does. It's not like Comcast or AT&T which operate horribly at scale. I wish they would get disrupted by Starlink or something and go out of business. Amazon is an incredibly effective business.

thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
It's all about Amazon's focus on customer service and customer satisfaction. By keeping customer happiness as a top priority, customers will continue to return for future business and trust Amazon in new categories. They prioritize customer happiness above profit and put any profits made into growth, so they will continue to grow by making more customers happy and opening new categories.
sartethought 7y ago
AT&T are established utility monopolies. There is simply no comparison here. When Amazon owns the roads, or when they put UPS & FedEx out of business, then we can start making these comparisons.
int_19h 7y ago
An efficient monopoly is that much more concerning. The efficiency with which it can squeeze FedEx applies to its customers, as well.
- ryanmarsh 7y ago
  Yes, I'm really going to hate those lower prices on overnight shipping for my business.

paulmd 7y ago

Amazon isn't helping anything by their "just in time" delivery model. If there is a truck going out that will allow 8-hour delivery, they will deprioritize the package for 40 hours and then mail it out on that truck. In turn, that leaves Fedex and UPS absolutely no margin for error. Package shipping errors happen, especially in the weeks before christmas when volume goes through the roof. But Amazon has wasted all the safety margin so if even one error occurs they blow their delivery window. It's hard to say whether UPS/Fedex have a problem without looking at their metrics, but Amazon sure isn't helping by pushing everything to the bleeding edge. Anecdotally over the last year or so I have noticed an increase to the point where virtually all (let's say at least 75%) of my "2 day delivery" (or even amazon day/no-rush) packages are being shipped like 11 at night on day before delivery and they just beeline it to me same-day.

fooey 7y ago
Fedex has their own margin of error. If they can't deliver it within their margin, they shouldn't claim they can.
- cornishpixels 7y ago
  FedEx ground does not have a guaranteed delivery time.
  - killface 7y ago
    which is why it's insane that it was ever an option for people selling under the prime label. If it's ground, FedEx manages to take the longest possible time they can, even if it's only going a few miles.
    - twothamendment 7y ago
      I had faster delivery of a pallet on FedEx Freight than I've ever seen from FedEx Ground. Ground is my least favorite (but Amazon doesn't do their own deliveries here).
7y ago

at-fates-hands 7y ago

>> Amazon is reaching further and further into the economy, and I don’t see much stopping them. Once the government makes them liable for the actions of their 3rd party delivery services, it will. Until then? I agree, there's not much standing in their way. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/amazon-delivery-drivers-accidents.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/amazon-delivery-driver... I've stopped buying from them in light of all the articles detailing the horrendous working conditions and people getting killed because of their contract delivery drivers.

AgloeDreams 7y ago

Amazon is going to vertically integrate shipping, no question. The market demands it, and Amazon will probably eventually ship more packages than any of its competitors. And, Bezos isn’t dumb, so he’ll build and sell this capacity to others. It AMAZES ME how unreported it goes that they are doing this right now. They are doing it hilariously upfront and clearly. They bought massive amounts of Sprinters for Amazon Delivery to non urban areas, they are rolling out (classically urban only) Amazon delivery to areas near warehouses right now. And then.. then. They went out and made an order for 100K Rivian delivery vehicles, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. The headlines were all focused on the Tesla factor and how they are electric and nobody bothered to ask.. 'Why?'. That's like the number of trucks UPS Owns, PERIOD. That should have been the headline 'AMAZON ORDERS OWN FLEET TO REPLACE UPS, FEDEX' But nope 'Bezos bets on electric with Rivian order'

badgers 7y ago
WSJ reported on Amazon's expanding delivery ambitions 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12600094
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
  "Ambition" rather than 'They are just killing off UPS and FedEx' Its a huge billion dollar story that's been incredibly soft, just look at UPS's stock, this will result in them losing their largest partner, no movement at all.
  - SubuSS 7y ago
    I am super sure there is an acquisition of one of convoy et al by amazon very soon to build the AWS for trucking as well because they're going to have so much extra capacity in a matter of 2/3 years.
    - koboll 7y ago
      If there's extra capacity, why would they need to make an acquisition?

bobongo 7y ago

> reviews that only gripe with the shipping time or condition I was thinking of just this (i.e. who is held responsible nowadays by customers of mishandled deliveries) while I was watching, a few days ago, a UPS worker actually throwing boxes out of the back of his truck onto the concrete ground while it was raining. Hopefully none of those boxes were electronics, which would not have survived such poor handling unscathed.

killface 7y ago
and according to nearly every ups/fedex/usps shipping center worker, that doesn't compare to the abuse they suffer before they're on the truck. it's why apple put tilt sensors and shock sensors in their bulk iphone shipments overseas. they can't trust the shipping companies to not do that, unless they know they can be caught.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> The consumer has come to expect guaranteed overnight or 2 day shipping. Amazon doesn't even offer overnight shipping anymore. This is a big step backward from the days when you were allowed to get one-day shipping as long as you were willing to pay for it. I am totally baffled.

killface 7y ago
just like most items are prime shipping after a 2-3 day delay in "order processing" ... 2 day prime coming 5 business days later is not cool.

azylman 7y ago

> Amazon is going to vertically integrate shipping, no question. The market demands it, and Amazon will probably eventually ship more packages than any of its competitors. Amazon already delivers half of its own packages. Currently they're about 85% of the size of FedEx. https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020938/amazon-logistics-prime-air-fedex-ups-package-delivery-more-than-50-percent https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020938/amazon-logistic...

petra 7y ago

I'm not sure it's just about vertical integration. Amazon is trying to to become better, of course. But it seems they are focusing on things that customers notice, things that are habit forming, while neglecting other areas where, maybe, most customers(maybe not here at HN), don't notice problems. So fast, effortless delivery(at a price Amazon can afford) is one. And private brands are also another. And TV. And Alexa. And i think that's where the main focus of their future investments will go, and not as news portrays - towards making themselves more efficient.

cornishpixels 7y ago

The problem is that Amazon Logistics is systemically far less reliable than FedEx or UPS.

mattrp 7y ago

Are there any anti trust experts here that can comment on whether this constitutes illegal tying?

bradleyjg 7y ago
Only monopolies aren't allowed to utilize a tying strategy. Every other company is free to. Amazon hasn't been found to be a monopoly in any market AFAIK.
- mattrp 7y ago
  Yeah so I just was searching on that and saw this too... like they would need to be nearly 70% of a market for coercive strategies to be antitrust (although I take it % isn’t the only test). Hard to see how one would define a market where that would be true.

jrs235 7y ago

>Amazon doesn’t want its customers to get upset, I wish this was true but it's obviously not seeing that they haven't fixed the commingling and fake/imposter product issues.

alanh 7y ago
awful logic. they know full well that customer loyalty is their bread and butter. not doing a great job solving one cause of unhappiness does not prove they do not attempt to solve any or all causes of unhappiness! your logic is equivalent to saying, "since the South did not win the Civil War, it’s obvious they did not really care if they were under Union rule or not"

rhizome 7y ago

All of those timeframes were Amazon's promises that they decided to make as a result of many meetings and many people being involved in the decision. Who else should be blamed? I feel the elephant in the room is the question of whether Amazon should be allowed to vertically integrate shipping.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

So Amazon is concerned about shipping but not counterfeit goods? This isn't about customers and expectations. It's about Amazon's bottomline. It's a great way to get ppl who already have their wallets open to add Prime.

bronco21016 7y ago

What blows me away is that frequently my expected delivery date for Prime orders is next day. More often than not that leaves my packages handled by Amazon or one of their third party contractors. Greater than 75% of the time the package does not come on time. Often times it even turns into 3 days. If using the established players means the buy button says arrives in 2 days and it arrives in 2 days then I would be SIGNIFICANTLY more satisfied with Prime. I haven’t read enough of the other comments yet to know if my experience is the norm but I really think Amazon would be better off abandoning this whole scheme and letting the pros handle it. It wouldn’t kill American consumers to wait another day. Side rant: I’m absolutely sick of the armada of rented panel vans from Enterprise blasting random circles through my residential neighborhood. Make them take the earbuds out and for the love of god give them some kind of routing that makes sense.

katbyte 7y ago
Maybe it’s my city but that’s not the experience I have here.. but Vancouver also does seem to have a lot of loading areas in front of and alleys for them to use