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At the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon was overwhelmed by people panic buying or preparing for shelter in place. The problem was not primarily the shipping in
by jshevek 7y ago
At the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon was overwhelmed by people panic buying or preparing for shelter in place. The problem was not primarily the shipping industry, it was within Amazon. They've since hired large numbers of people and deprioritized [items deemed] non-essential so that people can get their essential needs in a timely manner.
- StillBored 7y agoHow does amazon know what is essential?
- jshevek 7y agoEdit: I thought you said "determine" rather than "know", answered accordingly below. Of course they don't "know", that's not a helpful question. The same way everyone does when trying to solve this problem systemically (vs individually), by making imperfect decisions and leaning on categories. My UVC lamp was delayed. I think that's more important than someone else's "third month" bunker food, but what are you going to do.
- monkpit 7y agoA guess: it’s probably just heuristics based on things being panic-bought, high demand, suddenly high number of searches, etc. Obviously they don’t “know” some subset of essential items, that would be difficult, error-prone, and they would inevitably miss certain things which would lead to complaints and bad press.
- grimjack00 7y agoAt a high level, at least, anything in categories like "Groceries", "Health Care", "Personal Hygiene".