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Packages dumped in wrong lobby, resident tried harder to correct it than Amazon

157 points by ilamont 5y ago

kirykl 5y ago
A contracted employee for a contracted carrier left a few packages. The customers will tell Amazon they never received the items. Amazon will replace them free. If the items sold were from an FBA seller, Amazon won't eat the cost but will charge back the FBA seller. The contracted carrier may or may not ever hear about it.
- pitaa 5y ago
  > The customers will tell Amazon they never received the items. Amazon will replace them free. Why does this remind me of that old Firefly episode where they steal the medicine from the Alliance hospital. They justify that "the Alliance will have it replaced by the end of the day".
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    Firefly is a show about the bad guys, written by somebody who doesn't realise they're the bad guys. I watched it because I played the awful board game. "This game is awful" I said but the guy who'd bought it insisted it was great because it was so like the TV show. Watched the show, checks out, they've precisely imitated the show's "I don't deserve to suffer the inevitable consequences of my own actions. I am the protagonist in my story so the rules shouldn't apply to me" attitude.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    It's the fictional counterpart to the statement that you see on Reddit and elsewhere after a violent riot, that it's no big deal that buildings and businesses got torched and looted because "insurance covers it".
- albatrosstrophy 5y ago
  So the FBA seller's going to bear the cost of courier mistake? This doesn't make sense.
  - kirykl 5y ago
    yes, they class it as carrier delay and charge the seller been going on for a while. The reimbursements never actually happen https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonSeller/comments/9d9owl/a_ton_of_refunds_on_amazon_in_the_last_few_months/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonSeller/comments/9d9owl/a_ton_...
  - dawnerd 5y ago
    As someone that’d dabbled in FBA I don’t think it’s how it works either. It’s 100% amazons fault and one of the main reasons to do FBA - having Amazon deal with logistics. That said it might be different these days.
- julianlam 5y ago
  At Amazon's scale, it's not worth it to close the loop on every abandoned delivery worldwide. I once got a parcel delivered, but the driver was confused as the same tracking number was on two parcels. Amazon had printed an extra label and stuck it onto another package. He just had me pick one of the two. I picked wrong, and ended up with some window treatments that Amazon refused to collect. I reordered my stuff (which likely went back to Amazon as undeliverable anyway) and that was that. Amazon just writes it off as a business expense.
- georgyo 5y ago
  What's interesting to me is that Amazon fights very hard if it is their items. I have only every gotten one package stolen, and it was Amazon store brand Presto paper towels, a value of ~$30. Because it was Amazon brand, I got transferred three times, they flat out said that for their products they need to investigate. They created a case number and had me call back in a week. Other people I know, and even in this thread talk about how trivial it is for a return. Apparently Amazon only cares about lost packages if they have to actually eat the cost.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  I’ve had Amazon deliver my packages to the wrong address. This is why I wish they were required to take a picture of all deliveries. That way I could contact them, have them pull up the picture of the wrong house, and have them compare that to all the other pictures of all the other deliveries. Then it would be a lot easier to make them either send a new one to the right address, or they have to go to their misdelivered address and pick up that package so that they can send it to me. Sigh….
sandworm101 5y ago
Littering? Why is amazon not fined for this? If abandoning parcels is just "cost of doing business" then someone needs to step in and make it too expensive to still be worth it. Fine them for littering and/or the cost incurred by the building to rectify the situation. This might actually be something for small claims court. The building can pay to dispose of/deliver the packages and take Amazon to small claims to recover costs.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Same reason people with leafblowers aren’t fined for all the litter they blow off of private property into the public sidewalks and roadways. Because there isn’t enough political will to argue that what they’re doing is wrong, in the face of how desirable the convenience is to the electorate.
- justin66 5y ago
  > Littering? Why is amazon not fined for this? Asking someone to either throw the items away or keep them is the exact opposite of littering. > This might actually be something for small claims court. The building can pay to dispose of/deliver the packages and take Amazon to small claims to recover costs. Since Amazon told them they could keep the stuff or throw it away, they'd have to go to some elaborate lengths to actually suffer damages as a result of what Amazon did.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> or throw it away For a commercial enterprise, throwing something away is rarely free. And if there are electronics in those boxes, proper disposal might take more than a modicum of effort.
    - justin66 5y ago
      I expect even the judges in a small claims court get exasperated by having their time wasted over piddly shit. "Save me, I have to deal with the free stuff I just got from Amazon!" certainly falls into that category.
gwelson 5y ago
This sort of thing happens all the time at the apartment complex I live in (in the South Bay Area, California). We have an outdoor "mail room" with an automated package locker. I'm not sure if the package locker is usually full or simply hard for drivers to use, but often the delivery drivers will just leave a pile of like 30-50 packages next to it. Honestly, I don't blame the drivers in the slightest. If I were treated the way they were treated and paid what they were paid, I wouldn't care about doing my job the right way either. Hell, they're so monitored by algorithms and surveillance devices that they probably don't have time to do it the right way even if they wanted to. Things like this are going to keep happening and keep getting worse until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job. This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.
- hk1337 5y ago
  It probably depends on the location because here, we have an indoor locker room that requires a pass to enter. It always seemed like either the lockers are full either because there were a lot that day and/or people would leave the packages in the locker for days. Also, I noticed people would just give the address of the mailroom and probably did not sign up for the locker service.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force" They're not demented. They know it. They do not give a flying fuck.
  - orhmeh09 5y ago
    OK. So what is to be done?
    - popcube 5y ago
      call your Congressman?
Johnny555 5y ago
A few years ago a delivery driver dropped off an Amazon package for another town (but same street and house number as me). I contacted Amazon and they emailed me a return label and had UPS come pick it up.
Animats 5y ago
Just dump them at the nearest Whole Foods. Let them sort it out.
- jeffrallen 5y ago
  This is the way. When a stupid company externalises their crap onto your lawn, you drop it right back into their laps.
  - rasz 5y ago
    How is dropping basket of free gifts for employees working particular shift at a local store an Amazon penalty?
    - thinkingemote 5y ago
      the store is owned by Amazon.
      - Animats 5y ago
        Whole Foods have Amazon lockers. They must have some system for dealing with unclaimed items.
    - jeffrallen 5y ago
      Their boss will waste Jeff Bezos' time trying to find out how to return the stuff to Amazon, which is way better than you wasting your time.
      - rasz 5y ago
        The single phone call will go like this. Store manager: So what do you want me to do with those packages. minimum wage clueless phone support person staring at a support script: throw it in the bin. Store manager to night shift employees: Gifts for everyone!
gwelson 5y ago
Another note on this, I've had a few very thorny Amazon customer service issues in the past, and at a certain point I found the only solution was to email the CEO's office. I emailed `ajassy@amazon.com` and CC'd `Jeff@amazon.com` (Bezos) and `Dave@amazon.com` (Dave Clark, head of consumer). Got a response nearly instantly from an extremely helpful executive assistant who was empowered to do basically whatever and was a single point of contact moving forward. Even offered to hop on a call and explain what went wrong on their end and how they were fixing it moving forward (an offer I politely declined). I got my issue resolved and a fairly generous gift card for my trouble.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I'll try this next time. I used to send certified letters to the CEOs when I had poor service. That usually worked too.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    LinkedIn Inmail has been my go-to. Find a suitably high ranking staff member who is usually insulated from customers, and they're often shocked to hear real customer experiences. Got Cc'd on an E-mail chain from the assistant to some senior VP at DHL once, where the threat that said SVP wanted updates magically caused a package that support had claimed was already on a freight ship across the Atlantic in the wrong direction back to the sender to turn up in a depot five minutes from my office.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I've tried to report scams and sellers who tried to bribe me to those email addresses and never got responses.
  - gizdan 5y ago
    The scams and dishonest sellers are a feature, not a bug. Amazon still gets their cut whether or not you've been scammed.
kingcharles 5y ago
Amazon's delivery is getting worse and worse. I just had my packages stolen by the driver. So after hours talking to customer service they refunded my money so I could rebuy them. Of course some of the items had gone up in price by then. I rebought all the items and waited another week for them to be delivered, only to have them all stolen again by the driver. Now I had to go through hours of talking to multiple agents again, them pleading with me to wait just a few more days in case it was a glitch, before I got a refund so I could again spend more money to reorder everything and wait yet another week for it to be delivered.
- MarkSweep 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, how do you know the driver stole it? Something like it was marked as delivered but they never showed up?
- Jolter 5y ago
  How can you know the packages were not just left in another building? Or some else stole it from your porch after delivery?
atdrummond 5y ago
Amazon abandoned a five figure order of mine similarly and refused a reship. Was quite easy to cancel prime and never look back after that.
- exikyut 5y ago
  Okay, it sounds like the details might be interesting to hear on this one...
  - atdrummond 5y ago
    There are two apartment complexes in my small town with similar names (both contain the word Castle). That said, they have entirely different post codes (UK system) and my unit number doesn’t exist at the other complex. I had ordered new M1 macs and monitors for some new workers, plus an order of some snacks I cannot get on the island. If I had to guess, likely 10-12 total boxes. Amazon swears up and down it was delivered. I provide multiple CCTV feeds of the delivery date, testimony of the two posties that the independent delivery agent (NOT Isle of Man Post, who does a superb job) left it at the other location despite being told by residents and their postie that it was for my complex. The door it was left near is who I suspect took the packages but I’ve no way of proving it as I cannot get CCTV for that location. After months and months, Amazon ends up closing the matter and saying I need to pay for all new items if I want them shipped. I cancel prime and go ahead with having my credit card dispute the transaction. Amazon closes my account and tries to fight my dispute, despite my massive documentary evidence (that they were aware of) showing without a shadow of a doubt they made a mistake. Funnily enough, I eventually caught one of the boxes (sans goods) in a recycle bin near my place (small town) and the shipping label, despite what was on my Amazon account, was indeed for the other complex (but my unit number and postal code). So it can’t even be blamed on an overworked delivery driver - it was all a cock-up on Amazon’s end.
    - exikyut 5y ago
      ...Hah. *Files away* Did you grab a photo of the shipping label on the box that turned up? Mental drain notwithstanding, I theoretically wonder if you'd get a different response if you randomly cold-reopened the case with the new evidence. Sounds like the credit card dispute went through, in any case. Reading this, I also thought briefly that it would be really cool to make a site for people to publicly file open-and-shut substantiated claims as a sort of "name and shame"... but of course enforcing submission quality would be impossible (firehose), and the majority of the "neat" cases would end up being fraud. Sigh. :( TIL about the idea of having CCTV pointed at my front door and letterbox though. I've seen plenty of Ring clips at this point of "ha ha the delivery person yeeted the package in the general direction of the front door" but I never really thought that it makes it possible to be able to incontrovertibly go "...what delivery?". Definitely adding that to the todo list...
sen 5y ago
Amazon delivered a laptop to my house that I never ordered, the address wasn’t even slightly similar and I have no idea why they dropped it on my front step. I reported it to them and they said the same.. just throw it out. Local law says I have to attempt to return to sender so I called again and double checked if they want me to do so, and that second support person said the same bit more openly said “throw it away, or do whatever you like with it, but you definitely don’t need to send it back”. I was pretty shocked that they don’t even care about items of that high a value. My kid loved her new laptop though.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  It can’t have been of that high a value. Amazon sends the really expensive stuff via UPS, with a signature and ID required.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    I have never (hundreds, maybe even 1000+ deliveries) had to sign for an Amazon purchase. The only thing I can recall signing for, from any vendor, in the past 10 years was my wine club shipments and that's only been 50/50 since Covid.
    - ev1 5y ago
      I have $300 purchases that I had to read a 6-digit character to the amazon driver, the driver enter it in their device, and then release for shipment.
  - cmeacham98 5y ago
    I'm not sure what counts as "really expensive", but I ordered a $1k laptop via amazon and it was shipped with FedEx, no siganture required. (2-3 years ago, southeast US)
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      It’s a few thousands of USD. I don’t know what or even if there’s a magic cut off. But there’s some point where they seemingly no longer trust minimum wage subcontractors. Or perhaps it varies by locale… Even the Whole Foods security guards are armed where I live.
JamesAdir 5y ago
All the stories in this thread should be remembered when they will talk about zero carbon footprint and reducing waste in packaging.
causi 5y ago
Amazon can be very weird about deliveries and delivery problems. There's a distinct tendency for orders that are particularly good deals to just not show up. Also one time I forgot to ship a fairly expensive return item and eventually I just got an email saying "your return has been received and your refund processed."
aasasd 5y ago
> Amazon – the logistics expert the world has come to rely on Ah, yes, the really narrow definition of ‘the world’. Meaning the US, as everyone knows.
- jasoncartwright 5y ago
  Less than NA, but Amazon is 30% of e-commerce in the UK, and 25% of JP
locallost 5y ago
We are a very efficient company because we waste everybody's time for free.
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
Ya, this sucks but what's even more amazing is the relatively few f-ups that happen from Amazon. Given the millions of packages that they deal with daily I'm amazed that I keep on getting my packages on time and with little to complain about.
bunnie 5y ago
Logistics are efficient in only one direction. It's about 20x more expensive for packages to flow in the reverse direction. That bin of 'just throw it away' packages is a pretty good visualization of the cost asymmetry of reverse logistics. That, and how the delivered cost of an item is often 4-5x over the 'ex factory' cost, so altogether it's cost effective on average to abandon mis delivered products as long as your error rate is low enough. I'd wager that the cost to handle the support ticket that reported the delivery issue alone may start to approach the ex-factory replacement value of the cheapest goods in the pile...
- omegalulw 5y ago
  > Logistics are efficient in only one direction. It's about 20x more expensive for packages to flow in the reverse direction. Source needed. I would expect Amazon to have shipping between major hubs well figured out. The only cost that they may be unwilling to pay is the last mile pickup cost of packages like this (if the expected used value of the item(s) in the package is lower than this cost). But that's not 20x expensive, should be comparable to shipping costs.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Reverse logistics suck. Sure, once stuff is in the network of, say, FedEx, per-mile costs are comparable. Thing start to become more expensive from the point the returns arrive at an (Amazon) warehouse: - stuff isn't packed as good as from the supplier - stuff has to be unpacked, checked, graded, re-packed, re-labelled and re-stored - stuff isn't delivered in bulk, it is delivered in small, more often tan not, single-unit quantities making goods receipt and in-bound ops more expensive No idea if it is 20x, but it is considerably more expensive.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      20x sounds way too high. Imagine if pickup at factories is free due to scale, and the only cost is drop-off, then a return should be about two times as expensive, since sending a package to the factory is no different then someone's home.
dazc 5y ago
I have two apartments above my office, both residents have regular parcel deliveries and expect me to be available to receive them as some kind of free concierge service that I don't remember signing-up for? To make matters worse, one of these people refuses speak to me even I am stood immediately in front of him; the other parks her car in such a manner that I have to pay to park in a public space down the road despite polite requests for her to park in a more considerable manner. I've also had to soundproof my office at my own cost because of her barking dog (that she isn't supposed to have). The added irony being that if I order stuff from amazon I have it delivered to a nearby locker because I don't like waiting all day for the buzzer to go. So, yeah, not much sympathy from here. And, yes, I do still accept their parcels. Just because some people are **holes doesn't mean I have to be one too.
- koliber 5y ago
  Have you talked to them about these issues?
  - dazc 5y ago
    Did you read what I said? Paragraph #2 would be a good start if you want to skim.
kreeben 5y ago
An unsubstantiated but to me very plausible theory about America is that its society is designed in such a way that it creates a huge lower class for its upper class to abuse ("hire for peanuts"). This abuse is a means for the rich to enrich themselves even further by selling products and services to middle class, luring them into thinking they, too, can become plutocrats, or at least achieve something close to a plutocrat's level of standards of living. If a poor person rejects one of those shit jobs they are labeled as "being lazy" and are shunned by society.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  They're running out of people to abuse. Amazon seems to have bought up about a quarter of all advertising space on YouTube and is using it all to recruit employees. None of the ads are trying to get anyone to buy anything, just trying to get people to apply for jobs. I'm not sure I've seen Amazon advertise jobs on YouTube before this year and now the ads are ubiquitous.
the_other 5y ago
> One person noted that “It costs more logistically for Amazon to pick up and redeliver than to replace most items. It’s simply a cost of doing business and is factored into the model.” How do we refactor our economy such that this is no longer possible? What actually needs to happen?
- jstanley 5y ago
  Why does it need to change? If it costs more to pick up and redeliver than it does to leave free gifts for random people, what's the downside of leaving free gifts?
  - the_other 5y ago
    > Why does it need to change? Because when every decision by a company ultimately comes down to cost/profit, we lose the planet. > If it costs more to pick up and redeliver than it does to leave free gifts for random people, what's the downside of leaving free gifts? 1) the ethics are wrong here. Those gifts were intended for different people 2) Amazon "own" delivery here, and they failed; the cost is on them 3) a solution like "it's cheaper to post new ones" is anti-ecological (and thus probably also unethical) 4) Amazon is showing a very subtle disregard for its staff here. Technically, the staff member had responsibility for this delivery and they failed to manage that. Amazon enabled this misbehaviour (they probably enforced it through ridiculous targets). This removes the agency of the delivery staff. A "good" company would use individual staff members' agency to improve conditions for both the company and its staff (like how "good" engineering firms foster learning and career development). Whilst there may not be a career ladder with many rungs in delivery, those on the ladder should be afforded respect and their responsibility championed. Amazon failed here too.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    If that is even close to reality, there is no excuse not to just go straight to UBI and our Star Trek future… and stop messing around with pathetically arbitrary detritus being spewed off the fringes of a giant corporation, uselessly, and calling that 'gifts'. 'Free gifts for random people' isn't gifts, it's pollution.
qwerty456127 5y ago
> “Everyone at Amazon was saying, ’You can just throw these out.’” Isn't this great? Amazon probably records their calls so above said Andrea Norman could just have a huge bag of goodies for free. Take whatever you want and donate the rest. The vendors probably are going to reship/refund to the customers and Amazon will pay. Isn't this cool?
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Twice this year Amazon has sent me an entire case of a product instead of just the single item I ordered. I wasn't charged extra and they didn't want anything back. It appears in both cases that in the warehouse a case of the items wasn't opened and individually labeled but instead the case labeled as an individual item. One of the items was an inexpensive home improvement item but the other was a moderately priced computer part. It's crazy that their system is so highly optimized for sending items out that it doesn't make financial sense to retrieve these items.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Amazon does thing issue #44957
rkunal 5y ago
In some countries, 'return' comes with another huge problem. A parallel hidden economy, led by corruption to swap them with old items and sell as new on same ecommerce platforms. Sometimes swapping only original parts. Amount of money needed in managing 'authenticity/purity' of a return item is huge. From fake barcodes to fake packaging, everything is available at dirt cheap price. And ofcourse, the cheap manual labour in dire need of money.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
What's the law on this? Stack the boxes and toss the bin. An Amazon package is not technically considered mail, so if they leave the box on your step, refuse to retrieve it, isn't it finders keepers?
scohesc 5y ago
Man, if amazon was telling them to just throw the packages out, I'd be inclined to bring them up to my suite and flip whatever's in them for profit. Amazon clearly has no interest in delivering them and have already deemed them "lost".

157 points by ilamont 5y ago

A contracted employee for a contracted carrier left a few packages. The customers will tell Amazon they never received the items. Amazon will replace them free. If the items sold were from an FBA seller, Amazon won't eat the cost but will charge back the FBA seller. The contracted carrier may or may not ever hear about it.

pitaa 5y ago
> The customers will tell Amazon they never received the items. Amazon will replace them free. Why does this remind me of that old Firefly episode where they steal the medicine from the Alliance hospital. They justify that "the Alliance will have it replaced by the end of the day".
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Firefly is a show about the bad guys, written by somebody who doesn't realise they're the bad guys. I watched it because I played the awful board game. "This game is awful" I said but the guy who'd bought it insisted it was great because it was so like the TV show. Watched the show, checks out, they've precisely imitated the show's "I don't deserve to suffer the inevitable consequences of my own actions. I am the protagonist in my story so the rules shouldn't apply to me" attitude.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  It's the fictional counterpart to the statement that you see on Reddit and elsewhere after a violent riot, that it's no big deal that buildings and businesses got torched and looted because "insurance covers it".
albatrosstrophy 5y ago
So the FBA seller's going to bear the cost of courier mistake? This doesn't make sense.
- kirykl 5y ago
  yes, they class it as carrier delay and charge the seller been going on for a while. The reimbursements never actually happen https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonSeller/comments/9d9owl/a_ton_of_refunds_on_amazon_in_the_last_few_months/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonSeller/comments/9d9owl/a_ton_...
- dawnerd 5y ago
  As someone that’d dabbled in FBA I don’t think it’s how it works either. It’s 100% amazons fault and one of the main reasons to do FBA - having Amazon deal with logistics. That said it might be different these days.
julianlam 5y ago
At Amazon's scale, it's not worth it to close the loop on every abandoned delivery worldwide. I once got a parcel delivered, but the driver was confused as the same tracking number was on two parcels. Amazon had printed an extra label and stuck it onto another package. He just had me pick one of the two. I picked wrong, and ended up with some window treatments that Amazon refused to collect. I reordered my stuff (which likely went back to Amazon as undeliverable anyway) and that was that. Amazon just writes it off as a business expense.
georgyo 5y ago
What's interesting to me is that Amazon fights very hard if it is their items. I have only every gotten one package stolen, and it was Amazon store brand Presto paper towels, a value of ~$30. Because it was Amazon brand, I got transferred three times, they flat out said that for their products they need to investigate. They created a case number and had me call back in a week. Other people I know, and even in this thread talk about how trivial it is for a return. Apparently Amazon only cares about lost packages if they have to actually eat the cost.
bradknowles 5y ago
I’ve had Amazon deliver my packages to the wrong address. This is why I wish they were required to take a picture of all deliveries. That way I could contact them, have them pull up the picture of the wrong house, and have them compare that to all the other pictures of all the other deliveries. Then it would be a lot easier to make them either send a new one to the right address, or they have to go to their misdelivered address and pick up that package so that they can send it to me. Sigh….

sandworm101 5y ago

Littering? Why is amazon not fined for this? If abandoning parcels is just "cost of doing business" then someone needs to step in and make it too expensive to still be worth it. Fine them for littering and/or the cost incurred by the building to rectify the situation. This might actually be something for small claims court. The building can pay to dispose of/deliver the packages and take Amazon to small claims to recover costs.

floatingatoll 5y ago
Same reason people with leafblowers aren’t fined for all the litter they blow off of private property into the public sidewalks and roadways. Because there isn’t enough political will to argue that what they’re doing is wrong, in the face of how desirable the convenience is to the electorate.
justin66 5y ago
> Littering? Why is amazon not fined for this? Asking someone to either throw the items away or keep them is the exact opposite of littering. > This might actually be something for small claims court. The building can pay to dispose of/deliver the packages and take Amazon to small claims to recover costs. Since Amazon told them they could keep the stuff or throw it away, they'd have to go to some elaborate lengths to actually suffer damages as a result of what Amazon did.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> or throw it away For a commercial enterprise, throwing something away is rarely free. And if there are electronics in those boxes, proper disposal might take more than a modicum of effort.
  - justin66 5y ago
    I expect even the judges in a small claims court get exasperated by having their time wasted over piddly shit. "Save me, I have to deal with the free stuff I just got from Amazon!" certainly falls into that category.

gwelson 5y ago

This sort of thing happens all the time at the apartment complex I live in (in the South Bay Area, California). We have an outdoor "mail room" with an automated package locker. I'm not sure if the package locker is usually full or simply hard for drivers to use, but often the delivery drivers will just leave a pile of like 30-50 packages next to it. Honestly, I don't blame the drivers in the slightest. If I were treated the way they were treated and paid what they were paid, I wouldn't care about doing my job the right way either. Hell, they're so monitored by algorithms and surveillance devices that they probably don't have time to do it the right way even if they wanted to. Things like this are going to keep happening and keep getting worse until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job. This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

hk1337 5y ago
It probably depends on the location because here, we have an indoor locker room that requires a pass to enter. It always seemed like either the lockers are full either because there were a lot that day and/or people would leave the packages in the locker for days. Also, I noticed people would just give the address of the mailroom and probably did not sign up for the locker service.
FpUser 5y ago
>"until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force" They're not demented. They know it. They do not give a flying fuck.
- orhmeh09 5y ago
  OK. So what is to be done?
  - popcube 5y ago
    call your Congressman?

Johnny555 5y ago

A few years ago a delivery driver dropped off an Amazon package for another town (but same street and house number as me). I contacted Amazon and they emailed me a return label and had UPS come pick it up.

Animats 5y ago

Just dump them at the nearest Whole Foods. Let them sort it out.

jeffrallen 5y ago
This is the way. When a stupid company externalises their crap onto your lawn, you drop it right back into their laps.
- rasz 5y ago
  How is dropping basket of free gifts for employees working particular shift at a local store an Amazon penalty?
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    the store is owned by Amazon.
    - Animats 5y ago
      Whole Foods have Amazon lockers. They must have some system for dealing with unclaimed items.
  - jeffrallen 5y ago
    Their boss will waste Jeff Bezos' time trying to find out how to return the stuff to Amazon, which is way better than you wasting your time.
    - rasz 5y ago
      The single phone call will go like this. Store manager: So what do you want me to do with those packages. minimum wage clueless phone support person staring at a support script: throw it in the bin. Store manager to night shift employees: Gifts for everyone!

gwelson 5y ago

Another note on this, I've had a few very thorny Amazon customer service issues in the past, and at a certain point I found the only solution was to email the CEO's office. I emailed `ajassy@amazon.com` and CC'd `Jeff@amazon.com` (Bezos) and `Dave@amazon.com` (Dave Clark, head of consumer). Got a response nearly instantly from an extremely helpful executive assistant who was empowered to do basically whatever and was a single point of contact moving forward. Even offered to hop on a call and explain what went wrong on their end and how they were fixing it moving forward (an offer I politely declined). I got my issue resolved and a fairly generous gift card for my trouble.

kingcharles 5y ago
I'll try this next time. I used to send certified letters to the CEOs when I had poor service. That usually worked too.
- vidarh 5y ago
  LinkedIn Inmail has been my go-to. Find a suitably high ranking staff member who is usually insulated from customers, and they're often shocked to hear real customer experiences. Got Cc'd on an E-mail chain from the assistant to some senior VP at DHL once, where the threat that said SVP wanted updates magically caused a package that support had claimed was already on a freight ship across the Atlantic in the wrong direction back to the sender to turn up in a depot five minutes from my office.
heavyset_go 5y ago
I've tried to report scams and sellers who tried to bribe me to those email addresses and never got responses.
- gizdan 5y ago
  The scams and dishonest sellers are a feature, not a bug. Amazon still gets their cut whether or not you've been scammed.

kingcharles 5y ago

Amazon's delivery is getting worse and worse. I just had my packages stolen by the driver. So after hours talking to customer service they refunded my money so I could rebuy them. Of course some of the items had gone up in price by then. I rebought all the items and waited another week for them to be delivered, only to have them all stolen again by the driver. Now I had to go through hours of talking to multiple agents again, them pleading with me to wait just a few more days in case it was a glitch, before I got a refund so I could again spend more money to reorder everything and wait yet another week for it to be delivered.

MarkSweep 5y ago
Out of curiosity, how do you know the driver stole it? Something like it was marked as delivered but they never showed up?
Jolter 5y ago
How can you know the packages were not just left in another building? Or some else stole it from your porch after delivery?

atdrummond 5y ago

Amazon abandoned a five figure order of mine similarly and refused a reship. Was quite easy to cancel prime and never look back after that.

exikyut 5y ago
Okay, it sounds like the details might be interesting to hear on this one...
- atdrummond 5y ago
  There are two apartment complexes in my small town with similar names (both contain the word Castle). That said, they have entirely different post codes (UK system) and my unit number doesn’t exist at the other complex. I had ordered new M1 macs and monitors for some new workers, plus an order of some snacks I cannot get on the island. If I had to guess, likely 10-12 total boxes. Amazon swears up and down it was delivered. I provide multiple CCTV feeds of the delivery date, testimony of the two posties that the independent delivery agent (NOT Isle of Man Post, who does a superb job) left it at the other location despite being told by residents and their postie that it was for my complex. The door it was left near is who I suspect took the packages but I’ve no way of proving it as I cannot get CCTV for that location. After months and months, Amazon ends up closing the matter and saying I need to pay for all new items if I want them shipped. I cancel prime and go ahead with having my credit card dispute the transaction. Amazon closes my account and tries to fight my dispute, despite my massive documentary evidence (that they were aware of) showing without a shadow of a doubt they made a mistake. Funnily enough, I eventually caught one of the boxes (sans goods) in a recycle bin near my place (small town) and the shipping label, despite what was on my Amazon account, was indeed for the other complex (but my unit number and postal code). So it can’t even be blamed on an overworked delivery driver - it was all a cock-up on Amazon’s end.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    ...Hah. *Files away* Did you grab a photo of the shipping label on the box that turned up? Mental drain notwithstanding, I theoretically wonder if you'd get a different response if you randomly cold-reopened the case with the new evidence. Sounds like the credit card dispute went through, in any case. Reading this, I also thought briefly that it would be really cool to make a site for people to publicly file open-and-shut substantiated claims as a sort of "name and shame"... but of course enforcing submission quality would be impossible (firehose), and the majority of the "neat" cases would end up being fraud. Sigh. :( TIL about the idea of having CCTV pointed at my front door and letterbox though. I've seen plenty of Ring clips at this point of "ha ha the delivery person yeeted the package in the general direction of the front door" but I never really thought that it makes it possible to be able to incontrovertibly go "...what delivery?". Definitely adding that to the todo list...

sen 5y ago

Amazon delivered a laptop to my house that I never ordered, the address wasn’t even slightly similar and I have no idea why they dropped it on my front step. I reported it to them and they said the same.. just throw it out. Local law says I have to attempt to return to sender so I called again and double checked if they want me to do so, and that second support person said the same bit more openly said “throw it away, or do whatever you like with it, but you definitely don’t need to send it back”. I was pretty shocked that they don’t even care about items of that high a value. My kid loved her new laptop though.

jdavis703 5y ago
It can’t have been of that high a value. Amazon sends the really expensive stuff via UPS, with a signature and ID required.
- brewdad 5y ago
  I have never (hundreds, maybe even 1000+ deliveries) had to sign for an Amazon purchase. The only thing I can recall signing for, from any vendor, in the past 10 years was my wine club shipments and that's only been 50/50 since Covid.
  - ev1 5y ago
    I have $300 purchases that I had to read a 6-digit character to the amazon driver, the driver enter it in their device, and then release for shipment.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  I'm not sure what counts as "really expensive", but I ordered a $1k laptop via amazon and it was shipped with FedEx, no siganture required. (2-3 years ago, southeast US)
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    It’s a few thousands of USD. I don’t know what or even if there’s a magic cut off. But there’s some point where they seemingly no longer trust minimum wage subcontractors. Or perhaps it varies by locale… Even the Whole Foods security guards are armed where I live.

JamesAdir 5y ago

All the stories in this thread should be remembered when they will talk about zero carbon footprint and reducing waste in packaging.

causi 5y ago

Amazon can be very weird about deliveries and delivery problems. There's a distinct tendency for orders that are particularly good deals to just not show up. Also one time I forgot to ship a fairly expensive return item and eventually I just got an email saying "your return has been received and your refund processed."

aasasd 5y ago

> Amazon – the logistics expert the world has come to rely on Ah, yes, the really narrow definition of ‘the world’. Meaning the US, as everyone knows.

jasoncartwright 5y ago
Less than NA, but Amazon is 30% of e-commerce in the UK, and 25% of JP

locallost 5y ago

We are a very efficient company because we waste everybody's time for free.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

Ya, this sucks but what's even more amazing is the relatively few f-ups that happen from Amazon. Given the millions of packages that they deal with daily I'm amazed that I keep on getting my packages on time and with little to complain about.

bunnie 5y ago

Logistics are efficient in only one direction. It's about 20x more expensive for packages to flow in the reverse direction. That bin of 'just throw it away' packages is a pretty good visualization of the cost asymmetry of reverse logistics. That, and how the delivered cost of an item is often 4-5x over the 'ex factory' cost, so altogether it's cost effective on average to abandon mis delivered products as long as your error rate is low enough. I'd wager that the cost to handle the support ticket that reported the delivery issue alone may start to approach the ex-factory replacement value of the cheapest goods in the pile...

omegalulw 5y ago
> Logistics are efficient in only one direction. It's about 20x more expensive for packages to flow in the reverse direction. Source needed. I would expect Amazon to have shipping between major hubs well figured out. The only cost that they may be unwilling to pay is the last mile pickup cost of packages like this (if the expected used value of the item(s) in the package is lower than this cost). But that's not 20x expensive, should be comparable to shipping costs.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Reverse logistics suck. Sure, once stuff is in the network of, say, FedEx, per-mile costs are comparable. Thing start to become more expensive from the point the returns arrive at an (Amazon) warehouse: - stuff isn't packed as good as from the supplier - stuff has to be unpacked, checked, graded, re-packed, re-labelled and re-stored - stuff isn't delivered in bulk, it is delivered in small, more often tan not, single-unit quantities making goods receipt and in-bound ops more expensive No idea if it is 20x, but it is considerably more expensive.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    20x sounds way too high. Imagine if pickup at factories is free due to scale, and the only cost is drop-off, then a return should be about two times as expensive, since sending a package to the factory is no different then someone's home.

dazc 5y ago

I have two apartments above my office, both residents have regular parcel deliveries and expect me to be available to receive them as some kind of free concierge service that I don't remember signing-up for? To make matters worse, one of these people refuses speak to me even I am stood immediately in front of him; the other parks her car in such a manner that I have to pay to park in a public space down the road despite polite requests for her to park in a more considerable manner. I've also had to soundproof my office at my own cost because of her barking dog (that she isn't supposed to have). The added irony being that if I order stuff from amazon I have it delivered to a nearby locker because I don't like waiting all day for the buzzer to go. So, yeah, not much sympathy from here. And, yes, I do still accept their parcels. Just because some people are **holes doesn't mean I have to be one too.

koliber 5y ago
Have you talked to them about these issues?
- dazc 5y ago
  Did you read what I said? Paragraph #2 would be a good start if you want to skim.

kreeben 5y ago

An unsubstantiated but to me very plausible theory about America is that its society is designed in such a way that it creates a huge lower class for its upper class to abuse ("hire for peanuts"). This abuse is a means for the rich to enrich themselves even further by selling products and services to middle class, luring them into thinking they, too, can become plutocrats, or at least achieve something close to a plutocrat's level of standards of living. If a poor person rejects one of those shit jobs they are labeled as "being lazy" and are shunned by society.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
They're running out of people to abuse. Amazon seems to have bought up about a quarter of all advertising space on YouTube and is using it all to recruit employees. None of the ads are trying to get anyone to buy anything, just trying to get people to apply for jobs. I'm not sure I've seen Amazon advertise jobs on YouTube before this year and now the ads are ubiquitous.

the_other 5y ago

> One person noted that “It costs more logistically for Amazon to pick up and redeliver than to replace most items. It’s simply a cost of doing business and is factored into the model.” How do we refactor our economy such that this is no longer possible? What actually needs to happen?

jstanley 5y ago
Why does it need to change? If it costs more to pick up and redeliver than it does to leave free gifts for random people, what's the downside of leaving free gifts?
- the_other 5y ago
  > Why does it need to change? Because when every decision by a company ultimately comes down to cost/profit, we lose the planet. > If it costs more to pick up and redeliver than it does to leave free gifts for random people, what's the downside of leaving free gifts? 1) the ethics are wrong here. Those gifts were intended for different people 2) Amazon "own" delivery here, and they failed; the cost is on them 3) a solution like "it's cheaper to post new ones" is anti-ecological (and thus probably also unethical) 4) Amazon is showing a very subtle disregard for its staff here. Technically, the staff member had responsibility for this delivery and they failed to manage that. Amazon enabled this misbehaviour (they probably enforced it through ridiculous targets). This removes the agency of the delivery staff. A "good" company would use individual staff members' agency to improve conditions for both the company and its staff (like how "good" engineering firms foster learning and career development). Whilst there may not be a career ladder with many rungs in delivery, those on the ladder should be afforded respect and their responsibility championed. Amazon failed here too.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  If that is even close to reality, there is no excuse not to just go straight to UBI and our Star Trek future… and stop messing around with pathetically arbitrary detritus being spewed off the fringes of a giant corporation, uselessly, and calling that 'gifts'. 'Free gifts for random people' isn't gifts, it's pollution.

qwerty456127 5y ago

> “Everyone at Amazon was saying, ’You can just throw these out.’” Isn't this great? Amazon probably records their calls so above said Andrea Norman could just have a huge bag of goodies for free. Take whatever you want and donate the rest. The vendors probably are going to reship/refund to the customers and Amazon will pay. Isn't this cool?

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Twice this year Amazon has sent me an entire case of a product instead of just the single item I ordered. I wasn't charged extra and they didn't want anything back. It appears in both cases that in the warehouse a case of the items wasn't opened and individually labeled but instead the case labeled as an individual item. One of the items was an inexpensive home improvement item but the other was a moderately priced computer part. It's crazy that their system is so highly optimized for sending items out that it doesn't make financial sense to retrieve these items.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Amazon does thing issue #44957

rkunal 5y ago

In some countries, 'return' comes with another huge problem. A parallel hidden economy, led by corruption to swap them with old items and sell as new on same ecommerce platforms. Sometimes swapping only original parts. Amount of money needed in managing 'authenticity/purity' of a return item is huge. From fake barcodes to fake packaging, everything is available at dirt cheap price. And ofcourse, the cheap manual labour in dire need of money.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

What's the law on this? Stack the boxes and toss the bin. An Amazon package is not technically considered mail, so if they leave the box on your step, refuse to retrieve it, isn't it finders keepers?

scohesc 5y ago

Man, if amazon was telling them to just throw the packages out, I'd be inclined to bring them up to my suite and flip whatever's in them for profit. Amazon clearly has no interest in delivering them and have already deemed them "lost".