https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery/e...

If anyone is delivering something to your home, they know where you live.

Option A: You drive to Walmart, pick up your shopping and three other people's, you drive home via three other homes.

Option B: A driver starts at Walmart, picks up four people's shopping including yours, delivers it all, and returns to Walmart.

Seems to me the number of person-hours and distance driven is identical in both cases?

Option B would likely be an employee requiring additional taxes to be paid and benefits to be supplied.

This is not a comprehensive argument.

So option B is really, "A driver starts at Walmart, picks up three people's shopping, delivers it all, returns to Walmart. You also drive to Walmart, pick up your shopping, and drive home."

There's still the entry barrier of having a background check, verifying insurance, etc., so it'd likely be more effort than it's worth for neighborhood Joe to sign up for it unless he wanted this as a full-fledged side hustle. If people want to do a "community delivery"-style thing, they can just sign-up for DoorDash/Postmates/IC/etc.

what happens when I make the delivery, but someone gets injured in the process? DoorDash has insurance for this most likely.

Shipt supposedly covers it–their contractor agreement states that you need to have the state required auto insurance and they have a policy that takes effect while working that will increase your coverage to commercial-level insurance. I have also asked their insurance department about this directly and this has been confirmed.

It’s so much better to either piggyback on the mail or just have customers do curbside.

Additionally, there is little reason to commit to a delivery timeline that they cannot commit to. Prime 2-day delivery is not actually a guarantee, as far as I understand it (and in some places it is not 2-day, e.g. Hawaii, from what I've heard), but it is a much firmer commitment, because Prime members are paying a fee for improved service. Regardless of whether Prime delivery is guaranteed, Amazon has optimized much of its logistics chain around <=2-day delivery. So you may be reaping some benefits from that.

Finally, Amazon is almost definitely using the cheapest possible shipping option (unless you are opting to pay more for improved options). Just because the rate paid is low does not mean that carriers will purposefully slow down. Once those items are picked, the cheapest thing to do is to move them quickly. Regardless of shipping option, that package still incurs a cost everywhere it sits, and every time it moves. So it will be routed as efficiently as it can to you. Holding it is just accruing liability (more options for loss or damage). If you happen to be near the DC, or near to the shipping carrier's hub, it's likely you will get stuff very quickly, even if it is estimated at longer.

You may be seeing the worst-case estimate for cross-country shipment, but benefit from one or several of the things above.

But also I think they’re using it as an excuse to use cheaper shipping. I know bestbuy is doing this for sure.

I think they figure no one will notice they’re using smartpost and if you complain just blaming the speed on the pandemic.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/sixth-confirmed-amazon-worke...

(Not trivializing deaths.)

Also, regarding the article, Jet from my memory gave Wal-Mart the infrastructure for online sales, so it's not like they didn't get anything for it. If anything, they are likely playing accounting games and writing off the acquisition, thereby improving their return on investment metrics into the future. When you acquire a company, there is sometimes a penalty to ROI if you pay too much, shows up in the form of intangible assets. When you write off an asset, you are basically removing it from your balance sheet.

If stores are closed all their stock can just be delivered with UberDash(tm) delivery drivers because they are everywhere:

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/mu18i_4q9FQSqMWuBtGuXw--~B...

In the Uk Amazon had this policy too but in reality most non essential/but useful items were sent to me in less than a week.

Of course most of the very useful items were not in stock at all the first few weeks, and some still aren’t.

Edit: good lessons in not depending on one supply route and as a result I will buy my fresh food from smaller companies from now on.

Given the sheer scale of the lockdown and following disruption the existing supermarkets have handled it really well except for the toilet paper situation which was beyond silly on the consumers part and there really wasn't much that the supermarkets could have done at that point.