Another location and I’d get these local people delivering packages in their personal cars and that was really hit or miss. Seems like anytime they were busy they just report that they tried to deliver but no one was home. They could steal whatever they wanted, it’s a matter of trust. How does Amazon know who is lying? Maybe I’m scamming them, maybe the shippers, maybe someone else is stealing packages off my doorstep.
There was just no way to choose a shipper or report problems with one. Don’t have any problems where I am now, so I don’t know if they’ve fixed that. They should be able to tell, statistically, if packages have more problems with one shipper over the other, but smart shippers who want to steal could probably game the system.
If Amazon gave these choices to customers for shipping, it would apply pressure to shipping carriers to improve their service, as people would experiment and pick the best ones and stop picking bad ones. Eventually a bad carrier is forced to improve to not lose revenue. And Amazon would get way happier customers, who can pick what is best in their region, and they would have a massive advantage over smaller shops.
I assume because the volume of returns is much lower than the volume of sales, plus Amazon isn't responsible for coordinating the return.
In essence, my suspicion is that at Amazon's scale they literally can't afford to let customers pick their own shipper. That's one variable too many to manage for their massive logistics problem, and the expense of building out the support for that would never be recouped.
I don't get it. All the alternative carriers are obviously in their system already, since deliveries obviously get routed via all of them, and (presumably) some algorithm selects which one that is in each case. All it takes is to put one more selection field on the order (and I guess in the customer profile, for a personal default value) and then use that if provided and the algorithm only if not provided. What's so hugely complicated about that?
I've certainly been part of something very similar, where a company has multiple suppliers providing the same service. Near contract renewal time we would move our volume on their competitors to remind them that they needed us more than we needed them. It was a very effective way to get them to keep lowering their prices as the years went on.
There is also probably also a logistics piece as well. Amazon will be shipping products to carriers last mile hubs or similar themselves, rather than having a carrier handle the entire distance. Which makes it cheaper for Amazon. So carrier will also be picked based on which hub is nearest to one of Amazons warehouses, how full the Amazon truck going there is, which warehouse has the product etc
Maybe it’s in fact trivial, but at Amazon’s scale I find it hard to imagine that any changes to their shipping algorithms are that easy, at least compared to the increased revenue that goes along with it, which in this case presumably is zero.
If you’re willing to put up with all of Amazon’s other crap in exchange for convenience, you’re unlikely to drop them because they won’t allow you to pick the shipper, at least until someone else starts taking business away from them.
Periodically I do have shipper issues (including USPS on occasion). I have a long gravel/dirt driveway and some shippers obviously don't like to come down it. (I also have a neighbor with a large dog that likes to bark and that sometimes scares off drivers too. Oh yeah, that was FedEx too. Saw their truck and they claimed online not to have been able to deliver due to local regulations.)
When calling Amazon about it they said I needed to ship the adapter back before they would send me the part I ordered. I told them it was totally unreasonable for me to have to wait many more days to get the thing I paid for when they obviously made the mistake and adapter wasn't worth anything compared to what I ordered. They could easily see that the weight of what they shipped was less than 1/1000th of what I ordered too but they refused to handle my case before they got their adapter back and they ended up hanging up on me.
Migrated my company off AWS after that and haven't used Amazon since. I value other things higher than saving an occasional dollar here or there.
I’m like you - I’ve ordered so many things from Amazon this last year or so (new circumstances plus pandemic lockdown) and literally not one problem of the sort described. I can think of two items out of hundreds which weren’t on time (one, Amazons’s logistics made it a whole day late, and one was the seller’s issue). And the (very rare) returns were dealt with without a hitch.
For other reasons, I actually want to not be so reliant on Amazon, but their combination of Prime delivery, reliability, and customer service is unbeatable for many/most non-specialist items.
I ordered a bunch of small electronics stuff, about 100€. In the order process Amazon selected an expired credit card (which I'm sure I had replaced in the settings already). They then split the order in parts and for each order part demanded an additional late pay fee, because the card was expired. This is despite me calling them to stop the order or to correct the payment method, before the package had arrived.
They couldn't help, I was promised a call back, never arrived. The chat support deleted the expired credit card from their system, only to cut the connection as soon as I asked for a solution for the fees and to know why the wrong card was selected. Later, that expired credit card turned up in my settings again.
In the electronics stuff that arrived, a converter I bought was evidently fake. It was also a converter, but it had different markings than the one on the product photo (including a missing CE symbol). I sent that back. A short while later, Amazon accused me of not having sent it back and wanted me to pay again! I still had the proof of having sent a package, which made them shut up.
Never again.
Trivial for small items, but doesn't bode well for high value orders.
It's a confidence issue. Amazon has become a logistics giant but is steadily losing customer confidence.
A combination of fake reviews, fake items, high-friction or just plain missing consumer support on high-value items, and a hopelessly confused mess of a shop front all add up to a mediocre and untrustworthy experience.
Edit: Had a look at my writeup in my blog [0], Lastschrift it was. Amazon picked a bank account that did not exist anymore to pay for the order. When that bounced came the fees - and while one fee for that would have been normal if I had given the wrong bank account (which I'm pretty sure I only did, if I did, because their system did not save when I changed the bank account before), to take multiple fees for one order was in no way okay.
[0]: https://www.onli-blogging.de/1832/Meine-richtig-schlechte-Su... (in german)
You'll have to ask the banks why. In my case it wasn't a problem, but technically it shouldn't happen and it's strange that it did.
That added to my concern with Amazon just using the wrong bank account, and that old account occuring again and again in my profile. Even if I wanted to order something at Amazon it would be too risky now.
On HN I put comment below because I had some issue - if I had not, such comment would have too little value to post.
I did receive many things without issues and have also received books that looked way worse than if you gave them to a toddler. It's bizarre - they started with books and books are items that are trivial to pack securely.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/nm1mm1/i_got...
If the chance of a problem worthy of complaining on reddit or a blog was a million to one that world be 4 problems a week.
[0] https://tamebay.com/2018/09/amazon-established-as-3rd-larges...
Since then though I won’t use Amazon for anything remotely safety related, think child car seat - nope, some equipment for rewiring house, nope.
This also makes me think about higher end purchases, whereas before I was like 100% Amazon, they have lost the trust I had for them and doubt they will get that back.
My main issue is that by the time I realised it was fake the game had been stopped and seller removed so they probably knew the game they sent me was fake (because of other complaints) but they made zero attempt to put it right. It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.
Amazon doesn't even bother to collect that data. If you want to make a return because you received a counterfeit, you need to lie about the reason for your return, because "I received/believe I received a counterfeit product" isn't a choice they let you choose from when filing a return.
Honestly, it feels like Amazon is intentionally not keeping explicit records of the counterfeits they sell because of their potential liability and the fact that such records would make Amazon look bad in depositions.
I mean, I am not sure, if anybody ever reads those, but you I would not have to lie this way.
Maybe with commodity household goods it’s different than with higher value items or with electronics.
The main issues you get are when returns are put back into stock but haven’t been sufficiently checked.
I used to work for an online retailer who sold things like games consoles and the amount of return scams we got was absolutely shocking. If you sold a games console with a free game (usually a code inside the console) people would take the game code out, or copy it, and then return the console and have the game. Other times they would take an iPad out, put a brick in the box and then shrink wrap it. Or buy counterfeit AirPod pro’s and swap them for the real ones and return the fakes.
The problem is compounded because people want to buy “new” items with shrink wrap around them, so it’s harder to check returns aren’t scams when the scammers have shrink-wrap machines.
If you could turn that into a ribbon, then any box could be wrapped in such a way any tampering is evident.
If you could also print a QR code on top, then you have a per shipment tamper proof
I suspect it exists but i am sure there is a long way between that and cost effective useage
I don't know if it has been invented yet, however here's the idea: a RFID tag that normally returns a valid code, but any removal attempt would not simply destroy it, but rather change the code (for example through bit changes by peeling conductive parts of it) into one that would return a tamper warning at next readings. That would also make possible to track when the box was opened (therefore potentially also finding by whom) since all boxes must be scanned at every step. The tag however should be put in a place where the user would not stick a cutter blade; it should peel off for example as the result of pulling a string to open the box, removing a piece of cardboard, etc.
The main thing is making sure that these things are ubiquitous, that there isn’t a workaround and that systems are in place to do the specific checks which are different for each item at every return point.
In the example with the Xbox games, not all games had the seal, or the same game SKU might sometimes have the seal and sometimes have a standard case. Then there was the workaround where people could lever the case open at the top and still take the game out.
The danger of seals is sometimes they can provide a false sense of security, but they probably do help when implemented well.
The issue here is people returning it in a state where it is still sealed - as if an item is sealed it will go back into stock straight away and the retailer can’t open it up to check that it is in there.
If it’s opened you can still return it, but once that happens usually electronics have to be sent back to the manufacturer to refurbish/reset.
It’s not about stopping people returning items, it’s about making sure the correct returns channel is used and detecting fraud (which happens when people return the item pretending it’s unopened so it goes back into stock unchecked, but the item has been replaced with a brick).
Also, how does Amazon prove that the brick they received came from the customer and not some employee?
As for the second one, with bin/lot tracking you can identify if the item had previously been returned. Employee theft doesn’t usually involve putting bricks in it within a DC - it’s usually easier and less risk to take the whole box (and maybe get rid of the packaging in the toilet, at a warehouse I used to work at someone was found to be stealing iPods because a lot of packaging was found behind a toilet ceiling tile). If the item hadn’t previously been returned, this would usually infer that the customer was lying about receiving it with a brick in it (although obviously there is the possibility that it came in that state from the supplier).
The usual assumption is that the supplier didn’t send it in with a brick, because otherwise customer fraud is too easy - but occasionally that assumption is wrong, which is probably what happened in this case.
They probably checked there was no return in the history, made the assumption it wouldn’t have come empty from Canon, and figured it was the customer that lied.
I’ve run a huge pile of apple kit through them in the last two years and when a Mac mini disappeared from my doorstep they refunded without question.
The Mac mini did make a reappearance a week later as it was dumped in someone’s porch down the road and they brought it back round. Spoke to customer services and they sent me a return label to send it back.
Probably. There’ll be some people who can rely on their reputation with their CC company too to do a chargeback.
ALL other delivery outfits are horrible in comparison, and i actually dred using any other service.
My preferred approach now is to use niche-retailers for things I care about arriving intact on the assumption that if your entire business is about that product category then you should be knowledgeable about how to ship those items safely. Barnes & Noble for books, B&H for camera, BestBuy for consumer electronics and video games, etc.
I suspect they are playing the odds, accepting that they will have to refund a few items that got smashed from inadequate protection.
I have also seen a few deliveries with pictures that went to what was clearly the wrong address, had a box of chocolates arrive totally melted where the ice pack exploded and left me with a wet, melted box of chocolates, and during early Covid, I did end up getting scam toilet paper rolls shipped in from China. Oh, it was actually toilet paper, but the rolls were incredibly tiny and nothing at all like the pictures.
So... definitely hit or miss and it depends a lot on what you order.
I buy about everything from Amazon, since the beginning, and have had nearly zero issues. A screw-up now and then is forgivable.
I wish Amazon could randomly test and delist some of those products or whatever. Or maybe do some random testing before listing them for sale, it's not some obscure scam after all.
And I love the ability to take items back to our local Amazon depot without having to box the item. Just give it back to them and they handle all the shipping.
Why camera equipment? IDK. Even before Amazon was a thing, buying camera equipment online was always a bit shady. I assume those same people just move to Amazon.
I should add that I've never had a problem sending back or replacing the item even when it was over 1k.
I have had issues with Amazon in the past, but if you do have a poor support experience you just need to persevere until you get someone more flexible. Which is somehow still better than most of our other stores here in the UK.
I have received one wrong item (refunded, told to keep) and one item I didn't order. The only hassle I've ever had was a damaged item they were trying to talk me into accepting a discount rather than returning (a very heavy item, I'm sure shipping was an issue.)
There very definitely is an issue with counterfeits and their comingled inventory system needs to be nuked from orbit. I have once seen a product where it was pretty apparent *every* offering was garbage or counterfeit. I even reported one of the counterfeits to Amazon as the image revealed it was one of the garbage things, not the name brand it purported to be.
We passed a ton of orders for valuable goods that were processed by small companies who used amazon as an alternative storefront to boost their sales. Communication was finnicky but everything went fine.
Then we also order a ton of cheap, little convenient stuff that we could have ordered on aliexpress but went to amazon for faster delivery. It was a lot more hit or miss, with pure junk coming in from tjmes to times.
We never hit the level of scam described in the article, but we'd also pay a lot more attention on where it’s coming from before forking 7k.
For example, I bought a projector on BestBuy. They had the dimensions wrong and it wouldn’t fit where I needed it. With amazon, that would be a simple return. With BestBuy, a simple return and a 15% restocking fee. Good luck reaching someone at BestBuy to explain why that fee should be waived. With amazon, it would be a simple chat.
Amazon is infinitely better than most other retailers. People just forget how good we have it.
A Japanese friend said he could Amazon order a particular variety of candy and it would arrive next-day in good condition and I felt jealous. In America there really is no such service for ordering food or spoilable items online.
Based off this thread I might think twice before ordering expensive stuff from them though - however I usually find other places are better value for expensive electronics etc. anyway
Not to mention not everything is shipped from seller / manufacturer to you via Amazon.
Like, I see all of these comments on HN all the time but I have the exact opposite experience - they just have no competition over here. I'm at a point where even if something is slightly more expensive on Amazon I'd rather buy from them as I know their CS Support won't try to screw me over.