Amazon Delivery

This is the kind of thing that annoys me. I am a Prime member, which is supposed to include a two-day delivery. Here is something that I ordered on September 7 - 5 days ago - and it is sold by Amazon, not by a third-party seller, yet they haven't even shipped it yet. This is just an example. I see this with nearly everything I order. When they began with their crappy service, they used the coronavirus as an excuse and I haven't gotten anything within the 2-day period since. Usually, it takes from 10-14 days to receive anything that I order from Amazon.

 

The way I look at this stuff is the merchant cannot charge my card until the item has shipped.
That is sufficient incentive for them to get it out the door as quickly as they can...it's their cash flow. (edit to add: This is why I have not joined Prime.)

Here are all my recent Amazon-fulfilled orders, where I paid no freight (I always hit the minimum order amt):

Thur Sept 3: Ordered a pot lid made for my sous vide machine. Received Sat Sept 5. (2 days)
Sat Aug 22: Ordered clay. Received Wed Aug 26. (4 days)
Sat Aug 22: Ordered dehydrator machine. Received Fri Aug 28. (6 days)
Mon Aug 24: Ordered sous vide machine. Received Sun Aug 30. (6 days)
Wed June 24: Ordered potato ricer. Received Mon June 29. (5 days)

I ordered other stuff, but it was 3rd party fulfilled.

 

It's been a week now, and they still haven't even shipped it yet. The same is true of two other things that I ordered the same day. Once it's shipped, it gets here quickly enough. The delay is nearly always on Amazon's end.

 

That is insane.

I went further back through my Amazon-fulfilled orders and had to get to a brief period when The Virus That Roared initially screwed things up to find any period where performance was less than the examples I already posted. And even then it was back to normal pretty quickly.

I ordered some supplements on Walmart's website yesterday morning because it's cheaper than in the store.
They are scheduled to arrive today (using one of those new Amazon-created carriers)...free freight.

 

So that Walmart order did not arrive yesterday as it was supposed to (not that it upset my life to any degree.)
The Lasership guy just dropped it off. He was "on vacation" yesterday. The driver for my area.

When I look on their website, there's all sorts of status updates for yesterday:

9/14/2020 5:43 AM---Arrived at LaserShip Final Servicing Facility
9/14/2020 7:50 AM---Loaded onto vehicle
9/14/2020 8:19 AM---Out for Delivery
9/14/2020 12:15 PM---Delivery could not be completed - Additional information require
Yet the driver says he never showed up.

This is one of those new delivery companies that Amazon helped to start up, and Walmart started using as well. So far, only Walmart has used them to deliver my orders...Amazon has stuck with UPS and USPS, and maybe FedEx every so often.

Lasership's online reviews make for some interesting "Keystone Cops" reading. Rated 1.2 out of 5.o with 450 reviews on one website.

People say the Lasership website shows the package as "Delivered" and it either never was, or the guy pulls in their driveway hours later. These are folks with Ring and other video recording devices.

 

It still hasn't shipped.

 

Your should be able to call customer service by now and have the money refunded ?

 

I don't think they charge me until it's shipped. This was just an example, though. I placed three orders that day and none of them have shipped. I don't remember anything shipping within the two days that they're supposed to deliver it in months, and it never takes less than a week for something to arrive.

 

Well, you've been Primed, when does the flow start?
Actually, that's horrendous. I can't recall ever having an experience like that except briefly during last March/April.

I sent Walmart's Customer Service folks an email regarding Lasership, to include my experience and the general issues I read that others have had. They replied with Lasership's Customer Service phone number. After I thought about it, I sent another email, politely saying:

-Lasership is Walmart's vendor, not mine
-Walmart controls awarding them more business (or retracting business), I do not. I lack leverage.
-The bad experiences Walmart's customers have with deliveries are ultimately gonna impact Walmart, not Lasership
-Walmart's sole way of measuring the performance of Walmart's chosen delivery services is customers like me communicating like this, not customers like me dealing directly with Walmart's poor performing contractors (except for the standard delivery questions)
-As Walmart's customer, I do not want a weak link I have no control over introduced in a supply chain that I so often rely on

They promised to document the issue to "higher management" (which they may have done anyway.)

These new start-up delivery companies are staffed using independent contractors rather than employees. It seems the drivers control their own evidence-of-performance (like logging deliveries as "Completed" several hours before they are actually made), which may be aggregated back to the shipper as evidence of the carrier's "satisfactory" performance. This is not a good thing.

 

That's interesting.

I get email notifications of when things are delivered, either at my doorstep or at my mailbox. I've never had an email precede actual delivery of the package for UPS, USPS or Fed Ex. I know things must get scaled down or up for each region's characteristics, but I wonder if the rural routes aren't measured differently.

The stuff I read about Lasership is that the scan happens hours early, not just en route to the house...or so say the internet commenters.

 

I first noticed the post office hand-off delay when I ordered something I assumed came from China. I figured it had something to do with U.S. Customs because that post office was near a port in New Jersey. I've got an Amazon 3rd party order I placed yesterday that has an ETA of Sept 23-Sept 28 and a USPS Tracking Number assigned to it, yet the USPS website status is "Label Printed/Awaiting Goods." It seems lots of 3rd party stuff ends up like this.

This is becoming a race to the bottom, where there are no objective performance standards but rather a "No worse than the competition" mentality. Perhaps this is the natural progression of things, now that our brick & mortar options have been killed off. Perhaps the quality of "free freight" is gonna degrade so the "for-cost" expedited option seems more attractive.