Amazon deliveries here get shipped to the local post office and then use USPS for the last mile, so I haven't had problems with that. But on the rest, absolutely.
Search is terrible, items are miscategorized all the time, there are multiple listings for the same thing when they should all be grouped as multiple sellers of one product, the product info is missing or wrong, prices are sometimes totally out of whack (like my comment above where a 2-pack is cheaper than a 1-pack), you have no idea if you'll get the item you ordered or a counterfeit version, Amazon has no idea if they sent you the item you ordered or a counterfeit version, and the description/photos/actual item sometimes don't match. Pretty much anything that can be wrong with a product page frequently is.
I should cancel my Amazon Prime subscription. It's a huge selection of stuff available in one place, but that's about the only thing they have going for them.
I order something or other from Amazon every couple weeks and, living in Chicago, have often gotten it via Amazon delivery for a year or two now. It just seems like one problem after another: not actually dropping the package off, hiding the package in a crevice between buildings, very often not arriving when quoted, rude calls from drivers because I'm not at home. Add to this problems with worker pay and treatment, and I'll stick to UPS whenever possible.
I really think Amazon needs to fix this. I'm about two shitty products away from cancelling Prime. Their business model is "good enough products shipped really quickly without needing to think about it much". Recently, things I order aren't good enough. I find myself thinking about whether I should just drive to Target so that I can see the thing before I buy it. This seems like a problem for Amazon.
Yeah, I share this experience. I assist elderly relatives with some of their online purchases and any time we don't use Amazon there's a 50% chance it's a bizarre ordeal. The speed of delivery is the main selling point but for a lot of items it doesn't matter if it's one day or three days or five days. It becomes a problem when it's just not delivered at all or it takes 3-4 weeks or is delivered to the wrong address.
A lot of it seems to be management of third party delivery firms. I don't remember ever having to interact with a courier directly with an Amazon order (even for the orders not delivered by Amazon Logistics). It's frustratingly frequent with most other retailers.
I've had multiple bad experiences with Amazon Logistics. They routinely ship things 2-3 days late and update the tracking information with some nonsense about "attempting to deliver the package but no one was home," which I don't buy for a second. They also routinely deliver to the wrong address. One time tracking information was updated to "delivered" and my package showed up at the building next door to mine 3 days later. I came close to canceling prime the last time this happened.
That's not even getting in to the current mess of Amazon Logistics deliveries. I thought perhaps it was just my bad luck, but a quick search online shows that their attempt to save money on shipping by doing it themselves has comically bad results. Unreliable quality with unreliable delivery, but unfortunately some of my attempts to shop elsewhere have also had very bad results.
I recently moved back to the US after many years abroad and started using Amazon again, buying around a dozen items w/ Prime.
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1. Most items don't ship for around two weeks.
2. The tracking is all over the place (the delivery windows are mostly incorrect due to #1).
3. The reasons for delays are - from what I can see - totally made up (per my private conversations with the product-maker, or due to localized weather which just doesn't exist).
4. The directionality of the packages en route is illogical (ie, a package is in one state then in another, two minutes later).
5. Their live chat support agents consistently give further incorrect information/explanations regarding the problems I listed above.
6. Not to mention the problems I read from other HNers about fake reviews and knock-off products.
Really? Anecdotally, I make lots and lots of Amazon orders, I get at least 1 or 2 a week, plus my prime subscriptions, and I have not had an issue getting the wrong item for several years. The only issue I've personally had, is the UPS driver dropped off a neighbor down the street's package at my house, which was a driver mistake.
I often see comments like these but I use Amazon a lot (I live an hour away from town) but have never experienced any issues related to the product (occasionally shipping issues). Maybe only certain product categories have this fakery?
Amazon Logistics is awful locally in the UK. I mean it. Terrible.
I'm currently waiting for a package "guaranteed" before midday. I've had a couple of emails since then, the last pushing it back to "before 9pm". It's 9.25 now.
They've delivered stuff to the wrong place. They've said they knocked and nobody answered (I work from home, wife is on maternity).
And their vans are rentals.
All in all it feels unprofessional. It makes me questions not only the value of Prime but Amazon as a whole. I've started shopping around a lot more.
I've been a Prime customer since the program started, a customer of Amazon before that, and probably order from them on average twice a week (including groceries). I would say when it comes to products from Amazon (not Whole Foods), 1 out of every 4 purchases of mine have been defective, expired, a return, or etc.
Examples include a 4 pack of Eneloops containing 3, a Magic Mouse with a scratch under it and the instruction booklet in a different font and language from what it's supposed to be, a glass candy jar with multiple cracks in it, a cell phone case with some sort of mold growing inside, expired food and drinks when ordering from Fresh, ordering two matching office chairs and getting two different models, etc.
It's gotten to the point where buying from Amazon feels like buying from a garage sale or dollar store. They make returns fairly easy, but I've found myself choosing other online and physical vendors that charge a bit more but who I can trust to have more reliable products.
I haven't had any product issues from Amazon Whole Foods delivery yet; one of the drivers told me they deliver from the store to a centralized warehouse before it gets delivered to me, so I'm hoping at some point groceries don't turn into how Amazon works in general, and I'll end up getting discount, bad food that they routed from a central location.
I don’t live in a country where Amazon operates but I do live in the EU. I’ve had good experiences with them regarding refunds and getting items the courier firm messed up with. I once ordered some stuff to the UK to a friend who shipped it to me with alongside some stuff from other places. My wait time for the whole package was a month due to this and when it arrived I noticed that one of the items I ordered was missing. I contacted them and they offered me a refund. I wasn’t expecting that!
Another time DPD messed up my package and never delivered it, they just shipped it again and it I finally got it. The only nuisance was the wait time.
That being said my trust for Amazon is at an all time low due to their marketplace listings. The discoverability has gone awfully bad, I generally end up searching for stuff elsewhere, researching stuff on Google and if I find something I need that’s only available through Amazon, then I have to and dig deep to see if it’s okay.
They simply allow through all sorts of dubious items, knockoffs and scams that clearly just ship from China. Whenever I can, I just order straight from smaller, specialty shops that deliver abroad, instead. It’s not an Amazon-unique situation, however. A local giant online e-tailer started a marketplace and they pretty much instantly started having very similar issues.
I still dislike having to spend lots of extra time just to not to accidentally buy something else instead of what I wanted. Frustrating, to say the least!
You're being downvoted, but you're not wrong. Amazon's deliver is terrible for me as well, never had a problem with UPS or FedEx (USPS is slightly less reliable, but still WAY better than Amazon).
Handling delivery of packages is sill a major annoyance of online shopping. I love Amazon but consumer-side logistics could use some serious improvement. The drive to reduce shipping prices as much as possible has definite downsides.
- Items consistently damaged/stolen during shipment.
- Delivery of incorrect items/wrong address.
- No place to leave packages during the day if you live in an apartment with no doorman.
- Impossible to schedule delivery, especially before the first delivery attempt. It is unwise to order things while
traveling.
- Carriers lie about delivery attempts and times.
- Distribution center for package pick up is 10 miles away and only open M-F 9-5.
I have a real issue with UPS / Amazon... ordered things like air filters, or a closet mounting rail, or just other random odds and ends I normally get an Home Depot or Costco... and they get all mashed up during shipping. Waste of time / energy to get them from Amazon if I can't be assured what I order won't be destroyed in transit. Anything that's not wrapped in another box is pretty much guaranteed to be jacked up when it gets to me in Austin.
But when you're out in the boonies, and the UPS drivers have to go a long way to get something to you... everything ends up busted / scuffed up in transit. It just sucks. Whenever I order anything for my Dad from Amazon (he lives in a very remote part of the US), what gets to him is never idea. I ordered a cowboy hat... and somehow it was squished flat. He tried to fix it, but by the time he told me it was destroyed in shipping it was a huge pain to return (he didn't know about returns). I ordered a bunch of jam... and they left it outside in sub-zero temperatures and all the jars broke because the jam expanded when it froze. I ordered a Jew's Harp and Harmonica set for him... and somehow the box got opened and only one of the instruments made it to him. Amazon hasn't always been great about returns / refunds in these situations. They are getting a little better, but it's just a shipping issue.
Shipping sucks to remote areas, and as long as shipping sucks, the Amazon experience will suck.
I have had some terrible luck with Amazon shipment lately. Keep in mind that it goes both for their in-house shipments as well as UPS and Fedex. On one item, it got to the absurd point of them telling me that they didn't know where the item was. They had to overnight me another one. Of course, the original one showed up 5 days later. Before they can compete on something new, they need to iron out their current systems.
Amazon used to be a better experience. Now you can’t trust that the thing you ordered is what will actually be delivered. I was a prime customer for more than 15 years, but I cancelled this year because I no longer trust Amazon to deliver what I actually ordered, not some scammy knock off.
(I like your idea about USPS parcel service though :))
Amazon logistics in the UK at least seems to be a cover for using a variety of no-name low-cost couriers, which for me at least has resulted in most deliveries now involving at least one fake 'delivery attempt' and needless runaround. I'm starting to buy things elsewhere as a result, it's not worth the hassle.
Search is terrible, items are miscategorized all the time, there are multiple listings for the same thing when they should all be grouped as multiple sellers of one product, the product info is missing or wrong, prices are sometimes totally out of whack (like my comment above where a 2-pack is cheaper than a 1-pack), you have no idea if you'll get the item you ordered or a counterfeit version, Amazon has no idea if they sent you the item you ordered or a counterfeit version, and the description/photos/actual item sometimes don't match. Pretty much anything that can be wrong with a product page frequently is.
I should cancel my Amazon Prime subscription. It's a huge selection of stuff available in one place, but that's about the only thing they have going for them.
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