2019-07-04

Amazon Yesterday

Amazon do a lot right, but sometimes they do some of the simple things wrong.

Getting it right

They are quite good at showing when they can deliver, clearly, e.g. "Get it by tomorrow if you order within next 5 hours", etc.

They are quite good at then managing to deliver on the agreed date.

Caught out

However, I have been caught out by changing delivery address (e.g. to Wales) and the dates change. This is actually quite good of Amazon, as they have worked out they cannot do the same delivery date, but I have been caught out and not noticed the change.

Things can go wrong

Obviously things can go wrong and they miss the agreed date. Nobody is perfect. They are pretty bad at then sorting it quickly or telling you when it will arrive, but thankfully this is not that often.

Getting the simple things wrong

What does bug me though is some of the silly things they get wrong. They will have "get it by [tomorrow]" on the buy now page but when you order the confirmation may magically change to the day later. If you don't spot it, you can be waiting in all day for a delivery that won't come!

I have also seen, and documented, cases where the delivery date changes from one screen to the next - e.g. the list of orders may say "arriving today" but you click on it for details and it is "by 9pm tomorrow". How the hell do they get something that simple so wrong.

Amazon Yesterday

You will have seen the excellent spoof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ for Amazon Yesterday shipping.

Whilst time travel is not really possible, their app is actually offering this. I just recorded it on my phone - with Amazon actually offering to have the item arrive yesterday.

Now how the hell do they get that so wrong?

3 comments:

  1. Amazon are most emphatically not good at delivering if your place is at all hard to find. We're down a 1Km private lane, about 1Km as the crow flies from the centre of our postcode. This, of course, makes using a SatNav to find us "challenging". All couriers that Amazon use seem incapable of using the phone number we provide. I have given detailed directions to customer noservice more times than I can count. One courier spent 20 minutes on the phone to the mothership once he'd found us, and said he'd got us geo-located which would fix it once and for all. Yeah, right. Finally, after I'd suggested it innumerable times, they've provided a box against a delivery address with enough space to put detailed directions. This has helped a little, but there remain a number of couriers who can't be arsed to read it, or it isn't made available to them. Delivery to pick-up locations is no good for larger items, which is about the only workaround.
    Kept getting Prime extended by a month, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sometimes Amazon's cookie cutter style descriptions are odd. For example, a template made from wood that has a power efficiency rating, at least it's shown as A+ though.

    ReplyDelete

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