Amazon Logistics (rant)

Doc_N

Interesting post, Shnevpayne - do you know the name of the company behind the Weston depot you mention? AL seems to be very much a case of different, usually smallish, companies operating in different parts of the company, using scruffy white vans and equally scruffy drivers.

I'm surprised any of these companies are in a strong enough position to build a new depot, but it's interesting to hear it.

DPD have always provided excellent service and it's a great shame to see Amazon throwing it out of the window for such a poor replacement. Obviously they've taken the strategic decision that short-term profit overrides long-term reputation - which is odd for Amazon.

pastafarian

I’ve just had a delivery by AL; it’s from the Bristol depot and I’m in North Wiltshire, the M4 corridor, so I expect deliveries to be late in the day, but I would like a more reasonable time slot. The driver was very polite; I felt sorry for him, he was on his way back to Bristol but with three more deliveries to do.

Separately, last Thursday I ordered a power drill, which came with its own hard case, for delivery by 1p.m. on Friday and was delivered by DPD. What arrived wasn’t just a damaged package, it looked like it had been broken into and wasn’t even a box any more, it was held together with parcel tape but still had big gaps in it; I could see the carry case was missing and the drill wasn’t protected by any internal packaging. The driver expected me to ‘check the drill’ and accept the package if it was o.k. !!!!!!? It’s a hammer drill, did he expect me to go outside and drill some holes in the house wall? Of course I refused it, and Amazon were very quick in replacing it, the replacement arrived this morning. I shouldn’t speculate what happened to the original, but I’m certain it didn’t leave Amazon in that condition, the label on the package couldn’t have been machine read, the state it was in.

typhoon49

I have to admit having worked for DPD before they are by far the best company out of all the courier firms,mainly for the software they use on their scanners.


Amazon scanners are horrifically bad,constantly crashing on you with a good 5 minutes wait each time for it to reboot.


plus as an experienced courier when I see the calibre of people they employ you can see why so many deliveries either go missing or don't get delivered to the right house,majority aren't British by birth,lucky if they can even speak the language. I took a guy out the other day for a ride along and couldn't even spell someones name when entering it into the POD scanner.


the salary they pay is shocking,we are all taken on as self employed which means nothing,we are effectively employees without any of the associated benefits with many drivers working for way less than minimum wage. im lucky that im good at my job and generally always finish early which is the only reason it makes it worthwhile. if they paid decent money they would get a better calibre of driver and a lot of the problems would be solved. Many of the couriers have never done multidrop work before, they don't even check you can actually drive a van safely before handing you the keys!

typhoon49

2250! Christ almighty I pity the driver out till that time of the night! I personally refuse to be working once its dark,thankfully I never have been as I have a clue at what im doing, but a lot of houses are hard enough to find in the daylight let alone when its dark,and I wouldn't even contemplate on knocking on someones door at that time of night!

Arch1bald

Just thought I'd add my own tale of woe: Webchatted Amazon to find out what happened to my Prime delivery @ 6:30PM. I got a polite apology, letting me know that I was a valued customer, and that I could be assured that this would not happen again. As I continued to express my dissatisfaction, I was assured I would get my parcel later(!) that same evening, and that AL are contracted to deliver up to 9PM !

I eventually received the parcel from a swarthy gentlemen with a foreign accent who just shouted "Parcel!" at me, dumped it in front of me and left immediately. I didn't even have time to say an ironic "Thanks" to him. This isn't the service I signed up for, having previously had excellent service via DPD.

Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned, Amazon have the monopoly online, so in order to fund their Jeremy Clarkson show, they've obviously decided to find economies, thinking customers will get used to the new norm. Maybe they have underestimated UK customers? I for one will be thinking twice about future purchases, there won't be any automatic orders from me in future. The only thing anybody can do is vote with your feet-cancel orders if they're going to be made by the vastly inferior AL!

LilElvis

Arch1bald wrote: »

Just thought I'd add my own tale of woe: Webchatted Amazon to find out what happened to my Prime delivery @ 6:30PM. I got a polite apology, letting me know that I was a valued customer, and that I could be assured that this would not happen again. As I continued to express my dissatisfaction, I was assured I would get my parcel later(!) that same evening, and that AL are contracted to deliver up to 9PM !

I eventually received the parcel from a swarthy gentlemen with a foreign accent who just shouted "Parcel!" at me, dumped it in front of me and left immediately. I didn't even have time to say an ironic "Thanks" to him. This isn't the service I signed up for, having previously had excellent service via DPD.

Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned, Amazon have the monopoly online, so in order to fund their Jeremy Clarkson show, they've obviously decided to find economies, thinking customers will get used to the new norm. Maybe they have underestimated UK customers? I for one will be thinking twice about future purchases, there won't be any automatic orders from me in future. The only thing anybody can do is vote with your feet-cancel orders if they're going to be made by the vastly inferior AL!

And the relevance of the driver's skin colour and accent is ....... ?

What service do you think you signed up for? One that only employs white Brits, who will smile nicely, maybe bow a little and call you sir as they hand over your parcel.

You paid for next day delivery and that's exactly what you got.

Damned fine service as far as I can see from your post, but there's clearly no pleasing some people.

GreatBeyond

Arch1bald wrote: »

Just thought I'd add my own tale of woe: Webchatted Amazon to find out what happened to my Prime delivery @ 6:30PM. I got a polite apology, letting me know that I was a valued customer, and that I could be assured that this would not happen again. As I continued to express my dissatisfaction, I was assured I would get my parcel later(!) that same evening, and that AL are contracted to deliver up to 9PM !

I eventually received the parcel from a swarthy gentlemen with a foreign accent who just shouted "Parcel!" at me, dumped it in front of me and left immediately. I didn't even have time to say an ironic "Thanks" to him. This isn't the service I signed up for, having previously had excellent service via DPD.

Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned, Amazon have the monopoly online, so in order to fund their Jeremy Clarkson show, they've obviously decided to find economies, thinking customers will get used to the new norm. Maybe they have underestimated UK customers? I for one will be thinking twice about future purchases, there won't be any automatic orders from me in future. The only thing anybody can do is vote with your feet-cancel orders if they're going to be made by the vastly inferior AL!

It's not a tale of woe - Amazon Logistics deliver up until 9pm, you received your package on the day stated.

If you find that poor service you should maybe look for another retailer that can better fulfil your requirements.

Doc_N

The fact remains, though, that it's still a dramatic deterioration from the delivery service previously provided. And that's despite a big increase in the cost of Amazon Prime.

All the other delivery services used (even the worst of them) would normally have delivered by around 5pm at the very latest. And a couple of them would have given you a one or two hour time slot.

Round here, DPD and Royal Mail provided a really excellent service, and now we're stuck with an indifferent 'service' from STL Couriers, who do the Amazon Logistics deliveries in this area. They pay little or no heed to the 'safe place' instructions given to Amazon, you have no idea at all when they're coming (or if they're coming) and deliveries are much later.

Deliveries at 9pm may well count as 'next day' technically, but they're nothing like as useful as deliveries in the morning or afternoon. And there are large numbers of people (particularly older people) who simply don't feel safe opening their doors that late in the darkness of winter.

tyrellinc

Sorry didn't find this, started another thread........

Just had the third delayed one this week.
We paid for Amazon Prime so we could get next day deliveries.
So I can be in to receive them. Not be told that they are being delivered - wait in all day - then receive another message stating they aren't!
They seem totally incapable since they've switched to Amazon Logistics and cut out Royal Mail.

saintadam

Just thought I would add a few words from my experience, having found this thread while looking for anybody else who had suffered the same problem.

I have items bought from Amazon for many years, and had deliveries from Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD, Hermes, etc. Had the odd problem finding us, but only on very irregular basis and then a call bag to headquarters tends to solve the problem.

Last week, I had the first (attempted) delivery from AL, whom I had not heard of before. The first day I waited in, it got to 18:00 and the tracking update said "unable to deliver due to adverse weather"! It was a bit foggy if I remember correctly. The second day, I waited in again, finally at around the same time, another update said "customer requested redelivery", which of course I hadn't! So, I waited in for a third day, and the parcel was finally delivered at 16:30 in the afternoon.

I had another parcel earlier this week, also to be delivered by AL. This time we had the standard initial failure on day 1 with "cannot find property" late in the day on the tracking site. I had been in contact with customer services who were very apologetic and offered a refund of the postage and promised postage the following day. The following day arrived, I stayed in again and when the time got to 22:00 with no delivery, I logged onto the tracking website to find the comment "customer refused delivery, returning to sender" and yet no-one had been near the house, so I cancelled the order and wrote to customer services to tell them why.

I then had another parcel later this week that was due to be delivered, again by AL. I thought I would give them one last chance to succeed but told customer services if the parcel was not delivered on Thu (today) then I would then be cancelling this order as well. Imagine my surprise when I got up this morning to a tracking update that read "Handed to resident", when no-one in the house had seen anybody on Wednesday, other than the postman. I immediately contacted customer services and demanded a refund, which they duly agreed to and said it would be completed in the next few days.

Basically, I have lost all faith in Amazon and their ability to actually deliver anything using AL as couriers. I have an outstanding order that is coming from Hong Kong that is due to be delivered via Royal Mail, which I fully expect to be delivered, but that could be the last purchase from Amazon until they change their couriers.