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Amazon Flex

flex.amazon.com

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Re: Amazon Flex

#391

Post by djur »

caskance wrote: post #285
djur wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pizza delivery driver doesn't get any of that delivery charge. Not tipping the driver because of the delivery charge is essentially punishing the driver for the owner's desire to take their tips.

The owner taking their tips is punishing the driver. It's not my responsibility to insulate the driver from that. I am paying a surcharge for delivery. That's reasonable. If the driver doesn't get the cut of that he feels he deserves, he can work somewhere else.

By this same argument, you might as well not ever tip. I'd be happy for our society to eliminate tipping and replace it with better wages. But, until that happy day, there are people to whom it is customary to give tips, and food delivery people are among them.

Re: Amazon Flex

#392

Post by samstave »

slr555 wrote: post #387

Amazon can't even effectively manage their second tier delivery vendors like Lasership in NYC. They dump packages in unsecured areas (I had one stolen last week). They scan packages as delivered to make their SLA with Amazon and then deliver after 9pm. And now Amazon thinks some random folks with cars are going to do great delivering merchandise in one of the country's most congested urban areas. Maybe bricks and mor…

This sounds like a problem with Lasership -- not Amazon...

Re: Amazon Flex

#393

Post by makomk »

digikata wrote: post #351
thieving_magpie wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I couldn't care less who hands me my package if it arrives intact and on time. I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".

Isn't the probability of something going wrong higher if the delivery infrastructure isn't staffed with full time people? I would guess that mishandling, loss, misdelivery, theft would all be more likely under the flex model.

Yodel (formerly the Home Delivery Network) used this model in the UK for years and were infamously bad. This may well be why they changed their name.

Re: Amazon Flex

#394

Post by hkmurakami »

thieving_magpie wrote: post #315
suvelx wrote: post #8

I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.

Man I couldn't care less who hands me my package if it arrives intact and on time. I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".

The OnTrac experience is already so bad that I can't imagine it really becoming that much worse.

Re: Amazon Flex

#395

Post by speby »

gherkin0 wrote: post #337
speby wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massive lack of imagination. I highly doubt the only motivation from Amazon's perspective is strictly about cost-cutting. On its surface, yes, it would be easy to assume this could result in some odd or lesser version of having a major courier deliver your package. On the other hand, by having Amazon control the to-the-door experience, that gives them incredible granular controls over how things are done, w…

> This is a massive lack of imagination. I highly doubt the only motivation from Amazon's perspective is strictly about cost-cutting. > For example, what about a 5-minute tutorial for a new product you just ordered? I highly doubt people who are essentially doing low-wage contract piecework will have the motivation or ability to give me an effective 5 minute tutorial on the random gizmo I just researched and ordered.…

While I certainly can't prove your comments any other way, my point isn't to declare that I somehow know what Amazon is going to do with this, rather that there are a lot of interesting possibilities when you control the whole process, including the final delivery step of getting a product to the actual customer. There are things you just can't do when you are contracting that through a normal courier (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc etc.).

Re: Amazon Flex

#396

Post by voltagex_ »

lorenzhs wrote: post #125
suvelx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand, is why I can't pick my delivery slot for free. Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job. Why can't you just say "I'll be at home on Thursday after 5pm. Call me on #555-333-9999 if you have any issues". Courier delivers the package after 5pm on Th…

I have everything delivered to my office, as long as I can transport it home on my bike (i.e. no washing machines). Works very well for me, but apparently not every workplace encourages this. Here, the delivery guy brings the packages directly to my office ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Often there's a complete lack of policy around this, especially in buildings requiring swipecards to get in. I don't mind coming down to the lobby to pick up parcels, but it's unknown whether this is actually allowed by $EMPLOYER

Re: Amazon Flex

#397

Post by gangstead »

martingordon wrote: post #134

One of the reasons I hesitate to use Amazon Now is that big "suggested tip" field. I don't tip the UPS delivery person, why should I tip my Amazon Now delivery person? What's been the norm for you all?

The tip field was pre-populated, I changed it to 0. It's up to them to pay their drivers. (Sample size: 1 delivery)

Re: Amazon Flex

#398

Post by d_theorist »

petercooper wrote: post #350
d_theorist wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I had a delivery from them the other day. I could see a map showing exactly where the driver was at any time. Granted, it didn't auto-update, but whenever I reloaded the page it gave me an updated location, and told me where I was in the queue.

If you use Chrome DevTools, you can get a curl query that will keep grabbing the latest JSON from the tracking. We rigged it up with a check every minute and had it send us a Slack notification when the delivery was under a mile away :-)

Nice!

Re: Amazon Flex

#399

Post by voltagex_ »

speby wrote: post #327
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-commerce companies have 2 points of contact with the customer - the website and the courier. It makes no sense whatsoever to me why there's this ongoing race to the bottom on the courier side of things while companies spend more and more on the website side. I suppose at that point they already have your money, so what if this delivery experience is awful? Yodel are worse than useless, and I can't see this being mu…

This is a massive lack of imagination. I highly doubt the only motivation from Amazon's perspective is strictly about cost-cutting. On its surface, yes, it would be easy to assume this could result in some odd or lesser version of having a major courier deliver your package. On the other hand, by having Amazon control the to-the-door experience, that gives them incredible granular controls over how things are done, w…

I hope they remember the world exists outside of the US and UK - Australia seriously needs some delivery competition between AusPost, StarTrack (owned by AusPost) and Toll. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but Australians buy a lot of stuff online [1].

AusPost won't accept anything but their own parcels / other national carriers (i.e. USPS but not UPS) into their parcel locker system, so it's a complete crapshoot whether your Amazon parcel is going to go around the world again.

Toll have tried to emulate this with their ParcelPoint system but there just aren't as many locations.

Amazon could seriously shake things up by launching Flex plus Lockers at the same time here. Flex would cover the rural areas quite well where the nearest courier depot is 1+ hours away (or more in WA, I'm sure)

1: http://auspost.com.au/annualreport2014/parcel-services.html but declining because our economy relies heavily on digging stuff up and selling it to China.

Re: Amazon Flex

#400

Post by cbhl »

suvelx wrote: post #96
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-commerce companies have 2 points of contact with the customer - the website and the courier. It makes no sense whatsoever to me why there's this ongoing race to the bottom on the courier side of things while companies spend more and more on the website side. I suppose at that point they already have your money, so what if this delivery experience is awful? Yodel are worse than useless, and I can't see this being mu…

What I don't understand, is why I can't pick my delivery slot for free. Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job. Why can't you just say "I'll be at home on Thursday after 5pm. Call me on #555-333-9999 if you have any issues". Courier delivers the package after 5pm on Th…

If you live in SF, Seattle, or New York you can probably find a 'package locker' service like Amazon Locker or BufferBox to solve that problem for you. It's a bit pricy though -- you may as well just live in a luxury apartment and have the doorman/reception drop the package off inside your apartment for you.
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