[altotrees]

I have had Amazon folks in my neighborhood: leave packages on the sidewalk, throw packages over fences and ask me for a tip.

These are antecdotal, but if Amazon wants to catch up to a company like UPS, they have a ton of ground to make up. Delivering packages is really hard work, believe it or not, and underpaying someone to do it isn't going to bring about the results you're after, guaranteed.

[stuart78]

Was coming here to post the same thing. The vans in my area are unbranded, the employees unprofessional and the delivery is sloppy. "Soft" expenses such as uniforms and paint make a difference on perception, as would better supervision and training.

I also wonder, in the drivers' defense, if the delivery schedule is unrealistic. I can better understand lobbing a box on the lawn if you're 10 deliveries behind.

[twothamendment]

An unmarked van isn't too welcome in some parts around me. Some people are downright defensive about visitors on their road. On the other hand, a recognizable UPS or FedEx is likely to get a friendly wave.

Amazon would do well to paint their logo on the van, but maybe it isn't their van.

Branding matters.

[dfischer]

What area is this out of curiosity?

[rbritton]

I can't answer for the grandparent, but it's not an uncommon situation in the eastern Washington/northern Idaho area. Much of it is rural enough that there's very little reason to be on many roads unless it's a delivery driver or something illegal. They're not roads you'd even end up on if lost -- it's a deliberate choice.

[twothamendment]

NW Montana. People are friendly, but private.

[deusum]

Sounds like contract work done by the lowest bidder. No coherent chain of a command, just get stuff to people's houses no matter what or lose your contract.

[0xfeba]

I often see Home Depot rented vans being used for this. No idea how that can be profitable.

[Aloisius]

Amazon used to use ONTRAC to deliver packages to me that did the same thing (complete with the unbranded vans). They stopped after the sixth package was stolen.

[mchahn]

> The vans in my area are unbranded

Most of my deliveries have been in cars uber-like.

> "Soft" expenses such as uniforms

They do wear an unlabeled orange vest here. Maybe that is just for safety when crossing roads but it lets me know who they are.

[joncp]

Ditto. I think Amazon is used to having complete supervision of people in their warehouses, where any slip-ups are found and fixed quickly before a package goes out. The delivery driver, on the other hand, needs a certain level of street smarts and people skills and has to be able to function with minimal supervision. That kind of person isn't going to work for you for minimum wage.

When I order from Amazon and see that they're going to try to ship it on their own, I just groan. It's going to be painful for sure.

[mchahn]

> I just groan. It's going to be painful for sure.

I get amazon packages every day or two for my startup. I don't ever remember any pain.

[anderskev]

Sounds pretty similar to my two experiences with Amazon Fresh. First guy shows up and goes into a long story about how his leg is broken and how terrible his day is going. Not to be unsympathetic, but clearly this guy was just trying to solicit a tip, which I was planning on giving anyway, but decided against after the experience. Second time around I just pick the "leave it at the door" option, and they dropped it off at the wrong building, and when I found it, it was also the wrong order.

[oatmale]

Sounds like you may have actually stolen mail inadvertently.

[anderskev]

There's a sticker label with your name and address on it attached to the green bags.

[013a]

Same. I've personally ran into amazon delivery people lost in our apartment complex, badged them into the building, and walked them to where they should drop off packages. I'd feel like it was a one time thing, but it seems like every week they've got a new guy delivering here, and its a tossup whether they're properly trained to know what to do. Meanwhile, the same USPS guy has been coming here for 3 years.

[vadym909]

They use an Uber like model with gigsters to do deliveries which is why you encounter different people https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-delivery-driver-like-wo...

[romwell]

Well, any notion of a mailman who knows things goes out the window with this model.

Good luck to those whose delivery location can't be easily located in the real world using <map app of the day>.

[twothamendment]

That is a problem. Our UPS driver has his own map of the area because there are so many addresses that don't map. I doubt gigster type is going to put in that much effort.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I wish there was larger adoption of a system like what3words for these rural areas. Something like if Amazon is unable to geocode your address give you the option to specify lat/lon location or 3x3m grid.

Shame that the company that uses the system seems really protective of the idea and might try to sue if someone were to come up with their own similar implementation. It's one of the places I believe that the profit motive actually gets in the way of innovation (the idea itself is simple enough that you could probably engineer a system to use it in a few weeks).

[asclepi]

There's https://plus.codes/ which seems to be more liberal and licenses its codes under the Apache 2.0 license.

However, although it has been around since 2014, I've never seen any practical use.

[manyxcxi]

It got so bad with the AMZN delivery company that we finally requested they ship to us with anyone but them.

- Delivery dates constantly getting pushed back 1-3 days (why even have prime?).

- Delivery notifications for packages that were never delivered, and not even attempted to be. Someone is almost always home and we have a security camera on all approaches to the house, they don’t even try.

- Completely lost packages.

- Our stuff getting delivered to the neighbors, and vice versa.

Amazon’s delivery has been an unmitigated disaster in our neighborhood.

[bigtunacan]

This will be no change for me. Where I’m at UPS and FedEx just toss the package at the porch/doors and then bolt. Very unprofessional and NEVER once ring the door bell. I don’t expect them to wait, but FFS how much extra work is it to hit the damn doorbell?

[nickpsecurity]

It's probably the "performance optimization" and such described below having an effect. This stuff happens in a lot of the traditional types of companies that are labor and equipment heavy. The new bosses in middle gotta push productivity up, costs down. They might mandate performance standards or with the time optimization allocate the "right" amount of hours for each job. The workers might get fired for not meeting specific numbers.

https://harpers.org/archive/2015/03/the-spy-who-fired-me/?si...

They probably don't have many better options either given they were doing deliveries for UPS and FedEx. The employees responding to that environment will either accidentally or intentionally in spite do stuff like that. I've seen quite a few of those companies. You also get to experience more spite the less the company or customers care about them. The jobs that require slaving away for nothing under assholes are the most consistent in generating that effect.

[daveFNbuck]

But the package ends up near your house. That's a huge improvement over Amazon.

[bigtunacan]

Unfortunately it’s not an improvement because theft of packages is rampant in my neighborhood. So despite someone working from home we still end up with packages stolen.

These days I just have my packages kept at UPS and go pick them up.

[stevedc3]

Seems like a lot of room to innovate with technology, and I bet Amazon is banking on that.

This reminds me a lot of Amazon marketplace, where they took the core service (Amazon e-commerce) and opened it up to others without holding inventory. They can use other people’s orders to gain even more scale and drive costs down lower in the distribution network, commoditizing the complement layer (delivery, in this case UPS and FedEx).

[pasbesoin]

Just this week, I've once again found Prime -- on multiple packages -- to apparently mean "when we get around to it".

I'm going to finally watch "The Wire" and a few other of their streaming offers that have been on my todo list, and then consider not renewing. (And... I'm wondering how onerous the process of effectively disconnecting them from my credit card will be.)

[shostack]

The good news is you can usually get a few bucks back if you complain to support about that.

[pasbesoin]

Thanks for that advice. However, the inconvenience outweighs such savings, for me. I've also found Amazon support to be becoming less and less generous with respect to "making things right".