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by gwelson 1681 days ago
This sort of thing happens all the time at the apartment complex I live in (in the South Bay Area, California). We have an outdoor "mail room" with an automated package locker. I'm not sure if the package locker is usually full or simply hard for drivers to use, but often the delivery drivers will just leave a pile of like 30-50 packages next to it.

Honestly, I don't blame the drivers in the slightest. If I were treated the way they were treated and paid what they were paid, I wouldn't care about doing my job the right way either. Hell, they're so monitored by algorithms and surveillance devices that they probably don't have time to do it the right way even if they wanted to.

Things like this are going to keep happening and keep getting worse until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job.

This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

11 comments

This implies that "things like this" are somehow bad, though.

What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

I know Amazon already don't bother to process their own returns, instead selling those off in bulk lots for potentially far below the market value of the items (sort of like creditors selling off bad debts rather than trying to collect on them themselves.)

Both situations suggest a paradigm where human labor is by far the most expensive part of any logistics process, such that margin can always be increased simply by replacing workflows that involve even a little bit of human labor with fully-mechanized/externalized workflows, even when that brings service quality down.

> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon

Maybe it does, but isn't this because of a _negative externality_, i.e. the "indirect cost to individuals" (1) who deal one way or another with the pile of abandoned packages?

So Amazon is like an river polluter in that regard, dumping the problem because it's cheaper _for them_. It should be clear that this is not a net good thing.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Definitions

I suppose in most cases, for most people, this would be a positive externality. You get free stuff. Amazon should just do a better job communicating this.
I've more than once got complete garbage through somebody getting hold of my shipping address (not credit card, just shipping address!) and exploiting Amazon using it.

I get 'free stuff' except it's absolute garbage. Somebody else gets to abuse Amazon reviews, hyping that stuff under my name for the purpose of jacking up its review scores. Once I looked and the thing was rated #1 in its category.

Don't assume you've figured out the true costs of externalities: anything that is clearly a broken system is also going to be harming people in its brokenness.

The only time that I got someone else's amazon package, likely due to a labelling or packing error, it was utterly useless to me, I mean like "book 4 of an anime series that I had never heard of, not in a language that I understand" level of junk-ness (to me).

It's typically not "free stuff" to the recipient, it's junk, a hassle, and in the way.

The "spam parcels" from review-brushing scams have negative externalities, yes; but, unlike regular spam, these spam parcels don't make up the majority (or even a non-negligible minority) of Amazon deliveries. So, on net, a random abandoned parcel pallet is going to have net-positive ROI to whoever claims it. Probably highly net-positive ROI.

(Compare: the liquidation stores that run entirely off of a business model of buying Amazon returns lots, tossing out the broken crap, and selling the rest. Those stores make a profit, and they're receiving pallets where half the stuff is unusuable. If they were receiving pallets where everything is new from the warehouse [valuable or not], they'd likely cry for joy.)

Remember, whoever gets this stuff doesn't have to personally have a use for it. They could just call up their local charitable thrift store to drive over and pick up the whole lot, if they wanted. But that's still net-positive ROI — they get a warm feeling of having donated a bunch of stuff; and the charitable thrift store gets a lot of free stock that they know how to resell, to turn into money for their charity; and a bunch of people who each wanted one particular thing, can now find it at that thrift store for much less than they would have paid for it on Amazon. It's exactly the same as if Amazon donated a bunch of random crap directly to the charitable thrift store, save for the necessity of making one phone call, and the possibility of the caller skimming whatever nice items they like off the top before they make that call.

All of these comments are from the perspective of a consumer rather than the perspective of the amazon employee (driver) who is likely poorly treated and paid. I doubt the driver is happy about their situation, is that positive?
Presumably the driver is as poorly treated and paid for delivering to the right address as to the wrong.
Minimally paid, so again probably not happy. You think people in low wage delivery jobs are doing it because they love delivering things? No, they likely don't have many other options, if any at all
> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

This is the sort of situation which happens so infrequently that literally the solution is you ask whoever calls about it to "read me off the TBA number off the tracking label", look up which DSP was responsible, and tell them to divert someone to go pick those up. Any DSP worth its salt always has some number of drivers on rescue or, failing that, one of their dispatchers will go pick it up. In short: DSPs are incentivized to maintain personnel to handle problems on route, and this is exactly the sort of thing they can and should handle. Either way those packages are going to be marked missing/undelivered and the DSP will get dinged for that driver's fuckup, so they might as well send someone out to pick them up and get them properly delivered.

> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

Excuse me? There's like a pile of boxes in the way. Amazon should clean this up, quickly. So you say it's better that random people living there should be made responsible for getting rid of a pile of boxes instead of Amazon who put them there?

What if I "abandon" a sh*tload of poo in your front garden because that's cheaper for me?

You might be overreacting. This is free stuff for whoever picks it up - yes Amazon shouldn't be littering, yes it might inconvenience something but it isn't that bad.
This is someones property not "free stuff". Its theft if you take it. These packages will actually have names and addresses of the actual owners written on them so you can't even say you didn't know who the owners are.
No, in this workflow, Amazon generates a replacement package and sends that out for the recipient. The recipient is entitled to one item that they paid for—and that would be the replacement item. The original item is still owned by Amazon, who is free to declare it abandoned, and so property of whoever finds it.

Remember, these parcels aren't being sent through the postal system (where you legally release ownership of mail to the Postmaster General by sticking something in a mail slot, which is how it can be a federal offense to tamper with their mail—undelivered mail is the government's legal property!)

Instead, these are parcels going through Amazon's own logistics carriers. Amazon never released ownership of these items—they don't do that until the item hits the recipient's door. These items are legally Amazon warehouse stock, that happen to have shipping labels printed on them.

I’m actually curious about the legality of this. Potentially those shipments contain personal information (from the invoice to the package contents). Is Amazon actually allowed to release them like that? Lost packages are one thing, but intentionally forgetting about them, idk.
It's still amazon's property until they deliver it I suppose, so charge Amazon rent.
In this case Amazon apparently advised the finders to open the boxes and donate the stuff. Sounds like free stuff to me.
Technically. Nobody is going to prosecute them for it if they just take it though. It is abandoned.

But Amazon isn't going to just abandon the people who bought stuff. They're going to get a different item. This is just Amazon signalling that it is cheaper to deliver a new item than to collect a lost item.

Though there are privacy considerations. You have the name and address of the person on a box that may contain something embarrassing or private.
What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon

What if killing the natives just has plain-old higher ROI for an oil company than trying to work with them? What if operating an illegal taxi business just has plain-old higher ROI than following the laws in place? What if kneecapping the competition just has plain-old higher ROI for an ice skater?

Those things are negative externalities. In this case, apartment buildings are receiving e.g. a carton of free new laptops that they could sell or donate. Yes, in some sense it's "littering", but it's not littering of valueless trash that costs more than it's worth to dispose of. It costs Amazon more than it's worth, but to pretty much any regular human being, it's like Amazon "littered" a stack of $20 bills in their apartment lobby.

And, because this stuff has value, it will very likely all get reused (i.e. resold or donated into the secondary market), not thrown away. Which will satisfy some of the demand for the products Amazon is selling, replacing an order someone would have made for a new product. Which means this act doesn't even have any externalities for the environment—nothing is going to landfill that otherwise wouldn't.

So I honestly don't get your comparison.

Then killing natives, running illegal taxi businesses and kneecapping will happen.

If the government doesn't like it, then provide sufficient incentive not to do it.

What if killing senators and representatives offers higher ROI than complying with laws (or bribing the senators more than other companies are bribing them)?

Amazon's not the first one I'd look at for this, but still. At some point you have to look at how things actually function. Not unlike critical theory. You ask, 'this is the rule, what's it like in practice though?'

> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

It's not. Delivery works with a hub and spoke model. Simply get it back to the nearest local distribution point and it will be dealt with.

However, the loss just isn't tracked by Amazon. "Unable to recover packages due to atrocious processes" will be indistinguishable in their reporting to "van flooded/burnt, packages lost". So they don't see the problem and can't see any reason to fix it.

How I can tell - the customer service couldn't even figure out how much the packages were worth. No cost benefit calculation was performed.

Cost isn’t necessarily linear with complexity. And customer service wouldn’t be the ones tasked with those calculations. Amazon knows how many packages they lose in delivery once the intended recipient notifies them as such.
Letting people leave their scooters obstructing the sidewalk apparently has a higher ROI for Lime/Uber/Whoever than promptly collecting them, setting up docks, etc. The scooter riders seem to find it convenient, too. But it annoys this pedestrian.
> This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

You sure this is only Amazon, and not also USPS, FedEx, UPS, etc?

I'd sooner blame your apartment complex than delivery companies.

Anecdotally, I've had so few problems with delivery drivers, that I can't recall specific examples.

On the other hand, the amount of lousy experiences with apartment complex management companies and their policies would fill a long twitter thread.

For example, ordered computer equipment from Newegg. It was delivered to my apartment complex mail room, which closed at 5pm. I left work early to pick it up, only to find out that the staff had closed down and went home early (4:45p).

At my building I’m pretty sure, given that every USPS package gets delivered to my mailbox, every FedEx and UPS package gets delivered to my apartment door, and like 25% of Amazon-delivered packages never show up or show up mysteriously a few days after they are marked as delivered.
FedEx maybe. UPS is unionized, I think they pay a fair wage.
So you assume that getting paid more automatically equates to more often doing the right thing?

Then it’s definitely not Bezos’s fault!

That is neat to hear. Rather than fix a systemic issue, couldn't we just have a national holiday?
> until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job

Everyone knows this already - though the lowest rung is occupied by the undocumented, and no one wants to help them.

until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap"…

Ahem, the society is not only middle and upper middle class, even (I believe) in US. These drivers themselves use Amazon and other “cheap” services, I mean do you realize they sometimes need to buy things too? That’s obviously not a counter argument to your conclusions, but something to account for before raising the prices.

So what am I supposed to do as the consumer? Where can I buy things where this won't be the case? For a few product categories, I sometimes have alternatives. Farmers market which is seasonal. I'm lucky to live in Portland which had a great local book store. Many other things I need regularly are much harder.
I'm curious what do you need to purchase regularly that you cannot pick up at a local store?
What makes you think that store treats its employees better than Amazon treats its drivers? Maybe you can talk to the employees, but that's just the first layer. What about their suppliers?
Unions
As dehrmann said in a parallel comment, sure I can pick up almost everything at local stores, but I don't believe that most of them treat their employees any better than Amazon does. That's why I listed farmers markets and our fabulous Powell's as alternatives where I'm pretty confident that employees get treated well or there aren't any.
Ah, I see I misinterpreted your comment, missing the key point that you are asking what local alternatives where employees are treated better.

I'm lucky that Fred Meyer (my preferred local retail store) is unionized.

More over, I tend to shop at mom & pop stores, if possible.

Arrange for stuff to be delivered when you're there to receive it?
Sorry, I should have been cleared that I was referring to the part about the middle class waking up to the abuse of service workers. I'm pretty sure that many local stores treat their employees as bad if not worse than Amazon.
Delivery dates shift. Amazon's are doubly fluid. You might have to stay at home for a whole week have a reasonable chance of being there when the package deigns to be delivered.
I'm in the UK, I can have stuff delivered to my office, my home, a remote access anytime locker, a local store or a friend's house. I really don't have an excuse for someone not being there.

Maybe it's different where you are?

>"until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force"

They're not demented. They know it. They do not give a flying fuck.

There's no point in stopping consumption as an individual, but if there was a workers unionization movement to support or an organized consumer action such as a boycott...
Some people do find that it feels good stopping consumption as an individual.
That's yet another consumer choice rather than an exertion of political will. The point of political ideas is to change reality, to exert will and make it manifest. Individual consumer choices absent a movement don't do diddly squat.
I agree. Just quibbling over the unqualified "there's no point".
OK. So what is to be done?
Support unions, vote for workers rights.

Then again, in the US it's very hard to focus your vote like this due to the two-party system. So... work on getting a better political system in place?

One party actually has advanced workers’ rights in recent decades.
Like the police union
There are unions that behave badly, therefore unions as a concept is broken and should be abolished.

Funny enough that logic never applies to corporations. If some corporations behave badly, murdering people, overthrowing democratically elected governments, kidnapping children, well, that's just how it is, we can't abolish corporations, even regulating them is criticized.

Unions help the small guy though, so those are okay to trash.

Legislative and executive action to disincentivize the manufacturing of cheap (and less cheap) goods produced overseas and incentivize the revival of US manufacturing.

China is the reason Amazon is so big.

And who is going to pay for the goods most people would not be able to buy? You will relegate majority of the population to become destitute and may end up with a nice cozy revolt as the result.

Some industries may be able to get away with it and still be competitive - ones that can replace people with robots. This would cause mass layoffs though.

Decent guaranteed basic income could be a solution but something makes me think that North America would rather commit suicide than let people have something "for free" on large scale.

>"China is the reason Amazon is so big."

It was the decision of many US / other western manufacturers to outsource production to China. China was smart and used it to catapult itself from relative nobody to superpower it is today. The true reason is not China but a simple greed.

For workers to fight for their rights / money. It is the only way. Owners will not out of blue get generous and decide to pay more money.
Move somewhere better. Or eat the rich.
> Move somewhere better. Or eat the rich.

"Move somewhere better" is the response of the (relatively) rich. It says "I'm OK with this problem, as long as I don't have to be near it." That's an OK position to take sometimes—we have to pick our battles, and can't right all the ills of the world—but it's not really taking a moral stand.

I consider it the best chance of sending a message that might actually be heard.
call your Congressman?
It probably depends on the location because here, we have an indoor locker room that requires a pass to enter. It always seemed like either the lockers are full either because there were a lot that day and/or people would leave the packages in the locker for days. Also, I noticed people would just give the address of the mailroom and probably did not sign up for the locker service.
> This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

Well, in the case of your apartment complex and its package locker, it could be either/or. If it's an Amazon brand locker and they're just dropping the packages then chances are the locker was full and the app told them to just drop them there because that was a safe location. If it's a Luxor or some other offbrand locker then they either may not have codes needed to access it or they were trying to shave a few minutes off their time by just dropping everything in the lobby. That might sound horrible but when everyone is incentivized to piss in a bottle and not take their breaks in order to make their deliveries and nobody at corporate ever bothers to investigate then these sort of things are going to happen.

That being said...

> This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

Yes. This is the correct answer. :D

> If it's an Amazon brand locker and they're just dropping the packages then chances are the locker was full and the app told them to just drop them there because that was a safe location.

These were not dropped outside a locker at the intended delivery address; they were at the wrong address entirely.

OK, then next question: Is the intended delivery address say one street over? Reason: Packages can only be dropped off if your device reports that you're within a certain radius of the delivery point. When navigating, crossing into the radius defined by that point (termed the 'geofence') is what pops up the button that says you've arrived at your destination. So imagine... you're a driver using the turn-by-turn directions on your device and it suddenly says you've arrived at your destination. So you grab the packages and head over to the building number listed on the packages... except someone put the point for the geofence at the wrong spot so the radius of the geofence extends to the next street over, causing drivers to stop on the wrong street and deliver to an address with the same building number.

Mind you, I'm not saying that's what happened here, but that's one possibility.

> OK, then next question: Is the intended delivery address say one street over?

You don't need to ask me; it's in the article, starting with the first sentence:

> Amazon – the logistics expert the world has come to rely on for everything from groceries to furniture – abandoned an entire cart of packages meant for delivery to Forest Street in a Fernald Drive lobby on Wednesday. …

> Fernald, in Neighborhood 9, and Forest, in the Baldwin neighborhood, are a five-minute drive apart.

Idk which your in, but FYI there’s a socal South Bay (south of long beach) and a NorCal South Bay (basically Silicon Valley.

Hope that prevents future confusion.

There’s one Bay Area.
I mean, I love the bay too, but google 'south bay area' and SoCal's comes up first.

You're asking the capitalization to do a lot of work.

> This is Amazon/Bezos' fault, not the driver's.

Agree.

> Things like this are going to keep happening and keep getting worse until the middle class/upper middle class realizes that our current lifestyle and access to "cheap" services is being held up by a systematically abused and underpaid labor force that isn't given the time, compensation, respect, or basic decency to support doing a good job.

Disagree. This is entirely the fault of yes-men/pie in the sky management at Amazon. Any manager with the slightest bit of autonomy at Amazon is making six figures and is willing to throw their employees under the bus for money. They will do literally anything to avoid admitting that a problem that exists that can be solved but will cause a KPI to go down. Absolutely no one is willing to go to bat for ideas that cause temporary productivity decrease but a quality and productivity increase over the long run as the company gets better at solving the problem.

Btw. fun cultural difference: In some other countries it's not considered Ok to keep packages on front porches or next to mail boxes. Drivers in the Czech Republic would never leave package like that and hence it would be their mistake not Amazons/Bazoses.
Yeah this seems insane to mee too, also from central Europe. If it doesn't fit in your mailbox and you can't pick it up in person, you get a note to pick it up at the post office or you can choose to deliver it to a nearby gas station. Both of those will check delivery details and your photo ID before giving you the package (the latter charging you some change for the service).

Nobody here would even consider leaving it outside, despite our crime rate being waay lower than somewhere like the US, where people seem to be 100% fine with that idea.

I've recently had one or two packages left in my recycling bin for paper/cardboard with a note from the driver saying they put it there. That was kind of a shock, because that's simply not done here in the Netherlands unless you have a personal understanding with the delivery driver.

It was also really uncomfortable because I definitely don't want delivery drivers walking anywhere around my house except for the path from garden gate to front door.

In Sweden where I live, if it doesn't fit in your mailbox you'll have to pick it up somewhere.

In Germany a friend of mine told me that if they're not home at time of delivery Amazon's shipping partner will intentionally deliver to her neighbors, smaller city though but I guess culture is indeed different.

>In Germany a friend of mine told me that if they're not home at time of delivery Amazon's shipping partner will intentionally deliver to her neighbors

It's quite common in Germany to accept parcels for neighbors - but that's also because in Germany, a lot of people live in flats in small-ish housing blocks where you know your neighbors. So, like 6-12 flats per house, not high-rises.

But we have the same problems in Germany as described in the article: especially Amazon's own drivers frequently just don't try to ring but instead just leave the boxes outside or just throw them into the hall.

The German postal system has pretty good public lockers, years before we got Amazon Lockers here. Used them a lot, but lately due to fragmentation of the delivery market and those DHL lockers being reserved for the postal system, I more frequently have to drive to some bar or kiosk to fetch my boxes when the sender chooses a different logistics partner.

This is the normal procedure in the Netherlands as well, for I think all-but-one of the package delivery services. If you're not home, delivery goes to one of the neighbours (could be 5-6 houses away if the driver already knows that that one is at home). Might not be common in the inner cities, but definitely in towns and suburbs. Good for social cohesion, as otherwise we wouldn't see most of these people for months at a time.

It's common to such a degree that many of the shipping forms on webshops have a dedicated field to indicate that you don't want this, though I've never felt the need to use this; definitely more convenient to walk over to the neighbours than to a pickup point.

In Poland delivery drivers just call you and ask what do you want to be done with package. If you don't respond, package waits in delivery center. Phone number is typically required field.
I'm reluctant to bring COVID19 into this conversation, but the reason Sweden managed "OK" (In relation to how nonexistent our regulations were) is because we're "the most" (don't have source) isolated people in the world.

We don't talk to strangers, we don't have the kiss on the cheek thing, we stand in well formed distanced lines, we avoid interaction at "any cost".

I would love it if this delivery thing was the normal procedure in Sweden, it builds trust and relationships in your surroundings. These days unless you live in a teeny village you don't really know your neighbors, other than what car they're driving, so that you can buy a more expensive one with borrowed money next time.

Our national anthem says something like "I wanna live and i wanna die in the Nordics", yeah nah!

Handing a package to your neighbour at the door is really not a significant vector for infection with Covid19. You can easily keep a safe distance.
In the UK, delivering to neighbours is standard if the parcel doesn't fit through the mailbox. I'm surprised to hear that's not the case elsewhere?
I don't want my post delivered to my neighbour. I much prefer the system we have which sends me a text saying that the package has arrived at the nearest pickup point which is a supermarket within five minutes drive or a locker that is less than ten minutes walk away.

Also, my neighbours are no more likely to be at home than I am.

Edit: forgot to specify that this is in Norway.

I think it depends on the delivery company. Amazon, Hermes, and DPD have been fairly good with that in my experience, Royal Mail have always made me go through the faff of a trip to the sorting office no matter what.
Oh yeah, Royal Mail are annoying for that, especially since the sorting office around here is in the middle of nowhere. Every other courier will try a neighbour though.

My wife and I used to live in a street where we were usually the only people at home during the day. All the delivery companies quickly realised we would take in anyone's parcels, so our living room was often like a mini sorting office!

The main reason for this is not just a cultural difference, but a legal difference. Only the USPS can legally deliver to mailboxes. Otherwise, other services would definitely use them. There are, in some cases, other delivery services that ask their customer to have separate delivery boxes installed for their packages.

For example: https://img1.etsystatic.com/055/0/7471543/il_fullxfull.74786...

It's not this. Mailboxes in the American sense are uncommon in my country (most properties have a letter box, which is literally just big enough to fit a letter or small padded envelope through). Delivery companies still don't/(can't?) just leave it on a front step and call it delivered. If you're not there they'll maybe try deliver to your neighbours and failing that, send it back to their depot and either try another day or ask you to pick it up.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a cultural difference, I said it wasn’t just a cultural difference. Signing for packages also used to be common in the US too, that culturally started changing around the dot com bubble when e-commerce companies fought for customers’ approval. Because even big American mailboxes can’t legally receive even a small envelope from a courier, it has become culturally normal to have them left out. It is normal because it is universally done.
> Its all your fault

BS. I didn't ask for the lockers, or even want them - because I knew what would happen. I've never signed up for Prime service for the same reason. Tell me again, how is anything my fault?