[jillesvangurp]

Here in Germany, it seems delivery services are inefficient, stupid, and clumsy. When you order a package on Amazon, it will indicate a time range of delivery likeliness with a high degree of uncertainty. Then you'll get an email stating the package is going to be delivered tomorrow. Sometimes that actually happens. Time window: the whole day. They don't like to commit to a time until very short before delivery time. Which is usually when working people are not at home.

I tried signing up with DHL once only to find out that that gave me the opportunity to actually pay them for the privilege of not wasting their time trying to deliver to me when I'm not home. That sounds a bit backwards to me. Why would I pay them to make their life easier. I'm fine with them delivering to a neighbor or nearby dhl store. I'd tell them to do that if I had the chance. But I'm not going to pay them for the privilege. And that's just DHL, there are about five or so different companies that Amazon works with here plus some contractors.

So, they keep on wasting trying to deliver packages to people that, mostly, aren't home. The problem is of course made worse by the fact that there are multiple delivery companies each wasting time in the same way. I'd say a rather large amount of packages gets delivered to neighbors or wherever after the delivery people waste time trying to deliver to the right place. Predictably, there are a percentage of lost packages which then need to be reimbursed by Amazon, which no doubt impacts the delivery companies. So, on top of the lost time, they end up dealing with that as well. That's inefficient and stupid.

It strikes me that not having a working relationship with the people you deliver too is costing these companies a lot of money. Why is that? What's so hard here? They have no insight in when people are at home, what alternative delivery options would be convenient, etc. How hard can it be to coordinate this in a way that is less likely to be mutually disappointing?

[jon-wood]

By far my favourite delivery company in the UK are DPD, who provide solutions to all of these problems. On the day of delivery I get a text message from DPD giving a delivery window which is somehow both very specific and quite vague: "your delivery will arrive between 10:54am and 11:54am".

If I know I'm not going to be in during that delivery window I can follow a link and ask them to either leave it on my doorstep, with a neighbour, redirect it to a local post office, or attempt delivery on a different day.

None of this is difficult to do, most delivery companies just don't bother.

[mcfedr]

Yep DPD definitely lead on the recieving end, I always fine the Americans, FedEx and ups to be by far the worst on that end.

[croisillon]

one of the reasons delivery services don't seam to care, i'd say, is that they outsource the actual delivery to poor migrants who don't have a choice but to price competitively against each other

[FirmwareBurner]

I've noticed the same in Austria and the UK.

Amazon's last mile shipping is outsourced, in a race to the bottom, to desperate migrants with a cheap white van who's road worthiness is debatable and who park illegally on sidewalks and bike paths during their deliveries. If you tell them that's not allowed they'll just say "Where else am I supposed to park? I won't make the delivery deadlines if I spend time looking for free parking spaces for the van. They're not reimbursing me for parking you know. What am I supposed to do?".

I hate Amazon. I also hate the governments who fail to regulate and crack down on these well known labor loopholes and abuses since this hasn't been going on since yesterday but for a very long time. I'd be totally ok with waiting 2-3x longer just to know th delivery workers have fair working conditions.