Today, Amazon reported the above item as being delivered to my door. One problem. Although I can see that it was delivered to a building in my complex by the color of the paint and the style of the floor, it was not delivered to my apartment. Instead, it went to someone in another doorway. Amazon's last mile delivery service screwed up again!
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One of the first things I've learned to hate lately are the "Last Mile Delivery Services", subcontractors who take products from a corporate warehouse and deliver then to the final recipient. Unlike UPS and FedEx, Last Mile services usually bid to deliver packages on a route and do not build up the institutional knowledge needed to make complex deliveries correctly. For example, a woman I noted as being a "Queen Bee" (not in a negative sense) lived in a place where Google Maps could not generate accurate delivery instructions. She usually had to tell people how to find her place using an alternate address not legally associated with her house on a cul-de-sac. My case was much simpler. I live in a complex with 31 apartment buildings with 4 entrances each, and the last mile service delivered my perishable packages to both the wrong floor, the wrong doorway, and the wrong building. I severed the relationship with the firm shipping my perishables, as their subcontractors could only correctly deliver things to me less than 30% of the time. A woman I know in Queens, NY has had similar problems as her goods were sometimes delivered to the wrong building in her densely populated area.
A few years ago, Amazon started to set up its network of last mile delivery subcontractors, even providing the financing for the delivery trucks needed to set up their businesses. All of these trucks would carry the Amazon brand, and would only service one customer - Amazon. Over the past few years, it seems like there was a consolidation among these subcontractors, as a friend from the Texas meetup group (not mentioned in this blog) got a job with one of these subcontractors and has her routes strictly managed by Amazon. I expect something similar occurs in the NYC metropolitan area. And here lies the problem.
You'll note that in the picture above, the Amazon subcontractor has taken a picture of the door to show that the package has been delivered. Yet, I can determine by the doormat that the item I ordered was delivered to the wrong doorway, as my doormat is patterned differently. Sadly, Amazon does not make it easy to tell them exactly what went wrong, as this would be useful information to hold the last mile delivery service to account.
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Will I buy things through Amazon again? Yes. We have few choices, now that the department stores are dying off. Most things I want to buy do not sell in a high enough volume to be carried by a local store. But they do sell enough for Amazon to warehouse in regional centers, then delivered to the customer by Amazon's complex logistics network. Hopefully, next time, Amazon will get it right.
PS: The UPS Deliveries were delivered the next day via USPS, and the mis-delivered Amazon package made it to my door as well. Now, I have to return the extra package....
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