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From my experience, overall, I have good, smooth deliveries. In these last 7 mos of COVID, I have online ordered by far more than I ever have in my life & overall, it's still been positive. Sure, there were a couple of things that never came & those were international orders via Amazon.
Regarding waiting for anything to arrive, I never have to wait at home...haven't for as long as I can remember, so that's been decades. At my apt complex, they email/text me when I get a package. I usually wait till about 4-6 packages arrive closely together so I can get them all at once because it's a bit of a hassle to get mail/packages here.
Every once in a while, a package is left at my door & people around here are good & I've never had one stolen yet (& again, I'm in an apt complex of 400 or more units consisting of separate buildings). if it happens, I'll alert the company I bought it from to see what the next step is.
We've certainly had no where near a 40% failure rate. If the rate were that high, companies like Amazon couldn't exist. We've had a few deliveries to the wrong address or just not show up, but the company always corrects it. And certainly not enough to make us not order on line.
Sticking with just “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” I have had only one major issue, where I ordered a bottle of weedkiller for poison ivy and both tries they made to ship it got destroyed in transit (never made it as far as attempted delivery!).
Maybe one in ten comes a day later than the estimated date; I am okay with that, if I need instant gratification I'll shop local (I try to support local small business as long as I'm not overpaying by more than 10% (sales tax is not a factor)).
I get about 1 package a week, on average, throughout the year since I have some household necessities on subscription and my business requires sourcing products not available in brick and mortar stores near me.
I never had a single delivery problem, apart from a 1-2 day delay, until the last 4-6 weeks when I had two deliveries go wayward.
For both wayward deliveries I filed a 'lost delivery' complaint to the merchant, and both were refunded within 24 hours or so. One showed up a week past the extended delivery date, the other has never showed. Overall, I am satisfied with my personal track record of receiving deliveries and being compensated for those that were waylaid.
I do get nervous due to the uncertainty regarding the USPS, thanks to political interference with their service, and the resulting load put on private delivery firms (which, frankly, have always seemed inferior in terms of prompt and transparent service to me compared to the USPS).
Never had a lost/stolen package in 2 different states (moved) in 10 years from any delivery service including USPS.
I order a LOT online because I used to live many miles away from shopping. Larger city now but covid happened so online order continue.
My latest beef is Amazon seller lied that they were US based, showed KY address, their merch did not match photos so I'm returning for refund (super rare for me) and they say "ship back to China". Haha nope.
OP if I had your problems I'd buy a Ring and see what's up. Maybe a sticky finger neighbotr.
OP... where on earth do you live?
I have made hundreds of online purchases for thousands of dollars worth of merchandise over ten years and had one item mis-delivered ($20 towels) which my neighbor restored to me, and a couple of small delivery failures that were rectified.
I use PayPal when possible to shield my CC and that has worked well also.
If the failure rate for online purchases was even 10% ebay and Amazon would have gone the way of the mouse pad years ago!
Sticking with just “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” I have had only one major issue, where I ordered a bottle of weedkiller for poison ivy and both tries they made to ship it got destroyed in transit (never made it as far as attempted delivery!).
Maybe one in ten comes a day later than the estimated date; I am okay with that, if I need instant gratification I'll shop local (I try to support local small business as long as I'm not overpaying by more than 10% (sales tax is not a factor)).
There is no difference in the shipping methods between "Ships and Sold by Amazon" and "Sold by X and Fulfilled by Amazon", they both ship from an Amazon warehouse and ship using the same shipping methods. The difference is the seller; items that are shipped and sold by Amazon were sold to Amazon by manufacturers/suppliers via Vendor Central (with Amazon taking ownership of the items), while items fulfilled by Amazon are sold by third party sellers for Amazon to fulfill on their behalf.
However, it seems like I rarely see any FBA items that are eligible for same-day delivery within a few hours (we have this new "Rush" Shipping method where I live); most of these are only shipped and sold by Amazon, except if the item is exclusively sold by one seller.
Last edited by Pink Jazz; 10-20-2020 at 09:28 PM..
I have not purchased a single item online since before March, due to multiple bad past experiences. In no particular order:
1) drivers can lie or misrepresent delivery by marking something as delivered when it has not yet been delivered ( even if they customarily take a photo of something on your porch , a driver can simply skip that step entirely with no repercussions to himself/herself and thus no accountability).
2) items can be lost en route due to various logistical mishaps
3) warehouse workers can screw addresses up
4) items can be stolen from one’s porch
5) a roommate can steal or misplace your item
6) you can get sick of sitting around all day for an 8- hour delivery window and venture out, only to miss a delivery
Etc.
Google says failure rates are commonly in the range of 10 - 40%.
This is alarmingly high. Imagine if your car wouldn’t start 10-40% of the time. You would be absolutely furious. So why do so many people accept this rate for online shopping?
And why is there no greater push to actually solve the problems? Even amazon locker is limited and doesn’t accept some types of items.
If you want me to shop online, you either have to reduce the failure rate 10X or you need to give me continuous video surveillance of the item and fire workers, including executives, with a high rate of botched deliveries. Until that time, I will continue to shop in person ( with a mask and face shield until pandemic ends).
Some of you are probably going to say you shop online a lot and it almost never goes wrong. But unless we can determine exactly what factors make the risk lower for your mode of online shopping, that is not exactly helpful to those of us who have results more in line with the commonly quoted statistics. We don’t know whether it is because your address is less frequently mistyped, less frequently skipped by drivers, less prone to package theft, or what not. In other words, anecdotes are not data.
\ diatribe
1. I have experienced the not really delivered delivery. In every case, it either arrived within another day or two or I received a full refund from the merchant
It's irritating but hardly a reason to stop online shopping
2. Have never had anything get completely lost, and if I did, I buy from reputable sellers who would provide a refund
3. Never experienced this - I double and triple check when entering an order and at this point, it's rare for me to buy from a new place, so I know my correct address is already in their system and I've successfully received deliveries
4. Knock wood, I haven't had this happen, but it's probably the most real risk on your list. There are some ways to prevent, such as using Amazon Locker although that of course takes away the convenience of home delivery
5. And items you purchase in person are exempt from that? Of course not. Get better roommates
6. Most deliveries don't need to be signed for, so you don't really miss them. But like many people, I'm working from home these days so I'm "sitting" around for more than 8 hours every day anyway
All of this matches my experience too. But we've been warned by the OP not to use anecdotes, so I guess we have to wait for him to validate that up-to-40% rate. Seems dubious as a general figure, maybe more accurate under some very specific, rare circumstances??
I feel for the deliverypeople these past several months. They're working their asses off.
Every piece that is delayed is considered a failure in the USPS. When pre COVID staffing and truck resources couldn't match the Christmas level surges we had failure after failure and as a very large shipper I can see that spiking the numbers but have not tried any Google Fu, just my own eyes to confirm it. At the post pandemic half staff levels dues to the high risk and young parents sitting at home as the quickly passed COVID laws came into effect everything was failed.
Even in the districts that never cut overtime there was a 5 day backlog of parcels sitting on delivery station floors as there was no man hours left to work them. Non Amazon pieces, the " dead baby chicks and medications for our veterans" sat for days, thus "failed", before being rotated to
The biggest failure rate for me with online shopping is when the item I ordered doesn't fit. It's so hard to buy clothes online for me as a petite woman.
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“Ships from and sold by Amazon.com”
