Amazon and Weaponised Incompetence
The Undelivered Package
I had a day off yesterday.
It was perfectly timed to coincide with the delivery of 2 packages.
The first package arrived before 9am, and I picked it up at 9:30am. Sweet. No dramas at all.
The package contained a small booklet / zibe called “Stolen Sharpie Revolution”. It’s about how make your own Zines and small underground books.
The second package wasn’t delivered!
Why? Because the Amazon delivery driver thought the address was undeliverable and decided to hold the package until they could try again.
Hopefully today, but I am not holding my breath and frustratingly I am working today and the next few days which makes it difficult to sort out.
Two Addresses, Same Location
It’s taken me a while to process what happened, and I will explain as simply as I can.
The Post Office has PO Boxes for regular customers and Suites for business owners. It becomes a virtual business mailing address for a small extra annual fee.
The physical location is the same but the names are slightly different.
A PO Box address looks like this:
Name
PO Box 1234
Suburb State Postcode
Country
A Suite address looks like this:
Name
Suite 1234
Shop 12, 34 - 123 Shop Street. (Post Office’s address)
Suburb State Postcode
Country
Update:
The package was updated to “Out For Delivery” yesterday at 6pm, meaning it was scheduled for delivery today.
Today at 6pm, 24 hours later, there’s no update.
Tomorrow is Good Friday, a public holiday, meaning that I will now have to wait until after Easter (next Tuesday) making it a week later than expected.
Even then there’s no guarantee it will arrive on Tuesday.
I’m not particularly impressed.
I don’t like that it’s very difficult to resolve this issue because Amazon wants to cut costs as much as possible.
This means outsourcing deliveries to the cheapest people possible and making the complaints department really difficult to find let alone deal with.
Please don’t get me wrong, good people are often forced to “stick to the instructions” rather than using common sense.
In fact, I asked someone at the Post Office whether or not the addresses made a difference and they said no.
They said “It should have been common sense…”
She must have read the look on my face, and changed tact.
“…which no longer exists…”.
I nodded in approval.
It was the confirmation I needed.
Update:
At 6:30pm, the package was returned the carrier facility.
What the actual f*ck?! The Post Office closes at 5pm.
So I contact Amazon Customer Service again, and they confirm that I had supplied them the PO Box alternative address. They also said that there were “unforeseen circumstances” as to why they couldn’t deliver my package today.
More like weaponised incompetence.
This is the Post Office as seen from outside the shopping centre.
Salisbury Post Shop at Parabanks Shopping CentreIt’s not easy to miss.
The customer service agent offered me $10 credit for my inconvenience and said that they would attempt to deliver the package to the Post Office on Saturday.
The Post Office is only open until 12:30pm on Saturday, so I hope they get there early.
I want to clarify that I have no animosity to the delivery driver. Mistakes happen, and I will endeavour to make sure this never happens again.
The morals of this story is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! and keep it simple.
I’ll update you on Saturday.
Thank you for reading this.
Happy Easter!
Shaidon
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