Amazon not consistently delivering the goods!

Amazon Logistics delivers mixed blessings, with many parts of the service not up to the standards of principal former delivery agent DPD. We have the advantage of Sunday deliveries now which is a great innovation, yet delivery times and reliability seem somewhat haphazard.

4 times this year I have been told that my package is ’out for delivery today’ only to get notice at the end of play that there were some unforeseen issues, and the package does not appear until the following day. I have been an Amazon Prime Member for a number of years, and have noted that both despatch and delivery times are not up to the levels they were when the service was first introduced. That is to say more packages are being sent out a day later as well as arriving a day later still.

In terms of UK courier services, in my opinion there are none better than DPD. You get a text message detailing likely one hour delivery slot on the day, with driver name included; e.g. ’Junior will be delivering your package at 12:30 - 13:30’ - not dissimilar to Ocado. You also get SMS / Text reply options - reply with 1 for following day delivery and 2 for the day after that - could not be simpler or more self-explanatory. And reliability here is exceptional.

For someone who works from home, it is usually a relief to have the packages arrive before noon or 13:00 - which was usually the case with DPD. With Amazon Logistics, the package appears quite randomly, very occasionally morning, but usually mid-to-late afternoon and even as late as 20:30 in the evening.

I really don’t understand why Amazon cannot deliver the same quality of service DPD used to do on their behalf. Having a delivery time-frame of any time in the day up to 20:30 is not really acceptable in this current age - surely they can pin it down a little more than that - so that you know when you can safely pop out of your house to run some quick errands. And they desperately need to sort out their reliability issues - delivery is one of the most critical components of ecommerce.

All delivery services need to take a leaf out of DPD’s book - The Which? Organisation agrees with me, and has named DPD as the UK’s ’Best Delivery Firm’. All these delivery companies use connected terminals - so it should be relatively easy to have notices and alerts go out to customers via SMS. All we’re asking for is some slight indication here - at the very least Morning, Afternoon or Evening! With modern logistics technology, including tracking and route-planning systems, there is no reason why a courier service cannot predict a likely delivery slot with some degree of accuracy - and despatch further alerts if the system notices delays in the schedule; you should not need to wait until after supper to find out that today’s delivery - which you waited all day for - has been delayed further ...