The Increasingly Random Nature of Amazon Prime Deliveries

So while Amazon’s profitability and share price are still hovering at an all time high, and the success of Echo continues to grow - some of their service elements seem to be on the slide. I have reported various issues in the past, particularly with delivery, and particularly with the ’Amazon Logistics’ service - which seems to be the least reliable of the courier services Amazon uses - especially when compared to the always excellent DPD.

As a Prime member - the expectation is that Amazon Inventory marked as ’Prime’ should really be delivered the next day - at least more often that not. Yet throughout this particular year - that once constant seems to be somewhat lacking. I am increasingly seeing 2 or 3-day delivery deadlines or more (and I don’t include Black Friday or Christmas deliveries - they will obviously be extended), even more weirdly, I am frequently witnessing changes to the delivery deadlines already promised. On a number of occasions this year, the delivery deadlines have shifted several times - ending up almost a week delayed. Even more bizarrely a couple of shipments marked ’on the way’ were then mysteriously delayed a few days for some unknown random reasons (unreliability with Amazon Logistics I assume). Normally, when you used to see an ’on the way’ message - it meant that the package would be delivered the very next day, but that seems far from the norm now.

I’ve read on several Internet messageboards too that many disgruntled customers have decided to cancel their Prime subscriptions as they feel they are no longer getting suitable levels of service. It makes me wonder what has happened with the Amazon Fresh service which they cut back on not too long ago - I am guessing there were issues with delivery there too. Amazon is evidently still trying to cut costs in its operation where it can - yet messing around with its most vital service cannot be a good policy - most everything it does on a retail basis - relies on that final delivery component - without that, Amazon just would not work.

Of the various streaming services - I’m not sure Amazon is really fully up there with Netflix and NowTV with its full-range Video offering yet. I prefer Spotify and Tidal for music streaming - and I’ve not yet bought into the ’snooping technology’ that is Amazon Echo. I believe Amazon has plenty info on me already and does not really need to snoop for further details. The major reason I am on Amazon Prime is really for the high level service guarantee - and if they are failing on one of the most critical components - then the question increasingly is should I really be paying for Prime?