Delivery day surprises from Amazon US

[mtbc]

Having paid for Amazon Prime, in ordering from Amazon UK I would be offered delivery options, select when I would like the goods to arrive, then they would come on that day. Walmart in the US is rather different: no choice of delivery day, the goods arrive over an odd spread of days, but at least they make expectations clear before one finalizes the order.

Amazon US is the worst of both worlds, even making the Amazon Day feature a cruel joke: it offers me a choice of days then does the Walmart thing of delivering over a spread of days instead, some items arriving earlier, some later. For the latest item I ordered, Amazon offered this Friday, which I selected, then after I had submitted the order it stated that the item would arrive on Saturday. It didn't know that a minute beforehand? This has been triply annoying while my life is split between two cities and I work full-time and items simply get left on my front porch in full view of the street. It also seems odd to me that no delivery drivers even ring the doorbell when leaving a package.

I am fine with logistics in the US being different enough that nominated day delivery is too difficult but I find it strange that Amazon US is so specific pre-order before promptly switching to throwing dice, it is as if they are trying to disappoint the customer.

Comments

[shadowkat]

The sad thing is? They are actually more reliable than everyone else. You know you'll get an Amazon delivery, and if you don't - they will refund it. And they grant you the option of picking it up at lockers. And they have their own delivery trucks now.

UPS is completely unreliable - they will leave it where ever they please, and not follow up. Amazon at least does follow up.

USPS is not much better than UPS, except slow.

FedEx is horrible no matter what. I've had to work hard to get packages from them. I have online tracking and I put in place - leave at front door or lobby. Now that I'm working at home all the time - it's actually easier.

I've not tried Walmart, but I hate Walmart (I won't bore you with why. I just do. And they aren't useful in NYC anyhow...don't really exist.)

[mtbc]

While Walmart isn't among my most-hated, admittedly, while I'm trying to get the new house and new job sorted, I'm optimizing hard for convenience, and Walmart's site is clean and useful and they also offer pickup. I'd have used Home Depot more were their site not so badly dragged down by slow JavaScript. What's annoying is that, if I want a wide range of goods and reasonable prices then the options aren't great though, when I do have a more settled life and more time, I do hope to find more palatable options than Amazon and Walmart.

[shadowkat]

Right now, we're all kind of limited. Only Amazon will deliver to me - Walmart won't. (I tried back in the spring and gave up. They don't deliver in the city or my area.)

It has gotten better. Macy's does. And I think Target might now.

My sympathies - moving and changing jobs during a pandemic cannot be easy.