O package, where art thou?

There is indeed a first time for everything.

Like most of you, I’ve been shopping with Amazon for the longest time. I’m old enough to remember when Amazon did not charge sales tax in California. Anyways, throughout this long relationship, the couriers contracted by Amazon have not once lost a package of mine. (Or stolen before I got to it, I guess.) Sadly, that streak ended this past Monday.

I got the standard notification email saying the package was delivered. However, it was nowhere to be found - and I was out the front door almost immediately. I live in a nice neighborhood, so package thievery doesn’t really occur (knock on wood). Couriers typically take a picture to confirm the delivery, but for this instance there was no picture! The only explanation is… well, bottom line is the package is missing.

In such situations, Amazon asks customers to check with neighbors to see if the package got delivered to them by mistake. Hope you’re on friendly terms with your next doors! If that returns unfruitful, the customer is then to wait 48 hours. Because apparently. couriers sometimes will mark a package as delivered, but will actually make the delivery on a different day (USPS has knack for this, according to Reddit). Only after 48 hours should the customer contact Amazon support.

If the courier is third-party (UPS, Fed-ex, DHL, etc), customers can and should contact them about the missing package that was marked delivered. In my case, the courier was Amazon (affiliate, probably), so nothing to do but wait the two days.

To Amazon’s credit, I was able to get a refund after a quick word with support chat. I was surprised at how easy it was, given it was about $160 worth of stuff. The fact that I’ve not once before this contested a missing package probably helped to grease things. I’m obviously not trying to scam Amazon here.

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Legends.

All I got's a moped

I've noticed lately that a lot of the DoorDash/Grubhub food delivery drivers are on mopeds. Instead of, you know, automobiles. It makes sense: in a highly competitive game of being stuck in San Francisco traffic, the moped (and its motorcycle cousin) is hugely advantageous. The ability to weave in and out between stuck cars is crucial in ensuring that KFC order gets to the customer with reasonable temperature left over. No one likes cold fried chicken - a congealed mass of molasses.

There's advantage in parking, too. As in, there isn't a need to park a moped. Not that delivery drivers in cars obey the parking rules anyways. The speed demand means they double-park, and simply play the lottery of "hope you don't run into a meter maid." (Or an angry driver stuck behind.) I can confirm this to be the case, because my brother for a time did food delivery as a somewhat full-time job. (Surely he does not miss hustling in traffic all day for a measly $100 payout.) With a moped or motorcycle, the riders park them on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant.

What makes the proliferation of moped-as-delivery vehicles interesting is that in Asia, this has been the modus operandi for a very long time. You go to any major city in Asia, and mopeds are absolutely everywhere, ferrying all sorts of things. It's driven by necessity, of course: it's far cheaper to buy and own a two-wheeler compared to a whole car. Americans don't realize how, relatively to the rest of the world, car prices here are cheap and attainable. (Gas prices, too, in the non-Saudi Arabian category.)

Will mopeds become as the gig commerce vehicle of choice here in San Francisco - a la Asian cities? I think it depends how inflation-proof the gig economy is. Buying food - much less having someone deliver it to you - has become prohibitively expensive. If the economy contracts due to high interest rates, surely people will be way less inclined to order on DoorDash.

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This is the sound of settling.

Signature required

I recently (finally) pressed purchase on the Fujifilm XT-5 camera. Bought it on Amazon, of course, to get that sweet 5% cash back. (Mind you that is only if you are an Amazon Prime member, along with using the Chase Amazon Prime card.) For such a hefty purchase in terms of value, it’s good to see that a signature is required to accept delivery. No need to fear the delivery person dropping it off nonchalantly in the front yard, exposing thousands of dollars worth of camera gear to potential thieves. That would not be ideal.

Similarly, I helped a friend buy a new camera of his own (A Sony A7 Mark IV) on Amazon. (He did not have Amazon Prime.) Receiving that package also called for an adult signature. No big deal; there’s people home most of the time. However, the Amazon-branded delivery person did not adhere to the requirements! He merely dropped off the camera at the front door as if it were a package of toothpaste. No knock, no door bell ring, no signature attained. That’s not very nice.

I would have been rightly pissed if not for that fact my housemate was home and intercepted the package right when it was dropped off. I’ve higher expectations for an Amazon-branded delivery person to actually follow the instructions. Conversely, the Fujifilm XT-5 was delivered by UPS, and they made sure to get a signature before delivery. I know this, because nobody was home to receive it at the time, so I had to re-route the package to a local pickup spot. By the way, that costs $7.99 now at ups.com. That’s extorting pure profit just because they can, if you ask me.

This reminds me of the time I bought my (many thousands of dollar) Yamaha piano. That was also unceremoniously dropped off with nary a signature required. Granted, if you have the strength to steal a 70 pound box of unwieldy length, carry it through a front garden and over a fence, then I think you have the right to keep it. Thankfully that did not happen, and someone was immediately home at that time as well.

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Art Decoration.

People think shipping should be free

Yesterday my boss complained to me about another person complaining to her about the shipping costs on this big purchase the department is making. The person is stunned to find the cost to ship a container's worth of furniture from Wisconsin to San Francisco - including setup - couldn't and shouldn't possibly be $3,000 dollars. 

What did she expect? Free?

I remarked to my boss that Amazon Prime and its free shipping (within two days, no less) have completely ruined people's expectations of what delivery should cost. Just because you can get laundry detergent shipped for free doesn't mean goods of a certain size (say, furniture) can costs equally nothing for UPS to get it to your home. 

I'm paying 10 grand for the television: can't you throw in delivery for free?

Amazon Prime sets a bad precedent in other marketplaces as well. Anybody that have tried selling items secondhand (or even firsthand) knows that offering free shipping is huge incentive to entice customers to buy. 

So they eat the cost. 

I'm starting to think one of the reasons wages have been stagnant is because the poor and lower middle class simply refuse to pay for quality work. They want things done as quickly and cheaply as possible. The rich understands the adage 'you get what you pay for', and have the monetary means to do so. Everyone knows 'Made in U.S.A.' denotes supreme quality but that tool set made in China is half the cost so let's go with that one. 

I guess I'm one of those people because man do I love Amazon Prime. 

Percipitations in May.