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0 pointsmindslight10y ago0 comments

UPS/Fedex/USPS have figured out how to reliably enter apartment buildings on their own (USPS uses a key, I presume UPS/Fedex use some numeric code convention). Amazon randos call you and make it your problem, as if they have never delivered a no-signature package before.

Nearly every time I've used Amazon, they've surprised me with something crappy and I'm left wondering how they're so popular. Recently, they displayed a "guaranteed delivery by this day if you order within the next 45 seconds" on the checkout confirmation. I had been paying attention to the cutoff time and the time had just previously said 40 minutes. All the digging I did supported the conclusion that both times were a fictional dark pattern to drive order completion.

Never mind the clingy stalker follow up spam when you price check an item outside of incognito mode.

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Obi_Juan_Kenobi10y ago

> they've surprised me with something crappy

What are they surprising you with? I've done loads of orders with Amazon and it's basically always what I ordered. Once I got some cheap knockoffs, but was able to easily return it. That's out of a few hundred orders.

As for the timeout stuff, they should definitely stop calling it a guarantee. Most of the time it's correct, and fairly often I'll get a package much quicker than it indicates, but I'd say about 10-15% of packages are later than the 2-day guarantee.

mindslightOP10y ago

The surprise is about their behavior, not about items received. In the situation I described, the discrepancy between the two times caused me to investigate further. 12 hours later, the same delivery schedule was still available. In other words, they deliberately misstated cutoff times to create a sense of urgency and discourage shopping around or having second thoughts before hitting submit. WTF?

In another instance - they canceled one item from an order, sent no notification of such, and completely erased that item from the order history. I was left scratching my head, until I reviewed emails to see if I really had ordered that item. Again, WTF?

I'm sure they're alright if you're constantly ordering things from Prime or whatever because there are more good instances to outweigh the weirdness, combined with their policy of crediting people to keep them happy and avoid breaking the illusion.

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