THIS IS WHY AMAZON IS BAD FOR CONSUMERS
I have had Amazon prime for sometime now. I order things every week and enjoy kindle books and Amazon video streaming services. However, for some time I have felt that Amazon is ultimately bad for consumers. Every week we see the shrinking footprint of book and mortar stores. Now Amazon is increasingly taking over the essential brick and mortar establishments that remain — for example Whole Foods.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to go to stores and see items we wish to purchase. Yes, most physical stores remain in some form, but the ones that remain have become increasingly specialized in the inventory they can carry. Many times I’ve wanted to purchase items which are not carried in physical stores — items that would have easily been available at such stores a decade ago.
WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT AMAZON
Obviously Amazon presents efficiencies for the modern world. I can buy virtually everything I need on Amazon. I generally don’t have to worry about size, color or price, and items are nearly always in inventory. Since Amazon works with numerous vendors, there is also some small (but very small) variations in pricing. One would think that these efficiencies would create the idea shopping experience for the consumer.
WHAT IS BAD ABOUT AMAZON
It is not my intent to go on a rant about Amazon except insofar as it’s delivery practices, so I will leave for another day any rant about the death of brick and mortar establishments and the loss of the employment opportunities those stores formerly provided for communities. The infrastructure of Amazon is build on efficiencies such that there has been a considerable loss of retail jobs in America.
My primary point today is about service to consumers. While Amazon offers more and more opportunities for fast delivery, the reality is that with each month the quality of the delivery service degrades considerably. Over the past year I have experienced far more delays in deliveries than I have successes. For months the track package feature told me that an item was delivered, despite the fact that I was home during the entire time and never received packages. Amazon was responses to the complaints about the delivery problems and cancelled orders or sent replacements, but the original items often appeared the next day. This pattern suggests to me that they use independent contractors for same day delivery service. By using these gig employment practices, instead of properly hiring people, Amazon loses the ability to control quality of the service, to the detriment of the consumer.
Over the past three weeks or so, increasingly I have picked same day delivery only to get a message after I placed the order that delivery will be delayed not one, but multiple days. My most recent experience of this was yesterday when I ordered two items early in the morning for same day delivery. No deliveries were made yesterday. When I woke this morning I checked outside and found no deliveries. When I went on the Amazon website and tracked delivery it now says that delivery “should” be received by August 29- three day after the promised delivery date. There was an additional message that if delivery not received by the 30th I should contact Amazon.
These problems have occurred during the same time that Amazon increasingly touts faster pick up and delivery services.
Before Amazon, I could have gone out to a store and picked up the items myself that same day. While I can obviously still do that in most cases, because of Amazon, increasingly stores either do not exist or do not carry the range of inventory that they once carried. Amazon effectively diminished competition and then degraded the quality of it’s service to the consumer.
Before Amazon, I could have spoken to a sales person or manager to register my complaint. Those people were not always responsive, but for the most part they understood that success of their business was tied to customer loyalty. Stores tried to earn that loyalty by being responsive to customer needs. Amazon has little incentive to do that. They do not publish phone number and the chat person you get never has to see you walk in the store again. It creates a very different dynamic.
A couple of weeks ago I placed an order that said I would receive the items the same day. After I completed the order, the app indicated that I would receive the items three and four days later. I used the chat feature and the person on the other end could only move delivery up two and three days. There was no explanation for why the order said same day but changed the date after I finalized the transaction. Nor was there any attempt to do anything for me, the customer, to make up for the inconvenience, bordering on deceptive practice.
This has now happened a few times. By the way, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Theoretically it should be easy for me to receive items as promised in my area. Imagine the potential problems for rural customers. As a consumer, there is no manager who will be responsive. All I can do is post a rant about my frustrations. In most instances, there are either few options for finding the items because of Amazon’s success in eliminating or severely limiting the options at brick and mortar establishments. This has been the tradeoff for the consumer in allowing a virtual monopoly to take hold of our purchasing options.
