Amazon Locker Delivery FAIL
I lead a pretty busy and full life and love when the tasks I do regularly can be more convenient for me. Hence my love of the Amazon Locker Delivery.
The Good: It’s so convenient, because the locker I use is right inside the same Whole Foods that I shop at often. I know when my delivery is coming and I can combine a shopping trip and picking up my delivery at the same time. I don’t have to worry about UPS leaving it on my doorstep and a porch pirate stealing it. I have a mailbox at a UPS store, where I’ve had my mail and packages delivered for over 10 years, but we’ve move and it’s not convenient for me to just run over and pick things up. My trips there are now once or twice a week.
The backstory of this one trip: For some reason, when I placed my recent Amazon order, it would not allow me to schedule a delivery at my usual Amazon Locker. However, because of my schedule and an appointment, I knew I would be near another Amazon Locker, in Wellington, this week. So, I placed my order and chose the Amazon Locker at the Whole Foods in Wellington, FL. My appointment was on Wednesday and the delivery was scheduled to come on Tuesday. Couldn’t be more perfect, right? At least I thought that’s how it would go.
Holy cow, I couldn’t have been more wrong! What happened was ridiculously absurd and I will never go out of my way to make things more convenient for myself like this again. I do hope however, that maybe Amazon will read this and re-evaluate their Amazon Locker Delivery and make some positive changes. I’m really good at solutions for problems, it’s what I do, and Amazon here you go, you may have this for FREE!
Tuesday came, no delivery because there wasn’t a locker available. I figure someone hadn’t picked up their package yet and was taking a locker that Amazon expected to be free. No big deal, I wasn’t going out that way until Wednesday afternoon anyway, so I assumed they would attempt delivery again the next day. I check the Amazon website Wednesday morning, it shows again that it’s out for delivery and I’m thinking “Yay! Everything is on Track”. I go to my dentist appointment and then head to Whole Foods after checking the app and it shows delivered to the Amazon Locker. Weird though, that it didn’t show the locker number and so on my way, I called my honey and asked him to forward the email to me with the barcode to open the locker.
He says there’s no email. We’re very confused. I pull into Whole Foods and we both look, me via the app and he at his desk, looking on the website. No locker info, but it says delivered to Amazon Locker, Whole Foods, Wellington.
Now, he heads to the UPS website, where it shows “available for pickup in Riveria Beach”. What?? It’s getting late, rush hour is upon us, I’m at least an hour from Riveria Beach and say “screw it, I’ll go get it tomorrow,” and I head home. When I get in, I also look at both the amazon website and the UPS website. Amazon says it was delivered to the Amazon Locker, but no email from them with the locker information and I cannot find anywhere on their website to contact them with a delivery issue. There’s an #AmazonFail. Next, looking further, at the detailed view, still on the Amazon website, it says that is is available for pickup in Riveria Beach. So I’m thinking WTF? On one page is says the Amazon Locker and the next page it says Riveria Beach.
This is crazy! Whenever I order something, it’s delivered to the locker and we receive an email with the locker information and a barcode to scan to open the locker. It shouldn’t be this difficult. At this point, we are 2 days late in delivery and on this day, I’ve got an hour of travel and about 40 miles of driving tracking down this package.
Thursday morning, I head to Riveria Beach, tried calling the UPS main number and got tired of sitting on hold, so I got in the car and put them on speaker. I got disconnected once, called back and was on hold for 17 minutes. Total on-hold time was 28 minutes. I pulled into the UPS Customer service center, head inside, where I’m met by a really nice men who feels me. I show him the delivery info per Amazon. He takes the tracking number and disappears in the back of the warehouse for a few minutes and returns with a couple of sheets of paper. He tells me my package is in Wellington, but not in the UPS locker and not even at Whole Foods. It’s at a UPS Store about 10 minutes further west! That’s even further away from my home. I’m lucky in that my time is mostly my own, I create my own schedule. And this day, I was lucky that my client rescheduled our session and I had the time to run all over Palm Beach County to track down my package. I am now 1 hour and 8minutes into this, as I get back in my car and head back out to Wellington.
It’s a long drive, as I head to i95 and drive South, then pretty far West to Wellington. I get to the UPS Store and they can’t find the package. I explain repeatedly what happened, show them the printout that the guy from the UPS Customer Center gave me and they can’t find anything with my name. The store is loaded with boxes in every corner (fire hazard?) waiting for people to come and pick them up. They keep looking at these small boxes and I keep saying “No, too small, there’s a case of Muscle Milk” and I swear I said that a dozen times. I tell them what it might look like because of what’s in it and the shipper is Amazon. We’re into 10 minutes of them looking around now, because there are so many boxes. Finally! They don’t have too many packages with the Amazon tape and finally they find one that says Amazon Locker — Kitty. WTH is Kitty? Who is Kitty? They have no clue and I begin to wonder if it is because there’s catnip in there? Regardless, finally, I have my package. I am now 2 days into this and have spent nearly 3 hours and driven countless unnecessary miles to track this down. I know the odds are slim, but I ask the young lady, who I made note of her name at the time, but it now escapes me “Who makes the decision of where to send packages, when they can’t be delivered”. They gave me the standard answer that I heard another person give repeatedly while I was awaiting “We have no control over the drivers, we just work at this store.” I asked “Who makes the decision of where to send packages?” She said they were an access point and so packages are brought there and she had no idea how that decision was made.
Not that she would care, but I went on to explain how I ordered this to be delivered so that it would be convenient for me to pick up and I told her why and the subsequent disaster that evolved. I also told her that I was curious as to who decided to send my package to this location, which seems so inefficient because it is out of the way. There is a UPS store much closer to Whole Foods and in fact, I already get deliveries there on a regular basis. However, it was not convenient for me to go there, the Whole Foods would have been much easier. Had I been able to foresee that I’d be running all over Palm Beach County, I would have just had the package delivered to the UPS Store that I visit about twice a week.
All together, I traveled about 80 miles and between driving and waiting around, spent about 4 hours to get the package. That’s ridiculous and Amazon should find it unacceptable.
Here’s what should have happened:
When I order something from Amazon and schedule a locker pick up, I receive an email upon delivery with the locker information. The email also says I must pick up my item by a specific date. Now, I’m forced to wonder, who monitors that? Of course, Amazon is notified when I open the locker, so they now know it can be used, but who monitors when a package has exceeded the allotted time? Let’s say it’s sitting there 4, 5 or 6 days, what happens? Does an Amazon/Whole Foods staff member open the door and remove the package? If they do, then what? Do they hold it in the back of the store? Do they send it to the UPS store to be held there? Do they ship it back to Amazon? I highly doubt any of that happens. An email should be sent to the customer who is hogging the locker and remind them of their package and notify them that they have 3 days or something like that before their package is returned to Amazon and processed as a return.
If a customer has scheduled a delivery to an Amazon Locker and the driver arrives only to find that there are no available lockers, an email should be automatically generated to the customer notifying them that they have an option of changing the delivery address, holding it for pick-up, or attempting to deliver a 2nd time. They should be told that their package will be held for 3 days while they wait to hear what to do.
I get that this is not an ideal situation, but why should I have to spend nearly 4 hours and drive nearly 80 miles in order to track down a package which I did everything right to have delivered to me. It’s not fair to the customer who does everything right, to have to suffer because someone else didn’t.
What do you think Amazon? Can you do this a little better? Time to re-evaluate your delivery process? This will not stop me from using the Amazon Locker delivery again, I will continue to use it. However, I will never attempt to schedule a delivery someplace out of my normal travel area, just because I’m going to be in that area. That was a total and complete #AmazonFail
