Perplexing Amazon logistics
I got a call from the mailroom this morning, which generally happens when they have a big package waiting for you, and they would rather not deliver it to your desk. This time, however, they had a whole cart filled with boxes in my name. Several days ago we bought a set of 8 bath towels (Martex Egyptian Bath Towel), which came with a corresponding hand towel, so we got a total of 8 bath towels and 8 hand towels, which qualified for free shipping with larger than $25 buy from Amazon.
If you read any article on Amazon, it generally praises the company logistics, and the ability to pack and ship at the lowest rate possible. One would expect this package of 8 bath towels + 8 hand towels to come in a single bundle shipped via something cheap, like USPS. The order status, however, looked different:
- Each towel was shipped in a separate box
- Hand towels were shipped in the boxes that could fit two Encyclopedias in it
- Bath towels were shipped in the boxes that could fit a foosball or air hockey table in them
- Some of the boxes were shipped via Airborne Express
- Other boxes were shipped via UPS Ground
Would certainly strike me as the most inefficient way to ship a set of towels, with all the air postage fees and free shipping delivered to the customer, I’d be surprised if Amazon’s margins on this order were positive.
July 14th, 2006 at 1:10 pm #Jeremy Zawodny
Please tell me you took pictures of this epic shipment!
July 14th, 2006 at 2:19 pm #Sergey Chernyshev
It’s a great story! My faith in Amazon is fading away
Please post some photos!
July 15th, 2006 at 11:06 am #Alex
Ah, uinfortunately no, the helpful folk at mailroom F were too eager to get rid of entire cart consisting of nothing but my boxes.
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:26 pm #A gift basket from Amazon - alexmoskalyukblog
[...] Whether it’s the frequency of shopping or the amount of boxes received, but it looks like I got on Amazon’s good site enough to cause someone in the organization called Jeff Bezos to send a large gift basket to my home address. Like in the good old days, when the local grocer would send the best customers some gifts, Amazon introduced its Grocery store by sending a sample selection of the products being sold online. They even sent a flashlight with batteries included. [...]