Caporegime
- Joined
- 21 Jun 2006
- Posts
- 38,367
As I have said it is a crap business model. OK for smallish scale but when a significant criminal element work out the angles some people are going to be ripped off. Either amazon control all the dispatch and delIvery to your door ie no amazon warehouse, no third party couriers or the system will continue but just get worse for the customer. With luck it will eventually implode.
That doesn't work either.
So if I order an item I need to wait 3 weeks for it to be delivered from the manufacturer?
Amazon makes billions they will have security and insurance in place or maybe they don't care.
What I don't like already about Amazon is they sell stuff they clearly don't have and don't even have in back order.
I ordered a £300 car seat which tested highly in the German crash tests. It said delivery within 4-8 weeks. I ordered it 4-5 months in advance of when I needed it. After 8 weeks it was coming up to the final deadline and I called Amazon the day before and their staff confirmed I would be getting it tomorrow as that's what their system says. Roll on the day and I get an email saying delivery due in 4-6 weeks. So I call and they say they will escalate to the product team to see when they will be getting stock in.
I said I can see you have the same seat in a different colour albeit was now more expensive. Can you send me that instead for the same price and no can do.
I managed to order accessories to go with that specific car seat which wouldn't work with any other so I needed that specific model otherwise I'd wasted £50 on a newborn insert and a protector, etc.
I managed to track down an alternate website which had stock so I kept calling Amazon to escalate to their stock team to see when they would be getting more and only by doing this did they actually get more in and 2 weeks later it arrived. Otherwise I was going to order from elsewhere and return the Amazon if I couldn't cancel before it arrived.
They shouldn't be selling something if they have no stock and haven't placed an order with the manufacturer with a guaranteed delivery date. They hope enough people order before placing a new order with the manufacturer. Which isn't right especially if it's an essential purchase.
If John Lewis don't have stock you have to set up an email alert. Amazon need to revert to that instead of letting me place an order and taking the money with no stock and none on the way.
So by removing their warehouses would make their whole system worse and people would shop elsewhere. The warehouses guarantee next day delivery and ensure they have enough stock to support this model.