I’m going to rant now. The subject of my rant is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly trivial. But I’m annoyed, and I feel like I’m getting flu, so I need to whine about something…
Last year, we ordered a load of Xmas presents from Amazon. I placed the order on 11 December, leaving plenty of leeway because the presents, once unpacked and lovingly (well, amateurishly) giftwrapped, would then be Parcelforced down to a number of family members, who, considerately enough, were spending Christmas in close proximity to each other.
After a week or so, it seemed one particular item was holding up the rest of the order. We cancelled this item, thinking that the whole thing would work like a blocked drain, *whooshing* smoothly through once the blockage was cleared. It didn’t. The rest of the order still didn’t come. We emailed Amazon’s hopeless customer support centre, receiving nothing but cheerfully vague platitudes in return. We *had* to send the stuff off on the 23rd at the latest, so when none of it had arrived on the 22nd, we rushed round Croydon, buying duplicates or near-equivalents, and emailed Amazon, requesting that they cancel the entire order. It was too late to do so, and the stuff finally came on Christmas Eve; we did get a full refund, but the overriding feeling was that we were dealing with a company which simply could not cope with periods of high demand.
So, this year…
Having decided the lifelong Amazon boycott would hurt us a lot more than it’d hurt them, we took the plunge again. Placing the order at roughly the same time (the 13th) we craftily only bought items marked as “usually despatched within 24 hours”. This whole story is, I’m sure, beginning to take on a pallor of inevitability, so let’s cut to the chase…
After around 140 hours (including one Sunday, I’ll grant them that) only three items have arrived out of a total of 15. The bulk of the order was apparently despatched yesterday, but who knows what Parcelforce service they’re using? Have a look at this screenshot…
None of the delivery estimates are correct. The bottom three items arrived on the 17th. The large group at the top hasn’t arrived, despite Amazon’s noble aim to deliver it two days before they actually despatch it!
I almost feel guilty about making such a big thing out of this. It’s just a few bits of consumer tat. No children have been murdered, no countries are descending into bloody chaos, it’s just an inconvenience. However, Amazon are at the forefront of this country’s internet shopping explosion, and despite what you might read in the Sunday supplements, internet shopping in this country is still an unpredictable, limited and occasionally utterly incompetent mess. Back in the autumn I bought a processor upgrade for my G4 Mac from Other World Computing of Woodstock, Illinois. I clicked “submit” on their website on a Wednesday evening, and the item arrived on Friday morning. Are you reading this, Amazon?