Delivery Disappointment: Why Are Amazon Deliveries Seeming To Take Longer Than Usual?
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Do the delivery drivers for Amazon, UPS, and the Postal Service know you and your kids by name?
So much arrives on our doorstep these days, but it's not arriving as quickly as it was pre-pandemic.
Amazon in particular has been catching a lot of heat from its Prime customers who want to know why their deliveries aren't coming in two days as they expect.
There are two things in play here.
First, the delivery services are dealing with a tsunami of online buying and shipping since the pandemic lockdown started and it continues to grow.
Second, Consumer Advocate Mary Bach says there is our impatience.
"We are a microwave-driven society, in the sense that we want everything just done very, very quickly," she explains. "Depending on where it comes from and how it's going to travel to get to us. It may take time, and we actually need to be flexible."
But Prime members will tell you they paid for speedy delivery in their membership costs.
Bach says, "We have to ask, what two days? Is it from two days from the time you punch send? Or is it two days from the amount of time when they actually process, your order, and it goes into their shipping system?"
Amazon says the two days after they ship, not when you order, and tells KDKA: "We are committed to providing fast, free shipping all year. There are certain times where we need to balance our fulfillment network capacity with our promise to customers."
Bach points out, "They give you the ability to track your package are your merchandise, and so you need to follow that, knowing again when it might have been actually processed and then shipped."
Regardless of who is making the delivery if it doesn't arrive in a couple of days from the shipping date Bach says, "and then try to hold them accountable after that. But it's a modern-day and age, and we are all learning, and we all need to be flexible, let's be reasonable in the circumstances."
She says Amazon isn't alone in feeling the pressure of unprecedented ordering.
"Many of us have been quite discouraged by the United States Postal Service, and how long it's actually taking some merchandise to arrive, even when you've paid for priority shipment or some type of their specialized service," she says. "We just have to complain, appropriately, after the fact, but I really don't know that there's too much that we can do about some of these situations when they claim that they are absolutely overwhelmed."
WATCH: What If Two-Day Shipping Takes Longer?
Amazon says if there is a specified delivery date and they miss it they "may" refund your shipping fee.
But if you are a prime member and it's just part of the membership how they do a refund isn't clear.
"That's one of those situations where it sounds good, and they are trying to lure you in by thinking that you will be given some type of refund, but are they going to prorate some pennies out of that membership," Bach says. "I personally don't think so."
Amazon didn't respond to our questions about how they handle refunds. But a staff member of KDKA who was upset by his late delivery pursued it with Amazon and after a lengthy discussion, he got a five-dollar credit on his next purchase.
The other delivery services also offer money-back guarantees when packages don't arrive when promised but Bach says you have to keep good records and hope for the best.
But Bach says people complaining is the exception.
"I think most people just write it off," she says. "Sometimes it's entirely too much trouble to try to fight with some of these large companies, or the US government in terms of the US Postal Service to try to get a refund, even though they have guaranteed that a package will be delivered at a certain time or a certain day."
