Amazon’s holiday success and UPS’ holiday fail(gigaom.com)
gigaom.com
Amazon’s holiday success and UPS’ holiday fail
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/26/amazons-holiday-success-and-ups-holiday-fail-highlight-the-internet-economys-problems/
22 comments
No amount of data will allow perfect predictions. And the physical world doesn't scale like AWS.
UPS oversubscribed their transport network, that's all. At some point, they should've stopped accepting packages for Dec 24th delivery, just like Amazon halted accepting new Prime members to maintain service for existing members.
UPS oversubscribed their transport network, that's all. At some point, they should've stopped accepting packages for Dec 24th delivery, just like Amazon halted accepting new Prime members to maintain service for existing members.
The virtual world doesn't always scale for that matter either. Try getting a new, in demand, instance type days or even weeks after release, you'll be waiting in line for access to that virtual instance just as you would for a new iPhone on release day.
Sort of. You're banging the hell out of my JSON API with gets? I'll just write it out into S3 and serve from various S3 endpoints around the globe (or even Cloudfront/Cloudflare, depending on how stale the data is permitted to get). I need instances? I can get them from AWS, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, etc.
There is only so much road, aircraft, and people willing to work Christmas Eve/Day out there. The physical world is inherently inelastic.
There is only so much road, aircraft, and people willing to work Christmas Eve/Day out there. The physical world is inherently inelastic.
Wow, WTF.
UPS missed a few packages in an insanely demanding crunch time, and you feel the need to pen an accusatory piece illustrating them as a complete failure?
I ordered all of my Christmas shopping the Saturday evening before Christmas, I got all but one thing, and I am, in fact, quite content with Amazon + UPS's performance.
UPS missed a few packages in an insanely demanding crunch time, and you feel the need to pen an accusatory piece illustrating them as a complete failure?
I ordered all of my Christmas shopping the Saturday evening before Christmas, I got all but one thing, and I am, in fact, quite content with Amazon + UPS's performance.
I much more sympathize with UPS workers who got Christmas day off than some shmuck who ordered his package late. Better plan next year.
There is a saying I like 'failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine'.
[Edited the saying, as I remembered it clearer)
There is a saying I like 'failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine'.
[Edited the saying, as I remembered it clearer)
> "There are some obvious reasons for this, such as UPS’ decision to let its workers take Christmas day off."
Good for them. I respect that a lot more than them being able to deliver every single package on Christmas Eve.
Good for them. I respect that a lot more than them being able to deliver every single package on Christmas Eve.
My monitor was supposed to be delivered on the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th. Huge let down by UPS, because I had to spend the holidays with my family instead of staring at 144hz of beauty! </sarcasm>
I would imagine a spike in the amount of Amazon Prime memberships increased this week due to console purchases. My first experience with Amazon Prime's Instant Video automatically got me to shell out my credit card information for movies on my child's Wii U. I have now completely cut the cord on my cable broadcasting. $40/yr Amazon, $95.88/yr Netflix, $95.88/yr Hulu Plus, totaling $231.76 vs my yearly cable television bill of $900/yr (with an extra unmentioned $120 in random fees/taxes).
I would imagine a spike in the amount of Amazon Prime memberships increased this week due to console purchases. My first experience with Amazon Prime's Instant Video automatically got me to shell out my credit card information for movies on my child's Wii U. I have now completely cut the cord on my cable broadcasting. $40/yr Amazon, $95.88/yr Netflix, $95.88/yr Hulu Plus, totaling $231.76 vs my yearly cable television bill of $900/yr (with an extra unmentioned $120 in random fees/taxes).
> "My monitor was supposed to be delivered on the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th. Huge let down by UPS, because I had to spend the holidays with my family instead of staring at 144hz of beauty! </sarcasm>"
Try instead: "My gift to my niece was suppose to be delivered by the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th, but her family flies back home on the evening of the 26th. Now I have to wait for it to be delivered, reship it myself at personal expense, and cannot watch her open it."
Believe it or not, reliable package delivery during Christmas actually is a big deal to consumers...
Try instead: "My gift to my niece was suppose to be delivered by the 24th. It will not arrive until the 27th, but her family flies back home on the evening of the 26th. Now I have to wait for it to be delivered, reship it myself at personal expense, and cannot watch her open it."
Believe it or not, reliable package delivery during Christmas actually is a big deal to consumers...
I would imagine a spike in the amount of Amazon Prime memberships increased this week due to console purchases.
This year I signed up for a free 30 day trial of Prime so that I could skip on the cost of shipping for Christmas. I will cancel it before the trial period ends. Last year my wife did the same thing on her account.
So I would be curious how many of those are trial memberships, and what the statistics are after 30-60 days once all of those trials expire.
This year I signed up for a free 30 day trial of Prime so that I could skip on the cost of shipping for Christmas. I will cancel it before the trial period ends. Last year my wife did the same thing on her account.
So I would be curious how many of those are trial memberships, and what the statistics are after 30-60 days once all of those trials expire.
Do many people really place orders to be delivered on christmas eve and imagine they aren't running a risk the item won't arrive on time?
I mean, I've placed orders for next day delivery on christmas eve, but I'm a realist. I know the postal system is busy at this time of year, and that my item may be late or damaged.
I mean, I've placed orders for next day delivery on christmas eve, but I'm a realist. I know the postal system is busy at this time of year, and that my item may be late or damaged.
These are the same people that were going to the mall on the 24th (pre-Amazon) and complaining that everything was out of stock.
We are nowhere near instantaneous transportation, so there will always be logistical delays. Planning your holiday purchasing around those delays is smart, assuming that 2-day shipping is always guaranteed and waiting until the last moment is playing with fire.
We are nowhere near instantaneous transportation, so there will always be logistical delays. Planning your holiday purchasing around those delays is smart, assuming that 2-day shipping is always guaranteed and waiting until the last moment is playing with fire.
I like the discounts and free shipping as web merchants try to boost their numbers for the year. :-)
I live in a neighborhood where UPS drivers are not permitted to deliver after dusk (see: Google Bus Attack). It's a local policy, so the tracking status will show that my packages (in last year's case, a retina MBP) would arrive by 7pm.
There's that moment when you feel the chill in your bones; a lone mourning dove flaps its wings in a bare-branched tree. You're sitting on the front steps of your house to prevent the dreaded door tag when you realize you've invested far too much into acquisitions and material goods and the international supply chain.
There's that moment when you feel the chill in your bones; a lone mourning dove flaps its wings in a bare-branched tree. You're sitting on the front steps of your house to prevent the dreaded door tag when you realize you've invested far too much into acquisitions and material goods and the international supply chain.
What?
Just an anecdote: I ordered something from Zazzle about a week before Christmas and it had a "guaranteed pre-Christmas delivery" option, which turned out to mean delivery on the 24th (using UPS!). I would have been bummed, but not incredibly surprised, if it hadn't arrived, but either way, I would have considered it Zazzle's rather than UPS' "fault". Seems like Amazon giving refunds is the right call.
Just use common sense. Everybody with half of brain should know that delivery of stuff takes time.
I really disliked the author's attitude for "reality check". One almost could get impression that people in tech have no idea what is around them.
Anyone know how "thousands of packages" cited in the original article turned into "millions of customers" in the gigaom piece?
I am amazed that people expect UPS to be able to scale like AWS. Nobody, nobody can create a supply chain network that expands 100x for two weeks in a year, w/out feeling a pinch. They should've set expectations and used the Uber trick of having "Holiday Rates." This way, people would've ordered ahead. Sad that media would write all sorts of crap, just to get eyeballs to the blog.
SUMMARY:
The holiday’s were great for Amazon and lousy for UPS.
The holiday's what?
The holiday's what?
Amazon / UPS didn't fail to deliver; OP failed to order in reasonable time. Even though some of my (Prime) next-day deliveries took a couple of days to arrive, they kept me informed, and everything arrived in plenty of time. Kudos to both parties.
I ordered something from Williams Sonoma, who was promising that orders up through Friday would be delivered by Christmas with standard shipping. What was really ballsy was that it turned out they used UPS Ground, and just hoped that using a regionally close warehouse would mean it would be delivered in time. And it worked out, they shipped on Friday and it was delivered on Tuesday. I guess the money they save on UPS Ground makes up for the occasional packages that miss Christmas.
Almost all ground shipping services are now "day-definite delivery" the same way Air services are. UPS ground, FedEx ground, and USPS Priority Express offer money back guarantees now, although large shippers may have different contracts of course. Several times I've used the $4 next day shipping via Amazon prime only to have it come UPS ground from a near by distribution center.
Wow, from looking around with that search term, UPS has actually had it for residential ground since 2002. I guess I'm out of touch.
So, for the package in question, from where they shipped it, UPS Ground does guarantee 2-day shipping. At half the price of UPS 2nd Day Air. So... pretty smart.
So, for the package in question, from where they shipped it, UPS Ground does guarantee 2-day shipping. At half the price of UPS 2nd Day Air. So... pretty smart.
Did Amazon let its warehouse employees take off Christmas day?
My biggest gripe to date about UPS: For years, they would deliver stuff to the doorstep & sign it themselves as stupid stuff like "Dr. Door."
Well one delivery this backfires when the driver takes the package to a house up the street and signs it as delivered. We check the tracking page, it says delivered. Give it a day or two, package still hasn't shown up. Alert UPS and the vendor. Eventually, the purchase was reimbursed. Maybe 2 weeks after that, the neighbor wanders down with the missing package. (This is a guy that isn't friendly towards my family because we do fireworks on the fourth of July, he holds a grudge for the rest of the year as a result.)
Anyway, ever since UPS made the error & delivered to the wrong address, they will no longer leave packages on our doorstep. We must be physically present to sign for the package - we cannot sign the slip and have them leave it the next day. Must be physically present. UPS comes at about 3pm. You can see how convenient this is.
You can sit in the house and watch as the UPS man runs up to each house on the street, drops a package, rings the bell, and runs off. But at our house, they always have to stop and wait. The delivery people must hate it as much as we do, since they have to fill out the paper slip if we're not around to answer the door at a time when most people are at work (luckily, one of us works from home now, but I can only imagine how bad the 3pm deliveries would be if that weren't the case.)
Long story short, my address is flagged (only by UPS) and someone must be physically present to receive the package. Which is a huge pain. Especially when vendors don't give you an explicit choice in the matter as much as they used to.
Well one delivery this backfires when the driver takes the package to a house up the street and signs it as delivered. We check the tracking page, it says delivered. Give it a day or two, package still hasn't shown up. Alert UPS and the vendor. Eventually, the purchase was reimbursed. Maybe 2 weeks after that, the neighbor wanders down with the missing package. (This is a guy that isn't friendly towards my family because we do fireworks on the fourth of July, he holds a grudge for the rest of the year as a result.)
Anyway, ever since UPS made the error & delivered to the wrong address, they will no longer leave packages on our doorstep. We must be physically present to sign for the package - we cannot sign the slip and have them leave it the next day. Must be physically present. UPS comes at about 3pm. You can see how convenient this is.
You can sit in the house and watch as the UPS man runs up to each house on the street, drops a package, rings the bell, and runs off. But at our house, they always have to stop and wait. The delivery people must hate it as much as we do, since they have to fill out the paper slip if we're not around to answer the door at a time when most people are at work (luckily, one of us works from home now, but I can only imagine how bad the 3pm deliveries would be if that weren't the case.)
Long story short, my address is flagged (only by UPS) and someone must be physically present to receive the package. Which is a huge pain. Especially when vendors don't give you an explicit choice in the matter as much as they used to.
Last week UPS delivered my Amazon package to someone else down the road, I had no idea why my package was marked delivered when it never got here.
When I called to complain, the driver went back to the place and brought me the box with everything opened, packaging removed and discarded and seriously tried to deliver it to me. I had to argue to refuse it.
I've had bad UPS service before but that topped everything.
When I called to complain, the driver went back to the place and brought me the box with everything opened, packaging removed and discarded and seriously tried to deliver it to me. I had to argue to refuse it.
I've had bad UPS service before but that topped everything.
The article didn't mention the weather, which in DFW, totally fucked the transportation system for almost a week in December. The delivery depots in the area were backlogged and overwhelmed. I can imagine there may have been other locales with similar weather created circumstances.
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They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing off packages in a strip mall parking lot. Personally, though, I was rather impressed by the shipping carriers this year (UPS included). No late packages and I even got some delivered early. The volume has to have skyrocketed in the last 5 years so there is obviously going to be growing pains but shipping just gets better and better every year for me so I'm a happy customer.
> They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing off packages in a strip mall parking lot.
UPS always hires seasonal workers for the December rush. And since the workers are seasonal, the delivery vehicles also have to be seasonal. They can't afford to buy trucks that are parked for 11 out of 12 months. Lucky for them, fewer people move houses during the holiday season, so they can borrow U-Haul's spare capacity.
Even UPS's regular trucks have a driver and a helper during December. For the other 11 months of the year, the trucks only have one employee in them.
You may also have noticed the postal service doing multiple deliveries on the same day. It's easier to overlay the abnormal package volume on top of the regular mail delivery, rather than to split the mail routes.
The holiday rush has always been crazy like this. Nothing new in the Internet era except for additional volume.
UPS always hires seasonal workers for the December rush. And since the workers are seasonal, the delivery vehicles also have to be seasonal. They can't afford to buy trucks that are parked for 11 out of 12 months. Lucky for them, fewer people move houses during the holiday season, so they can borrow U-Haul's spare capacity.
Even UPS's regular trucks have a driver and a helper during December. For the other 11 months of the year, the trucks only have one employee in them.
You may also have noticed the postal service doing multiple deliveries on the same day. It's easier to overlay the abnormal package volume on top of the regular mail delivery, rather than to split the mail routes.
The holiday rush has always been crazy like this. Nothing new in the Internet era except for additional volume.
They got the bulk of their packages out AND let their works take christmas day off? How many Amazon warehouse workers who were scheduled got Christmas off?
I USPS 2-day Priority'd a gift on Dec. 17 that hasn't had tracking updated since the 18th. It's most certainly not been delivered.
Pretty sure all the physical mail carriers were clobbered this year and we're just at the tip of the iceberg of understanding why they were disorganized/unprepared/whatever.
Pretty sure all the physical mail carriers were clobbered this year and we're just at the tip of the iceberg of understanding why they were disorganized/unprepared/whatever.
I have a feeling Amazon is going to develop their own shipping solution. I bet a fairly large percentage of boxes that UPS ships are from Amazon. UPS could be turning into a bottleneck for them...
They are doing precisely this.
I believe that they are doing this, but it seems kind of impractical to me honestly. Then again amazon is able to operate without turning a profit so i guess they can enter in these peripheral branches if need be...
Awesome! Are there any articles about this?
I'd imagine that having Amazon Fresh trucks driving around a neighborhood with a local fulfillment center could easily turn into their own solution. Combine this with Amazon Locker and 20 years from now Amazon drone and good bye UPS.
Amazon Lockers have been a boon for me living in apartments with hours that don't match up to my schedule for their 'helpful' package signing service. I recently noticed I can return packages through the lockers as well. If they can saturate with enough lockers I'm not sure I'd ever actually need the "final mile" of an actual delivery service.
No, they're actually going the whole "buy a fleet jets and distribution centers" multi-decabillion-dollar route.
UPS just handed my package off to USPS who put a note in my box saying that I could come to a Post Office, wait in a long line, then pick-up my package myself. WTF is this?
> UPS just handed my package off to USPS who put a note in my box saying that I could come to a Post Office, wait in a long line, then pick-up my package myself. WTF is this?
It's UPS Surepost. Shippers use it for packages that are price-sensitive but not time-sensitive.
You don't have to go to the post office to pick up the package. You can sign the release, and have them leave it at your door.
It's UPS Surepost. Shippers use it for packages that are price-sensitive but not time-sensitive.
You don't have to go to the post office to pick up the package. You can sign the release, and have them leave it at your door.
Ah the joys of "SmartPost". SmartPost is popular for residential deliveries in a large part because it doesn't have the residential surcharge which other options do. SmartPost shipments also generally don't have guaranteed delivery dates so they may be more likely to experience delays during peak load time (e.g. this month).
> Ah the joys of "SmartPost".
SurePost, since he said it originated at UPS.
SmartPost is the competing service from FedEx.
Notice that both of them have the word "Post" in it. Thus, not surprising that they hand off the last mile to the postal service.
SurePost, since he said it originated at UPS.
SmartPost is the competing service from FedEx.
Notice that both of them have the word "Post" in it. Thus, not surprising that they hand off the last mile to the postal service.
Ah good catch, however the logic remains the same (they both avoid residential delivery surcharges for the respective carrier).
Something I wish I had in my (European) Amazon shipping a couple weeks ago - they used a package carrier instead of the postal service, which used to be the norm. I had to call to set up a new delivery to a work address a week later.
This is the company that automatically distributes packages and generates optimal routes for its trucks. It's the company that can automatically account for changes in its transport graph and reroute. It's the company that does fuel consumption analysis and incorporates it into its truck routing algo.
Author really doesn't give UPS enough credit. It may have failed some deliveries yesterday, but crowing about how it's a stodgy beast and should embrace logistical technology like Amazon is preaching to the choir.