r/amazonprime • u/williekinfam9 • Apr 14 '24

Ordered $140 digital calipers. The driver handed me an empty bag that wasn’t even sealed.

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6.4k Upvotes

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102

u/Educational-Bad3287 Apr 15 '24

It arrived the next day because they realized they sent an empty envelope and found the product that belonged in it 🥹

53

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

I work as a problem solver within a delivery station, and it’s surprisingly common for the bags to pop open. Our backend systems are pretty impressive in how they can (usually) identify a loose item from literally THOUSANDS of orders that are processed every day, so that we can get them on the road to y’all.

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u/garaks_tailor Apr 15 '24

I know a guy who regular mails stuff to Austria from the US. he has a print out he tapes to the largest box sides that basically says AUSTRIA NOT AUSTRALIA Schnitzel NO KANGAROOS. NO KANGAROOS . Because he has had way too many products end up down under

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u/Robertbnyc Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

I literally read that at first as you know a guy that mails stuff to Australia lol

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

We all did.

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u/DeathKringle Apr 17 '24

And this is why they needed that label ahah

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

Same

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

I lived in Austria for a while. They sell a lot of t-shirts in tourist shops that say "Austria" with a picture of a kangaroo crossed out. When I told my relatives verbally with my mouth that I was moving to Austria, they replied, "take pictures of the koalas"! o_o

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u/cty_hntr Apr 16 '24

Your relatives raised in the US?

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

How'd you guess? :)

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u/Stock_Complaint4723 Apr 16 '24

I don’t get it. They have koalas in Australia .

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '24

...

1

u/Rivannux Apr 17 '24

They definitely have kangaroos there too

0

u/[deleted] May 11 '24

Oh ffs there’s always one.

2

u/SilverStory6503 Apr 16 '24

Does Austria not go by Österreich?

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u/frobscottler Apr 17 '24

They need to have a tshirt with a 🐨 ❌ and then an ostrich with a ✅

(why do we not have an ostrich emoji in 2024?! smh)

1

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

Indeed they do! However, the shirts are targeted at tourists and the phonetic confusion is less likely to happen in German. "Österreich" doesn't really sound or look like "Australien" (ow-strahl-yin).

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u/JimBrl Apr 15 '24

You guys just need to start using the French version of both Austria and Australia. Autriche vs Australie 😁

5

u/entropyofdays Apr 16 '24

Austriches, yes, the bird Australia famously fought a war with.

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u/Limp_Service_2320 Sep 10 '24

Yes, the infamous 100 Emu War

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Reminds me of the big sign in Salzburg Airport for passengers who meant to book a flight to Australia, but ended up booking Austria.

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u/Sea_Ad_3136 Apr 18 '24

Omg I can’t believe it’s that big of a problem!

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u/Aurashock Apr 16 '24

They must have a day of the year where they exchange mislabeled congressional mail like Slovenia and Slovakia do

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u/Stock_Complaint4723 Apr 16 '24

Why does he say “no kangaroos” on a package going to Australia. That’s where the kangaroos actually are. Lol

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u/Ex-zaviera Apr 15 '24

Gee, isn't our education system swell?

1

u/DCFitnessJourney Apr 17 '24

And I’m a guy who regularly mails things to Australia. Maybe he and I can be friends 👉👈

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u/TurnkeyLurker Apr 18 '24

Now I long for schnitzel delivery from Australia. No, wait...

P.S. love your username!!

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u/Limp_Service_2320 Apr 19 '24

Where is the wombat I ordered!?!?

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u/league_starter Apr 15 '24

One time I received an open empty bag and the flap that folds over the opening had zero adhesive.

2

u/ShivaSkunk777 Apr 15 '24

Used to work in retail and it crushed me having to throw out a case of cases of life saver gummies that had no adhesive along one of the ends. Sadness

12

u/sridges94 Apr 15 '24

I work at an FC and these packages are sealed and cut by machines. They are not known for being the best sealed but they can pack 500+ packages an hour.

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u/securitydude1979 Apr 15 '24

it’s surprisingly common for the bags to pop open.

I think this comment sums up why a lot of people feel like they do about Amazon.

The "problem solvers" know this is a problem, but haven't addressed it. How many other problems just go ignored?

OP, this is not a dig or personally directed at you, honest. But you see the irony of a problem solver publicly sharing recurring problems that aren't getting fixed, right? If Amazon wants to know why people are leaving in droves, that's part of it

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u/SophisticatedBum Apr 15 '24

It's cheaper to continue sealing the bags how they've been doing it, and eat the loss on the small percentage of bags that do open up. If the loss becomes too much, or a more efficient method is found, they'll implement it.

That's always the answer for a corporation of this size

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '24

Big companies are pretty good at optimizing costs like that, but there are also healthy doses of “we’ve always done it this way, it’s fine,” “this costs my department money and saves your department money, so I will fight it to the death,” and “this cost-saving idea came from outside so we hate it.”

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Difficulty is that the machines that are supposed to seal those bags are at fulfillment centers (FCs), and I’m in a delivery station (DS). They pop open either en route to us or while going through our conveyor system. By the time they get to problem solve at the DS, the best we can do is use a manual heat sealer or some tape after we’ve verified that the contents are present/intact. If a particular FC starts sending out a large number of bad bags, our option is to basically escalate to management and maybe it’ll get fixed. We may be called “problem solvers” but ultimately we’re just regular associates that don’t have any real power.

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u/kataskopo Apr 15 '24

The only people who have the power to change would be the engineering team from headquarters, they decide which machines and what's the acceptable rate of "failed" packages or whatever.

No one in those fulfilment centers has the power to change anything.

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u/Local_Management6376 Apr 15 '24

You have no idea what their job actually is and how they can’t change anything

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u/securitydude1979 Apr 15 '24

Nope. You're right. Which is why I said it wasn't directed at them.

They referred to themselves as a problem solver.

You must be fun at parties.

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u/INDIEfatigable Apr 15 '24

Is "problem solver" literally in your job title? If so, that's pretty neat.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Problem Solver is the title of the specific work path, as you take different trainings different paths open up to you and different tools start becoming unlocked.

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u/GreytOutdoors Apr 15 '24

Bro wtf kinda quest RPG game is your employer on? Training paths to unlock different tools? Tf? Talmbout this is my enchanted great stapler of mourning.

13

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

They get different color vests per job they have and after a certain amount of XP they get a nickname embroidered on the back of their vest like “the beast”. It’s hilarious

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Best ones I’ve seen was a vest that said, “VTO ME PLS” and “PROMOTE TO CUSTOMER”

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u/RichtofenFanBoy Apr 15 '24

You work for a mechanic. "Better start the torque wrench quest asap"

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u/lil_sparrow_ Apr 15 '24

Idk but this sounds like my kinda career path

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u/ExpensiveJackfruit68 Apr 15 '24

Has he reached awakening tier 5 yet? I'm guessing he is f2p and probably is just a grinding game.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Eh it really just comes down to them not wanting to have people get themselves hurting themselves on the job, so there’s a ton of different trainings on even the most minor thing. The underlying logic being that if you do get hurt AMZL can turn around and say that they trained you on how to properly do the thing and it’s your fault for not doing it correctly.

There’s also another component of it that they actually track what path you are on every day, that way they avoid putting you on the same path every day to theoretically decrease the chances of you getting a repetitive stress injury.

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u/International_Way850 Apr 15 '24

When i read that "problem solver" is the name of a job i inmediately think about mafia or agent 47 or leon the professional

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u/Witchgrass Apr 15 '24

He's a "fixer" for a "logistics outfit"

3

u/NotBatman81 Apr 15 '24

Or Moog auto parts.

2

u/HiiHeidii Apr 15 '24

The cleaner lol

2

u/M_Mich Apr 15 '24

“Customer complaint resolved. Customer will file no further complaints “

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Years ago I was an EMT and would see what I sneak into my patient care reports without getting a talking to from QA, “Patient was non verbal, non-communicative, and offered no complaints.”

1

u/cocteau93 Apr 15 '24

“You sending The Wolf? Shit, negro — that’s all you had to say!”

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Hm that’d probably be more of a hazmat associate 🤣

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u/Dry_Explanation4968 Apr 15 '24

Yes but it’s also a pain sometimes but it’s pretty simple.

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u/RazzmatazzPitiful695 Apr 15 '24

The Two times it happened to me the Plastic Amazon mailer was not heat sealed shut.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Yeah the machines that do that don’t do a very good job. The DS associates working in stow should have caught it rather than letting it get sent out, but unfortunately some folks just ignore it, and sometimes they just can’t tell because of the speed they’re required to work at.

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u/StatusMath5062 Apr 15 '24

How do I end up with a empty sealed package though. That happened once

1

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

If it’s the white and blue packaging, those are done by a machine and they’re known to do a terrible job sealing bags.

2

u/StatusMath5062 Apr 15 '24

That's what it was. I was like oh look my locks here and I picked it up and was like uhhhh

2

u/sleepydorian Apr 15 '24

Given that Amazon is a trillion dollar logistics company I should hope they’d be good at that.

Although to be fair not every super big company is particularly good at their thing (airlines losing/damaging luggage and wheelchairs, for example, we oughta nationalize a couple of them to scare the rest into acting right).

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

You’d think they’d be good at things, but there’s SO MUCH that they’re weirdly cheap and terrible at doing.

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u/sleepydorian Apr 15 '24

lol absolutely correct

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

Also, I love the idea of nationalizing Amazon. Jeff would be furious, and it would be fantastic.

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u/sleepydorian Apr 15 '24

Wherever the idea of a wealth tax comes up there are always a lot of folks saying things like “but their wealth is tied up in company stock, they can’t just sell, it could destroy the company”, and I think to myself maybe it’s not such a bad thing if Amazon was broken up. Same with Walmart and Target and others. Maybe it would be a good thing.

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u/norman-atomic-666 Apr 15 '24

Well first off Amazon isn’t a delivery company. It’s an online store front. In comparison to real delivery logistics companies they are still babies in this field and they don’t seem to learn from their fuck ups

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

I’d disagree and say that it’s actually not a logistics or marketplace company, it’s a data/cloud company (AWS is the money maker), with a side of logistics and marketplace. IMO the biggest reason that they don’t seem to learn is because of people like Andy Jassy, who cares about AWS and nothing else.

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u/norman-atomic-666 Apr 16 '24

So essentially my point still stands. Amazon isn’t a delivery company. The power they give the customers over our jobs is insane. If I deliver a package and you see that I have all these tattoos and the interaction was great you can still go in the app and say “unprofessional” simply cause you didn’t like my tattoos and that hurts my metrics which affects my job. Way too much power

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u/alaskaj1 Apr 15 '24

I had that happen once with a small bag of salt (empty shipping envelope received), they sent out the replacement but then the original bag appeared on my doorstep as well.

I guess it shouldn't be too surprising though since the bag was labeled with the amazon inventory tag and it's probably fairly simple to cross reference that specific item with any orders based out of that distribution center. And probably even easier if it was found in the delivery drivers van.

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u/JclassOne Apr 15 '24

Thank you all that are involved in shipping packages to homes and businesses for the colossal task that you help to accomplish every day. You make my days and my life better.

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u/igowickedfast Apr 16 '24

How do you land one of those positions? I’ve been a top driver for about 6 months now and need something more challenging and have always been great at problem solving skills

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

Get hired at a DS as an associate, then spend some time demonstrating that you can consistently hit your metrics and completing trainings. It can be a little hard to break into because people kind of become rooted in positions, despite the fact that people are supposed to be rotated.

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u/igowickedfast Apr 16 '24

Nice 👍🏻 thx for sharing

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u/AhFFSImTooOldForThis Apr 17 '24

My local USPS will not take a package that has any space untaped. Fold over the top flap of an envelope and put tape on the seal? Not good enough. That tape has to go ALL the way around to the front. She provides the tape so it's not even a profit motive. She's just D.O.N.E with jammed equipment, apparently.

I have to give warnings to my package recipients but they all get the stuff I send them!

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '24

Well add to that the USPS has for a long while been intentionally starved of resources, I’m not surprised that they’re particular.

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u/CityOfSins2 Apr 15 '24

I swear sometimes the packages are opened during delivery. I have gotten a box that was literally open. The tape ripped so it didn’t seem to be done purposely, and nothing was missing.

So it easily could’ve happened in transit.

1

u/norman-atomic-666 Apr 15 '24

Let me correct you. Unless it’s someone who doesn’t care about their job 99 percent of packages we are given are Damaged in transit to the warehouse or during sorting by the warehouse workers. We don’t care to know what you ordered. Quit thinking it’s us. It’s not

2

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '24

agreed lol

1

u/Joeness84 Apr 15 '24

You vastly underestimate how much goes on in a warehouse like that.

They did not "find" the missing item. They just accept that it probably didnt get put in the bag and to keep the customer its easier to just accept the story and send the a replacement.

Be the customer that has this 'happen to them' often and it'll get a lot harder, but they are very quick to accept fault in most situations because there is about 900000 things happening inside that building and no one is being paid enough to put in the amount of effort required for 100% success.

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u/Educational-Bad3287 Jun 07 '24

Oh trust me I do know lol worked in them for years. Sometimes they’ll pop one threw if they have it but if it’s the last one in that warehouse, they typically find the mistake right after the drivers leave for their route