Amazon Lies

I was an early adopter of Amazon.com, back when they were only books. I've been a Prime member since they started Prime and I have Amazon.com accounts for both personal and business use. I've noticed, though, that their reliability in shipping went way down a few years back -- right around when they partnered with the US Postal Service.

Now, however, things have gotten to be terrible on a regular basis. There is no reason to believe any delivery estimate they give you when you're buying but, more importantly, their company will flat out lie to you when you contact them to figure out where your stuff is.

Here is the most recent example:

  • 7/16, a Sunday, I ordered a bunch of Nerf guns for my son's 10th b-day on the 20th. 3-day delivery, guaranteed on 7/19. Ordered.
    • We've all seen at checkout: Guaranteed delivery date: July 19th, 2017 If you order in the next...
  • 7/19, some packages from that order arrive, but one doesn't. Of course, it's the important one.
  • 7/19, right around 8pm the Amazon.com website's tracking page changes from "7/19 by 8pm" to "20th-22nd".
    • It's preposterous to assume that a package that was up until that moment expected any minute, could now come up to three days later.
  • 7/19, I chat with Amazon. The rep tells me that he can have a "special team" at USPS guarantee my package will arrive by 11am on 7/20 -- my son's b-day.
    • I'm incredulous (you ever hear of such a team?) and tell him so, but he is very convincing. We opt to cancel plans and stay home on the morning of my son's birthday ... waiting on a package.
  • 7/20, 11am. Guess what? It's not here. I contact Amazon again by chat. They say it's on its way. Meanwhile, I look at the tracking at USPS and I see that at 3:29am on 7/20, after my 7/19 chat and before the chat I'm having now, that USPS is still awaiting the item and that it's in BALTIMORE.
    • The agent lied, or was given information to present to me that Amazon.com knew to be false.


Amazon.com presents shipping/tracking information to their users that they, as an organization, have clear evidence to be false. Either their agents are taking it on their own initiative to lie, on chat messenger (seems unlikely), or Amazon.com is presenting false information to them so they will unwittingly help mollify the customers. I suppose it's possible the USPS site is in error, but we can assume it's being driven off the same database that supplies the info that the Amazon support agents are using -- so safe to assume they have at least the same info as on the USPS site as the rest of us.

So, what to do? I asked my order to be redirected. I asked it to be sent to Jeff Bezos' desk. They wouldn't do it. So I looked up Amazon's shipping address and phone number, put it into my Amazon account, re-ordered the gear and had it shipped to Jeff with a gift note that says "www.amazonlies.com".

Maybe he'll care enough to make sure his agents don't make up the existence of "special teams" at USPS that can get a package delivered by 11am the next day, when USPS doesn't even have the package yet from Amazon. Maybe he'll care enough to make sure his tracking system aims for realism, and not unbridled optimism (that stretches the boundaries of space and time), when estimating delivery dates/times. Maybe he'll care enough to make sure his agents have access to, and use, all the available information when predicting ship times.

Maybe some other family won't stay home for half a day on their son's b-day waiting for presents that clearly aren't going to arrive ... because Amazon told them they would.

Until then, Amazon lies.