“Amazon order delayed” – never thought I’d see this, or feel they’re slipping up. Been a very satisfied customer of Amazon for a VERY long time now, and have never faced any major issues. However, 3 delayed orders in 5 days and the subsequent experience with their customer care on chat has taken some of the shine off all that previous good experience.

Order # 1: Placed on 04-Oct, was to be delivered on Wednesday, 12-Oct, in spite of being in Pune since 09-Oct. Status in the tracker showed as “Out for delivery” and “Getting closer” the entire day.

However, no Delivery till evening, and then at 8pm there is a message saying delivery will happen between 13th and 16th Oct. No reason given. Contacted them on chat and the customer care executive was apologetic, said it wouldn’t happen again. Item is delivered the next day, on Thursday. Sign of things to come? You bet.

Order # 2: Delivery date was on Saturday, 15-Oct . Exactly like the above, status in the tracker showed as “Out for delivery” and “Getting closer” the entire day. No delivery till 10pm, so I initiated a chat with the Amazon Customer Care. I also mentioned that I hoped delivery would not be attempted after 10pm. I was assured it would happen the next day, with the usual apologies. When I wake up on 16-Oct, I find that delivery was attempted at 11.41pm the previous night – which courier company in their right mind goes about delivering packages at midnight?!

In all, I’ve chatted with almost SIX of these representatives, each of them apologising for the inconvenience and assuring the item would definitely be delivered the next day. One guy from the “Escalation team” actually had the gall to suggest the delays were due to the “holiday season” and they would ensure the delivery person called me before the delivery to ensure the time was convenient (nobody ever called). Even as I was chatting with this person, he goes and updates the status as below, saying “Rescheduled by customer” which was crazy, and he said it was system generated when I questioned him about it.

Current status: Still haven’t received this item.

Order # 3: Delivery date was Monday, 17-Oct. Yet again, the tracker showed “Out for delivery” in the morning. By afternoon, there’s even a mobile number of the delivery person mentioned. Awesome, right? Oh wait. When there’s no delivery till 7pm, I finally called the number – only to be told “Wrong Number” after which he cut the call. An hour later, around 8pm, I get a notification saying the delivery is rescheduled as “customer wasn’t available” – which was incredulous because half an hour ago, at 7.30pm, TWO other items from Amazon itself were delivered. Much later, the tracker is updated to say “Delivery attempted at 9.41pm” – obviously, another lie since I was very much at home. Chatting with the customer care rep again wasn’t of any use.

Current status: Still haven’t received this item.

The customer service responses are standard and not helpful at all, each agent parroting out the same lines, and blaming the courier company for the mess up. There is no sync between the so called tracker and what the ground reality is. “Out for delivery” used to be a guarantee that delivery would happen that day – sadly, it no longer is.

While I completely understand delays can and will happen and nobody is infallible, I am losing my patience at the way Amazon is managing these logistics issues and the sheer lack of clarity, communication and coordination on display here. If the order is delayed, tell me so upfront. Don’t say it’s “Out for delivery” and “Getting closer” and then not deliver on time. It’s like one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.

Ironically, I recently signed up for Amazon Prime. Maybe I should cancel that with all the other pending orders and just take my business elsewhere.

This post, 3 delayed orders in 5 days – Amazon is slipping, was originally published at Atul Karmarkar.Com