Amazon - Multiple Deliveries from One Order

Hi all,

Not sure if others have experienced this.

Today I had 2 separate deliveries from an order that I made on Amazon via Parcelpoint. 1st delivery was around 12.30pm with item A & B. 2nd delivery was around 2pm with item C. I ordered A,B & C all in one order and both boxes were sent from their Dandenong warehouse, according to the labels (VIC based).

Just a bit curious why can't Amazon just package them all in 1 box and delivered once? Is it because they need to meet the delivery time promise?

This is also not the first time. Few months ago I ordered an item (6 units). First time they delivered 4 units and second time they sent the remaining 2 units. I would've been completely fine to just wait until they have all the items (if they didn't have enough stock) that I've ordered and send it in one go, rather than sending them in multiple packages.

It's a small hassle as I need to go downstairs to collect the parcel from the lobby (high rise apartment). Not a big problem. But I think the bigger issue is that it seems to be a waste of resource/labour and materials (multiple boxes), especially with how much workload and stress the freight businesses have during this time of the year and the impact of COVID-19.

Does anyone have similar experience? Are there ways to fix this because I can't seem to find any options during check out.

Keen to hear from fellow OzBargainers :)

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Comments

  • +1

    It's cheaper one way or another. Amazon is all automated in how it makes delivery decisions, from how long it'd take someone to pick it up within the warehouse to how it actually gets delivered, storage on each vehicle delivering and weight of each package. If it was increasing workload and it cost more to Amazon they'd change their method, so I imagine it's decreasing workload somehow.

    Imagine if one item was the other end of the warehouse. Rather than send someone walking for 10 minutes from one end to the other and back again it's probably easier just to keep that person packing in their own area and get someone else to pack another one on the other end, saving 5 minutes. That means a few more packages out the door in that time.

    Also comes down to whether items within each box could damage each other, then how much packaging that requires to protect them.

    I've had Amazon occasionally give me the option to delay the faster products in order to get it in one box, but it's rare. If it was easy for them to do they'd offer it on everything.

    • That's some good points there. If there's efficiencies somewhere Amazon would've took the opportunity. I just can't work out how delivering items separately from the same warehouse works out to be better for them.

      • +1

        Parcel delivery is very cheap for them. They're probably delivering multiple items to that parcelpoint, the cost per item would be low. Moving it from one shipment to another wouldn't change much.

        But let's say they take an extra 10 minutes to grab your other item and box it up together in one. Total cost of labour is probably somewhere around $50 an hour for a warehouse employee (salary + super + workcover + margin for staffing agency + casual + payroll tax), that's an extra $8.33 for that 10 minutes. Amazon tends to group items together for pickers so they can efficiently get them out the door. It also means that's 10 minutes not packing other orders that could be done very quickly, slowing the whole process down.

        There's no way delivering an extra parcel costs them that much or they'd have gone out of business long ago with Prime free shipping. So the extra parcel is probably cheaper.

      • +1

        Amazon has a market cap of 1.73 trillion USD. They see the things us mere mortals can only dream about.

        When you're an elite athlete your gains become fractions of a second. I would imagine the same applies to Amazon.

    • This is it. In a large warehouse, it can be more economical to just ship multiple parcels.

      Could you imaging grabbing a toothbrush at one end of the warehouse, then walking 300m to grab a shampoo at the other end of the warehouse? It'd be better to just ship two parcels.

  • +2

    not everything is store in the same warehouse.

  • Where all the items shipped by Amazon AU? You may have gotten something from another seller on Amazon

    • All items are from Amazon AU

  • Maybe ask amazon to deliver to you once a month… Youll get everything at the same time.

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