Amazon....again....the search for intelligent life

Having tracked the order on the Amazon site, I find DHL didn't even pick up their half-order until yesterday lunchtime..............I hope someone from Amazon reads this & Fitz's bit above & realises who gives best service here.........

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Amazon do not make the goods themselves ... they order them from other merchants. And I'm pretty sure that they don't have a "warehouse". That is way too expensive. Instead they have agreements with their suppliers ... that's how they know when they'll be able to ship the goods. If it says "24 hours" that means that they can get the supplier to ship the item within that interval.

Just as a follow up..........that which was sent by (the much maligned) Royal Mail - arrived this morning...........that which was due to be simultaneouly delivered by one of these market-driven super efficient, 21 st century, futuristic courier companies (errrmm....DHL.....)......didn't.........I'll confirm when it does......

ever heard of phrases like "just in time", "zero warehouse"? As anybody with a background in business administrations, especially: Supply chain management.

The point is that those merchants cannot afford to buy goods from their suppliers and store them in their own warehouse and then wait until somebody purchases them. Not only do they have to pay for these goods in advance without knowing if they're ever get sold ... they also have to pay for the warehouse. I guess that by some clever statistical calculations they order some goods in advance, but only for the next day, based on the sales of the previous day. So they might have some of the goods on stock in a warehouse (several ones per country, to be precise), but not many, and only the mainstream, high volume goods.

I think that they simply have delivery centers ... if you order something, it is delivered from the supplier to such a center, and then to the customer.

crimson thing wrote: In reply to Mike...... With respect, I can't see that's right.....all the items come packed by Amazon, not the supplier (of course Amazon don't make the CDs, BTW, I be not that stooopid  ), so unless they hire a van or a village hall for the day  , they clearly have a warehouse somewhere......and the items must coexist in place & time for the packaging to take place, n'est pas? Nicht wahr?

Not necessarily. Don't ask me how they do it, but they most certainly don't have a central warehouse where they keep all the goods that are marked "ships within 24 hours".

Are you sure they were all from the same Amazon? I ordered 2 CDs and a DVD recently. The CDs (Moody Blues remasters) came from Amazon Jersey and so were sent separately.

crimson thing wrote: I figured that might be a possible excuse - if not explanation But I'm not convinced - and although these incidents aren't particularly important in the greater scheme of things, they bug me - I don't like paradoxes!   I thought all the Amazon stuff came through one warehouse? And if things were separated, the obvious separation would be books to the left, CDs to the right? Plus, the division they've decided upon (5 CDs vs 8 CDs + 1 Book) is different from their initial prediction of 12 CDs + 1 Book vs 1 CD (to be despatched 1 day later) - all this after I'd picked the "free" option of "Super Saver Delivery" ("group my purchases into as few deliveries as possible"). It's just the 2 hour gap between notification of 2 different deliveries with 2 different couriers from the (I still reckon) same depot suggests the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.......   Like I said, it's not really that important, so please no replies along the lines of "get a life" - I don't lie awake at night worrying about this -  - but if anyone else is bugged by these little mysteries & has any ideas........

Amazon do not make the goods themselves ... they order them from other merchants. And I'm pretty sure that they don't have a "warehouse". That is way too expensive. Instead they have agreements with their suppliers ... that's how they know when they'll be able to ship the goods. If it says "24 hours" that means that they can get the supplier to ship the item within that interval.

I figured that might be a possible excuse - if not explanation

Edited by crimson thing - May 28 2006 at 07:36

They send them in whatever way is most efficient (meaning: least expensive) for them. Maybe the CDs are being shipped from different suppliers ... or they simply have an efficient way of sending shippments containing a small number of CDs per Royal Mail, and must use DHL for books (heavy goods).