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The Amazon at night

OK, not “The Amazon”, but Amazon.com.

I just got email notification that my order has shipped.  At a quarter to ten.  P.M.  On a Sunday.  What sort of crazy deal does Amazon have with UPS, anyway?

Serious question.  Anyone know?  They have to be sending thousand of tons — more — of stuff a year to all over the globe with this carrier.  UPS must be wetting itself.  What’s it offering?  24/7 pickups, huge price breaks, what?  There has to be something screwy going on for Amazon Prime to be profitable, for instance (Two day shipping, for free, on anything, for $70 per year?  It can’t all be the Costco/Health Club algorithm of “they’ll pay but not use”, can it?)

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:49:36 -0600
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18 Responses to “The Amazon at night”

  1. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Track.  Let’s see what time UPS reports getting it in their hot little hands.

  2. Amal Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    I suspect that “shipped” means they sent notification to UPS.
    I love Amazon.com. They’ve been so good to me. I did about 75% of my Christmas shopping there last year. I had a problem with one shipment (out of about 12) and they shipped another one to me with a faster shipping method and without any difficulty.

  3. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    The absolutely precious lyrics of Amazon’s Christmas TV spot December of 1999 or 2000 seem to have disappeared from collective memory (they’re nowhere on Google).  They’re worth remembering:

    Minnesota’s got a lot of snow
    There’s a lot of potatoes in Idaho
    Boston’s got a lot of baked beans
    There’s a whole lot of bowling in Bowling Green

    But no one’s got a lot of a lot of things
    Like Amazon’s got a lot of books and DVDs
    Toys, electronics and tools
    Like Chinese poker’s got a lot of rules:
    Amazon.com’s got a lot!

  4. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    And yeah, Amal, it looks like that’s what “shipped” means, that UPS were notified.  Still, interesting that they’re packing orders in the middle of the night.

  5. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 7:16 am

    You don’t think anyone could possibly have complained about the song lyrics, do you?

  6. Amal Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    I suppose it’s a good sign of how their business is doing if they need to be packing up orders in the middle of the night.

    Your item is still in SC right now. I am interested to see how they manage to get it to your door by tomorrow!

    Despite the volume of business that comes through there, Amazon still has some of the best customer service in my experience. I wish Dell would take a lesson from that.

  7. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Yeah, weird, that.  They flew it from Tennessee to South Carolina?

  8. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    OK, that’s pretty cool (let’s see if it will let me paste): 

     LONG BEACH, CA,  US 	01/29/2008 	6:30 P.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN

 WEST COLUMBIA, SC,  US 	01/29/2008 	3:59 P.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
	01/29/2008 	12:50 P.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN

    5.5 hours warehouse to warehouse, across the continent!

  9. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    Origin Scan, Arrival Scan, and Departure Scan all make sense.  What’s a Destination Scan?  It’s not the same as delivery.  Maybe it means arrival to the final warehouse, the one from which the truck will be sent in the morning?

  10. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Here’s another one.  Why do I find tracking so exciting?

  11. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    And if Louisville’s a hub, as the second one implies, why did the first one not go there from Nashville?

  12. Dave (Site Brother) Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 6:20 am

    A note about the lyrics:

    Think about how far we [humans, that is] have come.

    We have constant access to so almost all of the information that has ever existed that we’re now *surprised* when a single bit of it isn’t there.

    I like that.

  13. Dave (Site Brother) Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    “So Almost?” Isn’t that… like… an Ani Difranco song?

  14. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 12:47 am

    And why did this one make a stop in Cerritos, while this one go straight through?  Just speed of service?  It surely didn’t add an extra day.  Is it ad hoc?  Some days they have enough packages to truck from Long Beach to Baldwin Park (31 miles), some days they sub-hub in Cerritos (17 miles) and then truck to Baldwin Park (22 miles, for a total of 37 miles, or six extra miles)?

    Please do your own metric conversions, I’m going to bed.

  15. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Quick, what’s 17 + 22?  Just to prove you’re not a spambot.

    I must have really been tired.  There’s either a transcription error or an addition error there…

  16. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Awesome.  Anyone ever put a logging GPS tracker into a box and send it through a parcel carrier?  I wonder if it would ever get reception to log its position.  I’d love to see the map it makes.  Maybe the successor to GPS, which will presumably not need LoS?

  17. Joshua (Site Owner) Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    The first one, for posterity, or if someone is doing a  reverse-engineering study of UPS.

  18. mcgees.org » Blog Archive » Amazon/UPS Deal Says:
    February 25th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    […] so, Amazon, yeah?  As discussed previously, Amazon apparently have some sweetheart (but non-exclusive) deal with UPS.  I verified this […]

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