Amazon solves wait-at-home-for-deliveries problem Amazon is planning to roll out digital lockers in the UK, so people with busy schedules can go to pick up their online purchases instead of taking the day off work to wait for the postman. The first of these 'click-and-collect' points will be at the One New Change shopping centre in London, Retail Week reported. Apparently …
how about a "feature" whereby someone gets a digital locker key for their birthday/Xmas, and have the fun of the visit to find out what there goodies are. I bet there are people that would pay *extra* for that ... of course you wouldn't call it customer collection, you'd call it the "Surprise Experience"
I very rarely arrange for anything to be delivered to my work address. In very large companies (such as the one I work for), things can very easily get lost between the mailroom and your desk. In fact, this has happened today with a router we've ordered that's been delivered to the company but hasn't found its way to our department.
Home delivery is equally a nightmare, especially when Parcelfarce don't put a card through the door to say that they've attempted a delivery - this happened to me on Monday.
I'd much prefer online purchases to be delivered to secure drop-boxes such as these, so that I can pick them up after work or at weekends.
As my username suggests, I work in a big building with Amazon written on the side. Can I get stuff delivered to my work? Hell no. Around Christmas we'll have a couple of thousand staff on site- can you imagine the chaos if 10% of us got our Christmas shopping delivered?
This idea is great- hoping Tesco get involved as a locker location. It'd be a godsend to shift workers.
When I worked for a software company that got took over by a large blue corporation, I continued to get parts for the car I was restoring delivered to work, including an exhaust and a door (which someone signed for but I had to return as DHL managed to dent every corner of it) .
Much raised eyebrows from the 'takeover integration team' corporate management, but the local management thought nothing of it.
Deliveries to work are much better than the likes of HDNL/DHL throwing your parcels over the 6 foot fence / into a recycling bin on recycling day.
I've noticed the local Mace (convenience store chain) have a feature called Collect+ where you can send and receive parcels from the shop!
... I can see the big supermarkets actually signing up for this. You get to collect you goods when you want. Amazon get to practically eliminate shipping costs, and the supermarkets get a boost in footfall - especially if they can connect the cost of the locker, to a customer with a spend over £10 (similar to car-parking in some supermarkets today).
It's actually quite green, if the journey to collect the goodies, is a journey that the customer would have undertaken anyway.
I have been a big fan of Amazon since the 1990s ... they just keep doing things right,.
I broadly agree, aside from the Kindle, which is about as wrong as it can get (from a consumer standpoint). It locks in users, restricts their choice of content, publishers, and prices to only those that Amazon sell.
Think iTunes for books, and that is bad, especially since there are some excellent EPUB readers out there not getting a look-in due to Amazons loss-leader marketing, where they sell the hardware at a loss, and then rape you forever more over ebook pricing.
I have one, I love it.. the hardware is excellent, I agree with you in regards to EPUB support; shouldn't be missing! :(
As for ebook pricing, several of my colleagues are based in the UK but come from other places such as sweden.. and the ones that haven't gone over to reading their books in english yet seem pretty happy with buying their books from back home in mobi format (or converting into mobi for some of the smaller e-bookshops). Amazon might have a stranglehold on 'their' bookshop, but it is trivial to get books from outside the amazon ecosystem onto the kindle :)
While it's true that the kindle locks you in to using the .mobi format, it does not mean that you are locked into only buying books from Amazon. There are a number of ebook resellers that sell books in the .mobi format. fictionwise.com being one.
There are also a number of free programs that will convert DRM free epub books to the .mobi format such as calbre.
What amazon have done though is make it simpler to buy books on amazon and have them pushed directly to your Kindle effectivly encouraging you to buy from them. It is down to you whether it is worth the hassle of buying from someone else and having to manually transfer the purchase to your Kindle for the cost saving.
You don't have to use the kindle store to get books on the kindle. You can put books on the device through the usb cable or for the cable phobic you can browse the web on the device and download from any store that provides mobi. I use o'reilly for my technical books. If you have an account with them you can go to oreilly.com/e log in and get your books straight on the device. Then later get the pdf version on your computer, or the epub on your android etc
With the 50% off deals they keep sending me and how easy it is to buy it gets addicting... So far I have been clean for a week
Although locked into the Amazon store for online purchases (which I agree is a bit too Apple for my liking) .MOBI and .EPUB files can be converted using tools like Calibre and work perfectly. She's found that the Amazon store prices are very competitive and hasn't found any author that hasn't been available yet. I think that Amazon are doing a great job in raising awareness of ebook readers that people otherwise would never have considered looking into.
in the UK is dictated by the PUBLISHER, not the retailer. I queried Amazon a while back, about an e-book that was £2 *more* than the dead tree version (plus VAT). I had a well worded reply which basically said "we'd love to sell it at a more competive price, and agree the e-version should be cheaper than the physical copy. Unfortunately prices are set by the publishers under the Retail Book Pricing agreement. If you continue to feel strongly, may we suggest you contact them" (I paraphrase).
So direct your ire at the right people ....
...of onliine shopping? Maybe I'm unique, but my take on online shopping is it's generally cheaper, and (if you buy from a half decent merchant - Amazon are half decent) you know you have the availability. It's a right pain in the arse going to a shop to find they don't have what you want.
Personally (I work in mail order/ecommerce) this sounds great. It's certainly got more legs than that daft idea of secure boxes outside peoples' homes.
Since many years you can get such "delivery to convenient points" in Belgium and Holland, typically for Amazon-like deliveries (no Amazon.be or .nl --> Bol.com and similar local competitors). They give you a list of possible delivery points nearby: gas station shops (often 24/7), convenience stores, newsagents, ... . There's no need for lockers, except if you've become hyperallergic to human contact -- the shopkeeper has it in the back with other stuff not on display; it's as secure as any other mail in transit and as long as you don't countersign you can prove you haven't received anything (safer than leaving on doorsteps or handing it to neighbours).
A few years ago it was in the order of 2000-3000 options, sufficiently dense in the urban and suburban regions. In the end no different from picking up your specially-ordered mags at the newsagents, saving a needless trip to the PO queue on the one post-17h-opening eve, especially if your employer has a problem with using their offices for private deliveries.
http://www2.postoffice.co.uk/letters-parcels/receiving-letters-parcels/redirection-options/poste-restante
they also have "local collect" - http://www2.postoffice.co.uk/letters-parcels/receiving-letters-parcels/royal-mail-local-collect
Not so clever or cheap(?) as the one-time PO Box idea but still an option.
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If only the Post Office had any sort of imagination they wouldn't be in the hole they are now.
For example if a parcel is delivered to my house that requires a signature and I'm not in, generally means a trip to the distribution office across town. Not to the Post Office at the top of my road. Madness.
But then again I've given up on the Post Office, as no matter how many times you tell them, the postman just cant be arsed to deliver my post through my door as presumably there are too many stairs and so delivers it to the flats above instead.
The whole organisation is crap, it either needs to be properly overhauled or scrapped. Don't care which.
Not many post offices around anymore and the buggers are useless at being open outside of working hours. Their depots are ok though, at least I can dive into my nearest one early in the morning to collect a parcel while on my way to work. I actually do pay more and specify the Royal Mail over say Citylink, because their depots are always in the roughest parts of town, miles away from anywhere. Fine when they deliver and you are there, totally crap otherwise though.
This Amazon idea is a great one. I work for a bloody living and can't hang around the house during working hours and getting stuff delivered to the office can be tricky. If they set up these collection points, say in the big supermarket opposite where I work, I can nip there during my lunch break and collect my parcel. Or heck, any location that is on my commute back home will do. Win-Win for both Amazon and myself. For those of us who work and don't have a stay at home/wife/partner/porter etc, these delivery companies make the whole online buying experience more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Yet more and more companies are using them.
My nearest CityLink depot is 20miles away. The cost of going to get the frigging parcel makes a mockery of buying stuff over the internet rather than at a realt shop.
Don't say, 'Get it delivered to your place of work'. Sorry not allowed. Security plus Healf and Safety.
Anyone tried to send a parcel by post office?
Try and find the nearest one near your office that hasn't been closed and actually allows parking (your parcel is in the boot).
Struggle to the back of a busy supermarket with said parcel.
Wait in queue while a gaggle of pensioners order single stamps or use the cashier to get money out of their accounts, because they don't like using ATMs. And have a good natter. And the obligatory person trying to tax their car with an out of date MOT/insurance, arguing with the cashier that the rules don't apply to them.
When you finally get to the cashier, you are presented with an astounding array of options for sending. 1st class? 2nd class? Recorded? Signed for? Parcelfarce? £40 insurance? £100 insurance?
Put it on the scales.
The cashier then tries to input the address in their computer. Unfortunately they are a "hunt the key" typist.
They type in the postcode but because your address is "Acme Ltd, Unit X, Anywhereville Business Park" and Unit X does not appear on their list of address numbers, they are now baffled.
This goes on for about 15 minutes, until the other cashier has finished arguing with the car tax person with the expired documents and types the address in manually.
And because you have wasted your entire lunch hour, you spend the rest of the afternoon cranky, hungry and snacking in between meetings.
Bah humbug.
I'm sure for most people it's easier to let the Post Office fail to deliver, then pop up to the PO depot after work to pick it up rather than traipse 5 miles across London to get your goodies then lug them home!
My local PO, despite being a bit useless does stay open until 7:30pm for pickups,
My local depot opens til 7.30pm one day a week. So once a week you can collect your parcels.
And it is in an awkward place. Surrounded by double yellow lines so you have to run in and out before the traffic warden gets you.
I feel sorry for those who don't drive, as to get to it from my house would involve getting 2 seperate buses.
Here ib Scotland the post man tries to deliver and hands in a card that says I can collect it next day from the SO and not before. On enquiring I find that the PO man actually leaves the sack in the local PO and it gets sent to the SO in the morning. So tough luck if I try to collect it first thing in the morning.
With this alternative drop off idea, the only trouble I can see is that your local PO has little room for hundreds of letters and parcels.
The only way Amazon (or anyone else) can truly solve the deliver-to-home problem is to have their own delivery service. This isn't it. It's just a variation on "your item couldn't be delivered and is at our (delivery partner's) depot" without even the attemped delivery first.
Amazon occasionally experiments with alternative shippers - I have one on my %$#@ list called "esenda" that they occasionally use. Apparently, this is a cottage business where ordinary people deliver the packages in their personal vehicles, and they don't seem to screen them very well, or tell them what acceptable delivery hours are - I had one show up for an office delivery on a Sunday and then cuss me out over the phone for making them trake another trip. Duh, it's an office, nobody's there on a day when we don't expect deliveries!
I am really liking the idea of lockers in 24 hour stores. It avoids the OTHER problem you have with shippers; leaving stuff in public spaces (I once had a delivery left on the sidewalk in front of the house), or it simply being signed for by some random person who "forgets" to tell you it arrived and you have to hunt for it.
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