How Amazon is failing to do business well in states like Himachal and breaking trust of fellow Himachalis in online shopping

 

Some time back I shared some of my experience with Amazon shopping here and these stories are about worrisome delivery system of Amazon India. After sharing these stories, I had few more bad experiences but I sort of gave up. Today similar story repeated and I am more worried because this is another essential stuff I wanted to deliver to my parents in Himachal and this delivery is at risk. And I see a pattern here and thought of sharing how Amazon delivery system is broken in rural India like majority of Himachal Pradesh. So here goes another Amazon story this weekend. 

Let me start with some key things which may be familiar to many Himachalis when they order from Amazon :

1. You receive a call from delivery boy and he insists to pick the package from a location which can be 1-5 kilometers ways from your address (the address Amazon accepted and promised to deliver). This not only happen with folks who don't have their homes near road but also with families who live right on the road-side. Is it relatable? 

2. Now if you say that it's not possible for you to come to the mentioned location and you are fine with delivery on some other day - the Delivery boy will also promise that delivery will be done in 2-3 days by giving a reason like he is going in different direction now. 

3. After above 2, this delivery boy will mention delivery attempted status in the system. If you will reach customer care, they will assure you to not worry and package will be delivered. 

4. You will relax after assurance from Amazon customer-care and will realise soon that package will never reach you. 

There is higher probability that you have encountered at least 1 of above 4 things, but I have experience all 4 once in the past and second experience is on it's way. For current delivery, I have least hope that it will reach my parents so already figuring out at alternate. 

Now that's about a standard experience I am having with deliveries to my Himachal House, but I see certain benefits of it. 

A. First biggest benefit is that rural India will rely more on shopping in brick and mortar stores instead of online shopping. So Amazon can continue to break trust of it's customers and that will make these people more confident to not rely on online shopping platforms but local businesses. 

B. Hopefully this can also lead to healthy competition on service side. Players like Flipkart can probably do better job and attract these customers toward them. This is something I am going to try now.

Thanks Amazon for pushing me to write this blogpost during this weekend. I was certainly struggling to write new post on the blog for few weeks now.