Amazon has termed the claims made by consulting firm ShipMatrix “inaccurate.” ShipMatrix claims that Amazon’s on-time delivery rates had fallen to 93.7% in the week ending December 7 compared to 98.2% during the previous week, which also included Thanksgiving.
Amazon spokeswoman Rena Lunak admitted that some deliveries were delayed due to bad weather but asserted that the company had regained control of the situation.
The on-time delivery rate for Amazon van drivers is important because they account for the major chunk of deliveries of Amazon products.
Amazon charges its Prime users $119 per year with free delivery within 1 or 2 days. It said in April that it would spend $800M to cut delivery times from 2 days to 1 for them. Its network of van drivers is expected to deliver 275M packages this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which is double that in 2018. Analysts have warned that Amazon’s delivery times leave very little room for error and failure to meet the deadlines.
ShipMatrix President Satish Jindel has pointed out that other carriers like UPS, FedEx transfer Amazon products by air over long distances, but still, their on-time delivery rates are similar to that of Amazon van drivers. Thus, just bad weather cannot be alone held responsible for the drop in on-time delivery rates. Satish said that as Amazon is a retailer, supplier and delivery firm the company might be facing problems in fulfilling the rush of orders in the festive season. In other words, it may be blaming the weather for covering up its failures in fulfilling orders on time.
Amazon began its involvement in the delivery of goods after a massive upswing in orders in 2013 which had caused a breakdown in its supply chain. This resulted in delayed delivery of products and upset the customers. Amazon’s logistics unit has many warehouses, almost 50 planes on lease and 30,000 delivery vans.
