soapbox

I’m really curious about how Amazon actually choses to ship things. I placed an order for some big items on Sunday and got an email this morning saying that the largest and heaviest object would be arriving tomorrow thanks to FedEx. Now, this wouldn’t be surprising if I’d paid for overnight shipping, but I’d actually selected the free shipping option.

Datapoint two is a book that Kirsten ordered this summer. She was out in the front yard when a guy in a crappy Chevy Malibu pulled up, hopped out, and just handed her a small package with the book. The label on it said something like “Amazon Courier Service”.

So the question is, how many different shipping options does Amazon actually have and how exactly do they go about optimizing which orders get shipped which way? It is purely a price distinction? Or do they also figure in paperwork/warehouse employee time/any manner of other things?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:17 pm and is filed under companies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.