How Amazon UK will lose business - and the stupidity of Royal Mail privatisation

Last week I ordered something off Amazon for my son - £50's worth - not too much - however, it was a pass through to an Amazon supplier, who then passed delivery through to one of the new private delivery companies, City Link, rather than using the Royal Mail.

Well...one week later, two attempts to get them to deliver on the day scheduled rather than a random day (hello...people work during the day and aren't at home) and it turns out I have to now go across town (London) to pick it up as in theory I have run out of allowances to have it delivered. One upset son, and after N bounces around a Customer Unhelp system in ACD meltdown, one infuriated father.

This is the second time we've been through an Amazon affiliate who has used these people, and the second time I've had to waste a lot of my time finally getting CityLink to step up to the mark.

Two strategic lessons:

(i) The attempt to create competition in Mail in the UK by opening the delivery market has clearly created an industry of low cost, low quality cowboys who are cherry picking the high volume urban routes, and undercutting services to the bone - leaving the Royal Mail trying to fund the mandatory deliveries to the Outer Hebrides while being scraped in the cities. This is not in the customer's interests - if the Royal Mail can't deliver and put the parcel in their depot, for most people its a short car ride to get it, not schlep across town after X hours on the phone dealing with people who clearly are not geared up to serve frustrated suck....customers.

Net net is that good delivery businesses are driven out, Royal Mail has to close down other services that are useful to customers (like post offices), cowboys selling crap services win, and total loss of benefit to end customer initially - but then also to the mail order businesses that use the CityLinks of this world, as - based on my experience anyway - people will be less and less willing to buy bulkier goods that can't come from a reliable source, and if they can't specify it they will go somewhere else.

(ii) Risk for Amazon - I am now - after the second time with this experience - rethinking what I buy through Amazon, as I don't want a 3rd repeat of buying stuff through an affiliate who then palms off delivery on a Cheap n Nasty service. I think they will need to (a) vet their affiliates delivery policies and probably (b) allow me to have greater control of specifying what I want than currently. In other words, they will need to take more control, or risk:

- parts of their extended business model withering away due to its unreliability

- the sh*t sticking to them - I am now sufficiently angry with the whole supply chain, and suspect that Amazon has over-extended itself in the pursuit of growth, to start to be more wary of someone I once loved and trusted. I'm blogging about it, so it enters the whole viral word of mouth chain, and I suspect I am far from alone.

The whole online shopping / shipping game is based on trusted, reliable physical delivery, and if that falters then the shock waves up the chain will be fairly hig impact.

( I was typing this while on the various ACD systems, I finally reached a harassed service rep, who has promised delivery tomorrow - we shall see.... )