I have delivered thousands of packages through the Amazon Flex program; I am quite well-versed in their policies. There is no such incentive policy to return undeliverable packages as he claims. If you are out making deliveries, and you can’t deliver a package for whatever reason, you mark it as undeliverable in the app and return it to the station after your route is complete. That’s just part of the gig. It sucks because you might have to go out of your way to bring back the packages to the station (using your own gas and time), so the real incentive is to deliver the package, even if it’s risky.
This guy is just a lying thief. There is no such program.
Edit: I should add that Amazon keeps track of your delivery metrics, including the percent that are undelivered/late/reported missing (DNR, did not receive)/etc. If you drop below some threshold you get kicked off the app. You get a weekly email with a summary of your stats. I think I had a couple DNRs out of the thousands of things I delivered, and was paranoid they were going to kick me off for them.
Does Amazon still use OnTrac? I had countless delivery issues with OnTrac when I lived in Tacoma, WA. I'm not even kidding when I say that 50% of the packages never made it and another 20% made it many days after their online status said that they were "delivered". It was truly the shittiest package delivery system I've ever seen. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy worked for OnTrac and that OnTrac did have some kind of incentive which encouraged this.
I would have had more reliable delivery if Amazon simply gave the packages to a meth head on a BMX bike.
OnTrac is the worst, in Palo Alto the Ontrac guys would drop off every single package they had from Amazon at our Apartment Leasing office after they were closed, so you'd often find 5+ packages sitting on the doorfront in the evening, instead of delivering the packages to the apartment locations (which are clearly labeled and very public)
Now in Oregon I ordered winter tires, Ontrac marked them delivered on the delivery date but never actually dropped them off, later and they decided to deliver 4 days later once I complained to the Shipper.
It's all anecdotal but the moment I see anything delivered by Ontrac I just assume it has a 50/50 chance of being actually delivered.
> It's all anecdotal but the moment I see anything delivered by Ontrac I just assume it has a 50/50 chance of being actually delivered.
USPS does this in my area. I'll frequently get packages that are "out for delivery" switch to "delivered" at around 7:30 - 7:45 PM or so. Then they'll show up the next day.
During the past year, I’ve been getting a photograph on my front porch of the package sitting there along with the delivery notification (I live in Washington county Oregon). I assumed everyone was getting these notifications.
I only get those photos when it was delivered by AMZL (Amazon's own delivery service). I don't get photos when it's delivered by USPS, UPS, Fedex or OnTrac.
They still use them although where I live it just seems to be for larger packages. Most stuff is delivered to me by Flex drivers now. I agree, though, they are the absolute worst.
This guy was probably just a Flex driver. I’ve had bad experiences with them, too, but OnTrac is much worse.
This guy is just a lying thief. There is no such program.
Edit: I should add that Amazon keeps track of your delivery metrics, including the percent that are undelivered/late/reported missing (DNR, did not receive)/etc. If you drop below some threshold you get kicked off the app. You get a weekly email with a summary of your stats. I think I had a couple DNRs out of the thousands of things I delivered, and was paranoid they were going to kick me off for them.