Recently online businesses are taking much longer to ship their products. It's not just Amazon, the behavior is endemic to the whole of internet retail, at least as far as large companies go. For a while I thought the cause was deliberate delays intended to squeeze customers to pay for faster "shipping", actually meaning faster processing. But I just had what is, to me, an epiphany. They're not delaying shipment because they want to squeeze the customer, they just don't have the product yet. Through vertically integrated supply chains and with decreasing inventory sizes they're saving huge amounts of money. At the expense of customer satisfaction. When you order a product recently the order bumps a huge automated supply chain. All the way from raw material through sub-assemblies, to the finished product. It used to be that there was more than enough inventory in each part of the system to immediately supply it. But now any part of that supply chain is liable to not have the thing Now. Maybe it's an hour for a breadboard and way down the line another hour for three gears.
Whatever the cause, while they're not making each order as it's ordered they're still squeezing every bit of flexibility out of their supply. They're making up for an inability to anticipate demand by making demand wait for them. It's just that they're able to catch up fast enough that most people don't notice. It's a 'managed dissatisfaction" thing.
So just remember when you order a widget, that widget, the one destined for you, hasn't actually been made yet. The ones "in stock" have already been ordered. And when they print that label so they can pretend it's been shipped it's one of several delaying tactics designed to hide deliberate slowness.
tldr; Amazon lie. Amazon say have arrow but not make arrow yet.
Recently online businesses are taking much longer to ship their products. It's not just Amazon, the behavior is endemic to the whole of internet retail, at least as far as large companies go. For a while I thought the cause was deliberate delays intended to squeeze customers to pay for faster "shipping", actually meaning faster processing. But I just had what is, to me, an epiphany. They're not delaying shipment because they want to squeeze the customer, they just don't have the product yet. Through vertically integrated supply chains and with decreasing inventory sizes they're saving huge amounts of money. At the expense of customer satisfaction. When you order a product recently the order bumps a huge automated supply chain. All the way from raw material through sub-assemblies, to the finished product. It used to be that there was more than enough inventory in each part of the system to immediately supply it. But now any part of that supply chain is liable to not have the thing Now. Maybe it's an hour for a breadboard and way down the line another hour for three gears.
Whatever the cause, while they're not making each order as it's ordered they're still squeezing every bit of flexibility out of their supply. They're making up for an inability to anticipate demand by making demand wait for them. It's just that they're able to catch up fast enough that most people don't notice. It's a 'managed dissatisfaction" thing.
So just remember when you order a widget, that widget, the one destined for you, hasn't actually been made yet. The ones "in stock" have already been ordered. And when they print that label so they can pretend it's been shipped it's one of several delaying tactics designed to hide deliberate slowness.
tldr; Amazon lie. Amazon say have arrow but not make arrow yet.
(post is archived)