Well, maybe we need a "delivery neutrality law" as well. In Germany it's the same story, DHL treats Amazon packages with utmost care and always delivers them on time, while anything else gets deprioritized. Guess the delivery companies don't have much choice here as Amazon packages make up 20-30 % of their parcel business now (at least in Germany), especially since Amazon is building up their own logistics in larger cities to compete with them.
First of all, any people outside Germany need to know that "DHL" in Germany refers to the regular parcel post of the former German national post. What other countries outside Germany call "DHL" is actually called "DHL Express" in Germany and they are a separate subsidiary of Deutsche Post World Net. They have their own fleet of delivery cars and also local parcel depots.
Secondly, it's important to note that in Germany, Deutsche Post DHL delivers 95% of all packages within Germany on the next day. This means, that your insinuation that non-Amazon packages are not delivered fast is untrue.
And, thirdly, Amazon pays for their packages being prioritized. Amazon calls this delivery service "Amazon Prime", at DHL, these packages are internally called "PRIO" (it's also on the label) and Amazon actually pays for that. Other types of packages include "VIP" which is used for packages with valuable content.
And since Amazon pays your the prioritization of their packages, every other customer can do that as well with DHL guaranteeing that your package gets delivered on the next day.
However, since 95% of all DHL standard packages in Germany are delivered on the next day anyway, most customers aren't using this particular service. There is simply no gain since a standard parcel ("Paket" as compared to the even cheaper "Päckchen") already comes with tracking and insurance up to 500 Euros.
Please keep in mind that in the US, regular packages take 2-3 days which is why choosing priority shipment in the US makes a huge difference as compared to when ordering from Amazon Germany.
That's rather harsh. The DHL "PRIO" sevice was explicitly created for Amazon and later opened to other larger customers like Zalando, but it's nothing I can buy as a private person or even small online retailer. I think your 95 % next day delivery rate is actually the value that DHL promises to PRIO customers (https://www.dhl.de/content/dam/images/pdf/GK/dhl-paket-prio-... - they mention up to 97%), as regular parcels don't have a guaranteed delivery time.
So to recap, DHL has created a specific service that it offered exclusively to Amazon (and now a few other retail giants) which prioritizes their packages. I can't buy that service as a regular Joe or small retailer, so my stuff gets deprioritized as compared to Amazon. In my personal experience I have witnessed that many times when sending or receiving packages, as my stuff from Amazon always arrives on time while my own packages take days or (in rare cases) even weeks to get delivered.
And to add to what you said, except bigger packages (things like TVs) for over 2 years most of the normal Amazon packages (could be only in the bigger cities) are going through some Amazon sub-contractors or whatever they call Amazon Logistics.
> Secondly, it's important to note that in Germany, Deutsche Post DHL delivers 95% of all packages within Germany on the next day.
Maybe DHL claims to have attempted a delivery for 95% of packages within a day (even that does not match my experience, average is more like 2+ business days) but that doesn't mean that the package was delivered or that a delivery was attempted.
I have had DHL claim to attempt delivery while I was home waiting for the package. No one rang the doorbell that day. No, this hasn't been a single occurence. Yes I have complained. No, this hasn't stopped happening.
I have had DHL send back international packages because they supposedly had made one delivery attempt (with no notification left behind) and then given up.
I have had DHL lose packages for months, only delivering after complaints and with no explanation of what had gone wrong.
Every international package I received had detailed online tracking until the moment it reached Germany where all updates stop until the package is delivered (if it is delivered).
DHL stopped making multiple delivery attempts for most packages and instead of stashing the packages at the Postfiliale around the corner they send all undelivered pacakges for the city to one or two places, causing literally hour long queues of people trying to get their stuff (not to mention the wasted time getting there in the first place).
I have had DHL claim a package was dropped of at a Postfiliale only to have the people there not find any records of the package even days later. And worse, they didn't launch an internal investigation but just directed me to the public DHL service hotline which is good for only one thing and that is wasting your time.
DHL / Deutsche Post is complete garbage and badly needs oversight that actually holds them accountable.
The idea of paying for a superior level of service is exactly what net neutrality is supposed to prohibit, so your response just kinda lends credibility to the parent comments analogy.
Service tiers make total sense for mail, even under a "neutral" system. Sometimes people need, for example, guaranteed next day delivery. So, if Amazon wants to pay extra for that service tier like everyone else ... what's the problem?
The real issue is if Amazon gets that service at a discounted rate. They probably do, and I can see arguments for why we wouldn't want them to be able to. But I can't see arguments against service tiers.
Besides, service tiers exist under net neutrality. I can choose to buy a 1Mbps connection, or a 1Gbps connection. The latter gives me a clear advantage. Yet that's allowed under net neutrality because _anyone_ can buy those tiers of service.
Every reason that mail service tiers make sense can be applied to net neutrality too. VOIP, streaming media, multiplayer video games all “need” a much better QoS than say browsing a web page, or downloading a torrent does.
Anybody who wishes to compete with Amazon will also have to pay additional fees to offer an equivalent service, and if high QoS delivery channels become over-subscribed, prices for them will increase. Further discriminating against competition.
> So, if Amazon wants to pay extra for that service tier like everyone else ... what's the problem?
What’s the problem with an ISP creating a seperate QoS tier for people who require it, and charging more for it? It’s exactly the same thing.
> Every reason that mail service tiers make sense can be applied to net neutrality too. VOIP, streaming media, multiplayer video games all “need” a much better QoS than say browsing a web page, or downloading a torrent does.
That's a pretty good argument against net neutrality. It's a bad argument against service tiers for mail.
Not really. It is more akin to paying more monthly for more GB of internet per month or paying more for faster internet.
Net neutrality is supposed to prohibit a company from slowing down a competitor or slowing down things the company disagrees with - so, for example, Comcast shouldn't be slowing down Netflix. For the post office, this would be prioritizing packages from one carrier in the same class of mail over another. Now, there is no saying that the mail is neutral, though, nor that the contracts allow them to be (I really don't know: Maybe they need to prioritize just to keep from having fees that bankrupt them).
If net neutrality is supposed to prevent paying for a superior level of service from the provider you directly contract with, somebody should crack down on all the internet providers that offer different bandwidth/priority for different prices.
There’s not an analogue in this instance for the two sides of a network connection; DHL picks up the packages and drops them off. If you want to argue against price discrimination in general, you’re going to need a stronger argument than an analogy to net neutrality.
And Amazon experimented (or is still experimenting) with building a logistics company to no longer depend on DHL. In the past i got sometimes packages delivered by „Amazon Logistics“ employees.
Do you mean actual Amazon Logistics branded vehicles?
Where I am Amazon seem to use an independent contractor, and they're brilliant. It's always one of a couple of people I recognise, they have a nice van branded as their own company. It's a great service.
Amazon uses multiple delivery companies in Germany, including their own Amazon Logistics, Hermes, DHL standard, DHL Express, UPS, Pin AG and Deutsche Post Letter.
It usually depends on the location of the recipient.
My understanding is that the infrastructure for Amazon Logistics was added to help scale for the weekend Prime deliveries and Christmas/Black Friday season. But I guess just like AWS was born out of Amazon building internal redundancy for scalability of their compute, Amazon Logistics is paving their way towards being more independent with shipping
I think this is the norm in Canada. I’m getting all of my packages from a third party logistics company. A small local operation. This is in a major central city.
That’s probably because Canada Post is just so terrible and expensive here that it’s worth it.
Amazon being able to cut deals with the delivery companies themselves seems... fine? Like I'm not in the habit of advocating things be easier for giant corporations, but it's whatever.
However, giving them a better deal than a regular citizen with a nationalized service is just bullshit.
Bulk discounted presorted shipping is a thing for everyone technically - junkmailers have been doing it before before Bezos was born. It is a matter of baked in fixed transaction costs. In addition to sparing the back end sorting costs they would rather get 1 order of 1000 to process than 1000 orders of 1. Most would rather not bother with the overhead of say a 17 cent checkout fee to pay for groceries and just have it baked in the prices.
Providing a level playing field for non-Amazon sellers is extremely important for the economy. Amazon is approaching monopoly or near-monopoly on many things, and getting preferential treatment from logistics companies will only accelerate that.
What the original OP said about German parcel services was wrong anyway. Even standard DHL packages in Germany are delivered the next day 95% of the cases.
It's just that Amazon pays DHL extra money that they guarantee next day delivery. It's just that Amazon can tell their customers that the shipment will arrive on a certain date.
However, as I said, since 95% of DHL standard packages arrive on the next day in Germany anyway, there is no point trying to scandalize Amazon's prioritized treatment (which they also pay for, btw).
Source: A close family member of mine works at DHL Germany so I have some insight on their business.
The crazy part is that their special Amazon tariffs seem to not really cover costs, so individual package delivery goes up in price instead.
Amazon might make up 20-30% of volume, but they also pay only 20-30% of the normal price for delivery. Which is crazy when you consider that most of the cost for delivery comes from the actual delivery to your door. That doesn't magically scale and get cheaper per unit because Amazon hands over a large amount of packages.
Mail delivery, like many internet services, has very nice economies of scale. Once you are paying the setup cost for someone to go to every door every day, the marginal cost of adding one more package is not high. So USPS can probably offer any particular mail-sender very low rates and justify them with the idea that the revenue exceeds their marginal cost to deliver (though if they offer everyone such low rates they won't be covering their true overall costs).
Like all other "neutrality" laws, this would be fundamentally anti-free-market, anti-consumer-preference, and pretty dumb. The USPS should give people what they want, otherwise the other delivery companies will put the USPS out of business.
If that happens, there will not be any delivery company that is required to bring mail to everyone, no matter where they live. Let's give the USPS the ability to survive so people in rural areas can still get mail.
