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galaxyLogic • yesterday at 6:11 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

My issue is buying groceries from Amazon. You have to fill up your cart to > $30 to get a free delivery (in NYC). So you start searching for whatever you might want to include to get the free delivery. But the items like milk can come from

a) Amazon ("proper")

b) Amazon Groceries

c) Amazon Fresh

d) Whole Foods

Each of these have their own "cart" which must have goods > $25 etc. to get a free delivery. If you add an item from another list it does not count, so you must add things which you maybe don't really need just because they come from the same list as milk. Or, you will need to fill up multiple carts.

Then once you reach the threshold for free delivery and make the order, you may, or may not notice an extra line in the total bill: A tip for $5 in very small print which you have to edit away, or it is NOT FREE DELIVERY AFTER ALL, like promised.

What I lament is that Amazon is making me feel guilty for not tipping the delivery person. It is making me take extra action to NOT tip -- I must be a bad person. And it's making delivery people angry at me if I don't include the tip. And Amazon is adding the $5 there always as a default, even though they already said I have earned a free delivery.

It's a transaction between me and Amazon but now Amazon can implicitly blame bad service on the lack of tipping. I assume they would like to not pay their delivery people at all, just let them live on the tips.


Replies

cmoski • today at 4:24 AM

They could pay the delivery drivers a fair wage themselves. Fair wages for everyone is a much better system than a tip based system. But USA doesn't like fairness. See: no decent health care system.