Delivery services are the weak link.
One thing we will not see in 2014 is Amazon delivering packages using drones. The online shopping giant certainly caught our attention last month when it unveiled its demo of the small craft collecting a package from the Amazon distribution centre and flying it to a customer’s driveway– less than 30 minutes from order placement If you have not seen it, search YouTube with ‘Amazon Octocopter’ for an amazing sight. The customer in question, however, appeared to live in a reasonably isolated and sunny spot on the Great Plains. The surrounding area looked completely flat, not a neighbour in sight. There were no huge trees the drone needed to dodge and no one lurking below to take potshots at it or run over and take the package before the householder got to it.
Can one imagine delivery by drone to Solihull’s tree line avenues, Birmingham’s terraced street or Warwickshire’s remote farmhouses, especially in the sort of wet and windy weather we have enjoyed recently?
Something needs to be done to improve online shopping delivery services that they are the weak link in the chain. Horror stories from the pre-Christmas rush abound, like a package with glass contents being thrown over gates into a front garden and county as delivered, job done!
Personally, I thought I was being clever, opting for delivery of a package to my business address, rather than home. When it did not show up, the tracking records showed one attempt to deliver, at 9 PM when the office was locked up.
My choices then were a trip to Coventry to collect it all pay more. No wonder the big online shopping growth area is ‘Click and Collect’!
