You finished all of your deliveries ahead of schedule and already see the earnings posted to your app – great day, what could go wrong? Well, it turns out that one of your customers reported that they did not receive the package that you were in charge of delivering.
When this happens, the best case scenario for you is that after a lengthy explanation, Amazon accepts that the driver did nothing wrong based on the circumstances, but a worst case scenario is that after repeated reports of undelivered packages, your Amazon Flex account may get terminated. The best approach is to make sure that there are as few opportunities as possible for a customer to report a missing delivery.
Make sure unattended deliveries are delivered to the right house
If it is an unattended delivery, double check that you are at the correct address. You might assume that you have the correct address based on your GPS or expert navigation skills, but some streets can be named in a confusing way (Maple Street vs Maple Lane), or apartment numbers that are not necessarily intuitive. One quick way to do a sanity check is to to confirm that the Amazon Flex app’s GPS location matches the delivery location. The inn-app GPS navigation leaves much to be desired, but it can be a useful tool to make sure the address you typed into Google Maps or Waze did not contain a typo, since the destination information is coded directly into your Amazon Flex app by the system.
Follow customer instructions carefully
Sometimes customer instructions to leave the package in a particular spot can be vague. After all, it isn’t the easiest thing to describe specific instructions like “behind the bushes to the left after entering the front gate” to someone who has never been to the house. When in doubt, call the customer or Amazon Flex support. You cannot receive derogatory marks for calling in too many times, but you can for incorrect assumptions that result in lost packages! Usually customer instructions make sense once you arrive, but if they don’t, this might also be a sign that you are not at the correct location at all (see above)!
Check that you have handed over all packages in a delivery
Double check with the customer after handing over all of the packages that this covers the entire order. They might not know for sure, but they should have a general idea of how many things they ordered. You may have scanned the package before stepping out of your car, but forgot to hand it to the customer, in which case the app will not know.
When in doubt, call the support line and/or return to the warehouse
It can be tempting to leave a package at the recipient’s door when you are unable to find them, as going back to the Amazon warehouse would add another stop to your route. But remember that this is against Amazon Flex instructions and will cause more headaches for you in the long run.
