Since I work for Amazon, you can take this whole post with a grain of salt (I’m biased toward my employer), but even still…it’s hard for an objective person to not look at this situation with Target and think “This is the way it should work”.
I needed to order some paper for our printer, and when I look on Amazon the options and prices were a bit lacking. I jumped over to Target.com, and found some recycled paper at a good price. I needed to hit $35 to get free shipping, so I bought three packs of paper (which will last a long while), but I was still short of $35 and didn’t want a fourth pack.
So, I purchased some liquid water enhancers, five in total. There was only the free shipping option, so I paid and went about my day. What I expected to happen was to get a single box in a few days with everything in it. The next few days were truly odd as I watched what Target did with my order.
- They sent four shipments in total, one of which had a single water enhancer in it, two of which had two each. Did they think this was insulin for a diabetes patient and someone would die if they wanted to bundle all the water enhancers in a single shipment?
- The shipments arrived across four different days, so this wasn’t simply a matter of illogical packaging.
- The emails. THE EMAILS! Does Target’s email team get paid by the email? 😱 Three emails per shipment = 12 total emails plus the original order email. Do I need to have an “your order will arrive today” email plus the email I get when it’s delivered? No, I do not.
- The three reams of paper coming in a single box was the only logical part about this order.
I know that now and then Amazon will do something bizarre with a shipment, such as shipping a single small item in a large box. But overall, nothing can touch the lunacy of Target’s wasted shipping and packaging, let alone their almost-spam level of customer emails.
