That is a lot. I've had zero non-deliveries over 10+ years of heavily using Amazon in various cities, states, and countries, including both very safe ones and ones that had a lot of crime. Having...
According to CPBC, Amazon told the regulator that it denied the refund because of suspicions of “return abuse.” The company alleged the customer had claimed refunds for three previous orders in the past year, each time claiming non-delivery.
That is a lot. I've had zero non-deliveries over 10+ years of heavily using Amazon in various cities, states, and countries, including both very safe ones and ones that had a lot of crime. Having four non-deliveries (the three previous + the one in question) in one year is pretty suspicious.
I'd like to point out that your own experience is of course anecdotal. The delivery experience can be different based on a variety of factors. For example, in many locations Amazon doesn't do...
I'd like to point out that your own experience is of course anecdotal. The delivery experience can be different based on a variety of factors. For example, in many locations Amazon doesn't do delivery themselves but has third party companies handle it. Even then, the experience can be wildly different depending on the driver. For example, we also rarely have issues with packages being delivered here. But friends a town over have issues with the same delivery company all the time.
I've heard reports from packages being thrown over fences to packages being thrown into garbage bins by drivers.
And I said we have rarely issues, but that is mostly because I work from home and delivery drivers know that. We are living in an apartment complex. Generally speaking, what happens is that a delivery driver will have multiple packages, ring the doorbell of the person they suspect is home, once the central door is buzzed open they will throw all packages inside and mark them delivered. If they are nice enough, they will put the packages on top of the mailboxes. Only one delivery driver actually walks in and comes up to our front door.
Our apartment complex is fairly small with 10 apartments, and we know most of our neighbors. So for us it isn't that big of a deal. But, there are also bigger flats with many more apartments where the same thing happens. Often enough when I take a walk at the end of a day I see some flat hallways being littered with various packages. It doesn't take much for packages to get lost there.
I'd also say you must have been fairly lucky in general. Considering that the term "porch pirate" didn't suddenly pop in existence with no cause. In fact, if this person has one such "pirate" active in their neighborhood, it would perfectly account for multiple packages going missing.
Finally, if it really was that suspicious, the CPBC would likely have ruled differently. What is actually suspicious is Amazon claiming to have proof of delivery and then failing to come up with that proof.
The failing to come up with proof is key here. We frequently order Amazon here in BC, and the delivery guys routinely take photos or ask for signature. Not sure why that wouldn't be the case here...
The failing to come up with proof is key here. We frequently order Amazon here in BC, and the delivery guys routinely take photos or ask for signature. Not sure why that wouldn't be the case here if the drivers weren't shady.
It could be “suspicious” against the customer, it could be a statistical fluke, or it could be a sign of a repeated issue on Amazon’s part: a software issue incorrectly labelling the address, a...
It could be “suspicious” against the customer, it could be a statistical fluke, or it could be a sign of a repeated issue on Amazon’s part: a software issue incorrectly labelling the address, a confusing building layout that new drivers aren’t familiar with, a habit of leaving things in unsafe locations, even a delivery driver taking them.
Surely the onus is on Amazon, who has every means to create proof that they did deliver, to show that the customer is at fault for this “suspicious” pattern? Because it’s just as likely for that suspicion to point right back at Amazon, either through malice or incompetence, and the customer has no means to definitively prove that something wasn’t delivered.
The lack of a delivery photo seems like a big enough oversight to side with the customer by default, and if Amazon already know an account is flagged for “return abuse” they have plenty of options to create additional proof rather than summarily denying refunds. There’s already a mechanism in place to require a one time code for higher value items, they could trivially enable that on any item that would otherwise not be refunded. Hell, they could even make it a click through: “Use a one time code or accept the risk that this is non-refundable even if it doesn’t turn up, your choice” - it’s not great UX, but neither is taking a customer’s money for something that didn’t arrive, so I can only assume that most people with an honest delivery problem would be actively happy to solve it this way.
The lack of a delivery photo is argued by Amazon to be due to respecting privacy of individuals. They do not want to take pictures that depict the package was delivered to a person because then...
The lack of a delivery photo seems like a big enough oversight to side with the customer by default
The lack of a delivery photo is argued by Amazon to be due to respecting privacy of individuals. They do not want to take pictures that depict the package was delivered to a person because then they'd have to have delivery drivers start taking pictures of people. They don't want to do that and I don't want them to do that. A picture of the package on a porch does little more to prove delivery than the GPS data of the package that they supplied to the investigator, so no gains there either. This is Amazon's POV:
During CPBC's investigation, correspondence to the Respondent appeared to suggest photographic proof of delivery or customer identification was required to demonstrate delivery orders under section 49 of the BPCPA. Such requirements would exceed any reasonable interpretation of the BPCPA and would be inconsistent with the Personal Information Protection Act ("PIPA"). In absence of express consent from the recipient, such collection would be unlawful unless justified by another provision. The BPCPA does not require companies to collect personal information of consumers to verify product delivery and Amazon cannot rely on a legal obligation exception under the PIPA to undertake this type of activity.
The investigator determined that Amazon needs to either deliver to the customer with proof (OTP as you suggest) or make it very clear to the customer that purchasing the item may mean delivery to the person that answers the door or leaving it outside. I'm sure Amazon will just add a checkbox or wording somewhere indicating the latter, but what they should do is make having an OTP an option on every order as you suggest.
Link to decision. And this consumer protection agency locked the PDF with DRM so that I can't copy and paste text.
That's a very interesting nuance about the photographic evidence, but I'd say Amazon are weasel wording it a bit - there's a middle ground on the spectrum between "no photo" and "fully...
That's a very interesting nuance about the photographic evidence, but I'd say Amazon are weasel wording it a bit - there's a middle ground on the spectrum between "no photo" and "fully identifiable photo of an individual". I'm not in Canada, so I can't speak for PIPA, but I am in a location subject to GDPR and it's totally standard for delivery drivers to take a photo of the package in the customer's hands or in the doorway if they deliver it directly to a person. They do always take a picture of the package specifically, not the person, which suggests they've probably been trained to do it that way.
Even a photo on the porch does quite a lot - it shows that they got the right house rather than a neighbour who's still within the GPS margin of error, it shows that the driver actually got out of their van rather than just stopping to satisfy the GPS and then driving off because it's cold or rainy or they don't want to bother lifting heavy boxes (this is an actual fight I've been having with a non-Amazon delivery company recently, where I thankfully have video evidence on my side), it shows that they did leave it on the porch rather than "helpfully" hiding it in the recycling bin an hour before it gets emptied or anything like that, it shows that the label they scanned was on a box of the correct approximate size, etc. etc.
Like you rightly say, OTP is the only way to really ensure that a specific person received the package (or at least received a package - even then there are edge cases like a driver handing over three boxes, asking for the code, and the customer not realising the code applied to a fourth box), but a photo rules out almost all honest mistakes. It narrows it down to porch pirates, customer fraud, or driver theft after the photo was taken.
If the picture of the porch did happen, I think this investigator would have been inclined to have made the same decision though. In their opinion, it wasn't sufficient for Amazon to drop it off...
If the picture of the porch did happen, I think this investigator would have been inclined to have made the same decision though. In their opinion, it wasn't sufficient for Amazon to drop it off on the porch (even with picture) or deliver to a third party (with picture) unless Amazon had notified the customer through the terms that that was what constituted delivery. So in this specific case, Amazon likely would not have won with a picture of the package on the porch.
It's interesting you guys have OTP where you are? I've not seen it here in the States, but maybe it also varies by region here.
Yeah, you’re probably right about the legal outcome, and I’m always disappointed (as it sounds like you are too) when “throw it in the 10,000 word T&Cs that nobody will ever see” is given as an...
Yeah, you’re probably right about the legal outcome, and I’m always disappointed (as it sounds like you are too) when “throw it in the 10,000 word T&Cs that nobody will ever see” is given as an acceptable solution.
I was mainly thinking that a photo would help prevent it going as far as the court in the first place - it shows whether it’s a simple mistake and helps the customer fix it, or whether they need to make a police report for theft. I guess I’m also thinking that the absence of a photo points the finger more at Amazon, even if the presence of one wouldn’t definitively absolve them; less from a legal perspective and more just from a “this seems sketchy compared to my personal experience” perspective.
And yeah, they definitely have OTP infrastructure in place here (UK), but it’s only used very rarely. I’ve seen it maybe two or three times ever, and only on high value but physically small electronics (CPUs, large SSDs, but not on a GPU, or a phone, both of which I would have expected to fit that pattern). I’m sure there’s some complex heuristic behind what does/doesn’t get flagged, probably a pretty good one given how much data they have, and I get that it adds a lot of friction so they don’t want to enable it too broadly, but it seems wild that when they also have a “don’t refund this specific order for this specific customer” heuristic, that doesn’t trigger a OTP!
So I had a bin company for 7 years at the house where I previously rented. And one day, they just stopped collecting the bins. They missed every delivery for a period of 2 months. 7 years of...
So I had a bin company for 7 years at the house where I previously rented.
And one day, they just stopped collecting the bins. They missed every delivery for a period of 2 months. 7 years of service up until then and the only previous time they hadn't collected the bins was the one time when the country had it's record levels of snow.
Of course the company's initial response was to deflect. Apparently I mustn't have put the bins out early enough, or put them visible enough or there was an obstruction on the street.
It was only after I insisted on a refund of my annual fee as they had totally stopped providing service (with the implied threat of small claims court) that they bothered to investigate what was going on.
They told me their driver had got out the of the vehicle, gone to the house number 2 doors up from mine and observed no bin. So I went out to that spot, took a photo at that house pointed at mine, and sent it to them to show the bin was clearly visible and at this point out for months straight.
Turns out they'd gotten a new driver who was going down the parallel street with a similar name (XYZ Avenue Vs XYZ road)
I hate it when you get "caught in the machine". They never build robust systems for handling minor failures or edge cases. It's so painful to get some of these companies to have an actual human...
I hate it when you get "caught in the machine". They never build robust systems for handling minor failures or edge cases. It's so painful to get some of these companies to have an actual human look into what's going on.
It’s only happened to me twice. Once my package got lost in the warehouse and never even made it to me. Just vanished into the void as far as I can tell. Fortunately Amazon was pretty forgiving of...
It’s only happened to me twice. Once my package got lost in the warehouse and never even made it to me. Just vanished into the void as far as I can tell. Fortunately Amazon was pretty forgiving of that, since they couldn’t confirm on their end if it was delivered or not.
The second time it happened was through FedEx and was a very clear case of the driver stealing the package. I had it delivered to a UPS store with cameras and staff on site, yet no cameras spotted the driver arriving at the delivery time and no one by the name of Steve or whoever they said it was handed off to worked there or at any of the adjacent businesses.
FedEx still fought the claim tooth and nail since it was “delivered”. Unfortunately, I honestly don’t have a good resolution to that story. I ended up pawning it off to the merchant who issued me a refund and fought FedEx on their end.
My point being, it does happen. I live in a relatively quiet part of Southern California, nowhere particularly noteworthy in terms of crime. I would agree three in a year is suspicious, but it could be a similar case to what happened to me: a rather bold (or stupid) delivery driver marking packages as “delivered” in order to steal them.
I used to decry the fact that companies would delegate decision making to automated systems with no means to escalate to a human for review - I'm actively in favour of automation in general, but...
I used to decry the fact that companies would delegate decision making to automated systems with no means to escalate to a human for review - I'm actively in favour of automation in general, but it seemed insane to me that they'd accept the machine's decision 100% of the time, rather than taking it as a 99% efficiency gain and letting a human correct the 1% of obvious failures when they're flagged.
What I'm seeing that seems much worse recently is the humans sticking just as rigidly to these absurd decisions as the machine would have done. These are all wildly varying in severity, but they seem like the same root problem of rigidity over common sense: just this week there's been guns pulled on a teenager because a bag of doritos was flagged as a gun, a £150 fine for tipping half a cup of coffee down the drain (yes, they relented, but only after two days of internet mockery - they originally doubled down even when contacted by the press), and now an Amazon case that cost $20,000 of lawyer time rather than being a ten second conversation along the lines of "Are we sure that was delivered? Well, there's no photo, so I can't be certain... Right, refund it, what's next".
Amazon can be such a shitshow at times. Luckily we still have a lot of alternatives for online shopping here so I try to avoid it when I can. But, sometimes Amazon is the only place to get a hold...
Amazon can be such a shitshow at times. Luckily we still have a lot of alternatives for online shopping here so I try to avoid it when I can. But, sometimes Amazon is the only place to get a hold of some specific items, other than importing them and dealing with days of shipping and sometimes weeks of customs.
Amazon claiming to have proof of delivery and then being unable to provide that proof reminds me of something else I dealt with the other day. This was an item shipped by Amazon, advertised as available and shipped the next day. I needed two, so did order two. The next day I got a strange mail where it said that the shipping date had changed from March 2026 to December of this year. When I checked the listing, it was still shown as available and next day shipping.
As it turns out, depending on the number of items I selected, the delivery date would jump up. Nowhere near the two months out date I had sitting in my mail, but it would change. My best guess is that if I select 2 it is actually a two pack of that item, shipped from elsewhere. But that is never made clear. To me, it comes across as false advertising or just a complete shit show in their inventory management.
Needless to say that I cancelled my initial order and then place two separate orders for the single item. For which I just got a delivery notification that they will in fact be delivered today.
That is a lot. I've had zero non-deliveries over 10+ years of heavily using Amazon in various cities, states, and countries, including both very safe ones and ones that had a lot of crime. Having four non-deliveries (the three previous + the one in question) in one year is pretty suspicious.
I'd like to point out that your own experience is of course anecdotal. The delivery experience can be different based on a variety of factors. For example, in many locations Amazon doesn't do delivery themselves but has third party companies handle it. Even then, the experience can be wildly different depending on the driver. For example, we also rarely have issues with packages being delivered here. But friends a town over have issues with the same delivery company all the time.
I've heard reports from packages being thrown over fences to packages being thrown into garbage bins by drivers.
And I said we have rarely issues, but that is mostly because I work from home and delivery drivers know that. We are living in an apartment complex. Generally speaking, what happens is that a delivery driver will have multiple packages, ring the doorbell of the person they suspect is home, once the central door is buzzed open they will throw all packages inside and mark them delivered. If they are nice enough, they will put the packages on top of the mailboxes. Only one delivery driver actually walks in and comes up to our front door.
Our apartment complex is fairly small with 10 apartments, and we know most of our neighbors. So for us it isn't that big of a deal. But, there are also bigger flats with many more apartments where the same thing happens. Often enough when I take a walk at the end of a day I see some flat hallways being littered with various packages. It doesn't take much for packages to get lost there.
I'd also say you must have been fairly lucky in general. Considering that the term "porch pirate" didn't suddenly pop in existence with no cause. In fact, if this person has one such "pirate" active in their neighborhood, it would perfectly account for multiple packages going missing.
Finally, if it really was that suspicious, the CPBC would likely have ruled differently. What is actually suspicious is Amazon claiming to have proof of delivery and then failing to come up with that proof.
The failing to come up with proof is key here. We frequently order Amazon here in BC, and the delivery guys routinely take photos or ask for signature. Not sure why that wouldn't be the case here if the drivers weren't shady.
It could be “suspicious” against the customer, it could be a statistical fluke, or it could be a sign of a repeated issue on Amazon’s part: a software issue incorrectly labelling the address, a confusing building layout that new drivers aren’t familiar with, a habit of leaving things in unsafe locations, even a delivery driver taking them.
Surely the onus is on Amazon, who has every means to create proof that they did deliver, to show that the customer is at fault for this “suspicious” pattern? Because it’s just as likely for that suspicion to point right back at Amazon, either through malice or incompetence, and the customer has no means to definitively prove that something wasn’t delivered.
The lack of a delivery photo seems like a big enough oversight to side with the customer by default, and if Amazon already know an account is flagged for “return abuse” they have plenty of options to create additional proof rather than summarily denying refunds. There’s already a mechanism in place to require a one time code for higher value items, they could trivially enable that on any item that would otherwise not be refunded. Hell, they could even make it a click through: “Use a one time code or accept the risk that this is non-refundable even if it doesn’t turn up, your choice” - it’s not great UX, but neither is taking a customer’s money for something that didn’t arrive, so I can only assume that most people with an honest delivery problem would be actively happy to solve it this way.
The lack of a delivery photo is argued by Amazon to be due to respecting privacy of individuals. They do not want to take pictures that depict the package was delivered to a person because then they'd have to have delivery drivers start taking pictures of people. They don't want to do that and I don't want them to do that. A picture of the package on a porch does little more to prove delivery than the GPS data of the package that they supplied to the investigator, so no gains there either. This is Amazon's POV:
The investigator determined that Amazon needs to either deliver to the customer with proof (OTP as you suggest) or make it very clear to the customer that purchasing the item may mean delivery to the person that answers the door or leaving it outside. I'm sure Amazon will just add a checkbox or wording somewhere indicating the latter, but what they should do is make having an OTP an option on every order as you suggest.
Link to decision. And this consumer protection agency locked the PDF with DRM so that I can't copy and paste text.
That's a very interesting nuance about the photographic evidence, but I'd say Amazon are weasel wording it a bit - there's a middle ground on the spectrum between "no photo" and "fully identifiable photo of an individual". I'm not in Canada, so I can't speak for PIPA, but I am in a location subject to GDPR and it's totally standard for delivery drivers to take a photo of the package in the customer's hands or in the doorway if they deliver it directly to a person. They do always take a picture of the package specifically, not the person, which suggests they've probably been trained to do it that way.
Even a photo on the porch does quite a lot - it shows that they got the right house rather than a neighbour who's still within the GPS margin of error, it shows that the driver actually got out of their van rather than just stopping to satisfy the GPS and then driving off because it's cold or rainy or they don't want to bother lifting heavy boxes (this is an actual fight I've been having with a non-Amazon delivery company recently, where I thankfully have video evidence on my side), it shows that they did leave it on the porch rather than "helpfully" hiding it in the recycling bin an hour before it gets emptied or anything like that, it shows that the label they scanned was on a box of the correct approximate size, etc. etc.
Like you rightly say, OTP is the only way to really ensure that a specific person received the package (or at least received a package - even then there are edge cases like a driver handing over three boxes, asking for the code, and the customer not realising the code applied to a fourth box), but a photo rules out almost all honest mistakes. It narrows it down to porch pirates, customer fraud, or driver theft after the photo was taken.
If the picture of the porch did happen, I think this investigator would have been inclined to have made the same decision though. In their opinion, it wasn't sufficient for Amazon to drop it off on the porch (even with picture) or deliver to a third party (with picture) unless Amazon had notified the customer through the terms that that was what constituted delivery. So in this specific case, Amazon likely would not have won with a picture of the package on the porch.
It's interesting you guys have OTP where you are? I've not seen it here in the States, but maybe it also varies by region here.
Yeah, you’re probably right about the legal outcome, and I’m always disappointed (as it sounds like you are too) when “throw it in the 10,000 word T&Cs that nobody will ever see” is given as an acceptable solution.
I was mainly thinking that a photo would help prevent it going as far as the court in the first place - it shows whether it’s a simple mistake and helps the customer fix it, or whether they need to make a police report for theft. I guess I’m also thinking that the absence of a photo points the finger more at Amazon, even if the presence of one wouldn’t definitively absolve them; less from a legal perspective and more just from a “this seems sketchy compared to my personal experience” perspective.
And yeah, they definitely have OTP infrastructure in place here (UK), but it’s only used very rarely. I’ve seen it maybe two or three times ever, and only on high value but physically small electronics (CPUs, large SSDs, but not on a GPU, or a phone, both of which I would have expected to fit that pattern). I’m sure there’s some complex heuristic behind what does/doesn’t get flagged, probably a pretty good one given how much data they have, and I get that it adds a lot of friction so they don’t want to enable it too broadly, but it seems wild that when they also have a “don’t refund this specific order for this specific customer” heuristic, that doesn’t trigger a OTP!
So I had a bin company for 7 years at the house where I previously rented.
And one day, they just stopped collecting the bins. They missed every delivery for a period of 2 months. 7 years of service up until then and the only previous time they hadn't collected the bins was the one time when the country had it's record levels of snow.
Of course the company's initial response was to deflect. Apparently I mustn't have put the bins out early enough, or put them visible enough or there was an obstruction on the street.
It was only after I insisted on a refund of my annual fee as they had totally stopped providing service (with the implied threat of small claims court) that they bothered to investigate what was going on.
They told me their driver had got out the of the vehicle, gone to the house number 2 doors up from mine and observed no bin. So I went out to that spot, took a photo at that house pointed at mine, and sent it to them to show the bin was clearly visible and at this point out for months straight.
Turns out they'd gotten a new driver who was going down the parallel street with a similar name (XYZ Avenue Vs XYZ road)
I hate it when you get "caught in the machine". They never build robust systems for handling minor failures or edge cases. It's so painful to get some of these companies to have an actual human look into what's going on.
It’s only happened to me twice. Once my package got lost in the warehouse and never even made it to me. Just vanished into the void as far as I can tell. Fortunately Amazon was pretty forgiving of that, since they couldn’t confirm on their end if it was delivered or not.
The second time it happened was through FedEx and was a very clear case of the driver stealing the package. I had it delivered to a UPS store with cameras and staff on site, yet no cameras spotted the driver arriving at the delivery time and no one by the name of Steve or whoever they said it was handed off to worked there or at any of the adjacent businesses.
FedEx still fought the claim tooth and nail since it was “delivered”. Unfortunately, I honestly don’t have a good resolution to that story. I ended up pawning it off to the merchant who issued me a refund and fought FedEx on their end.
My point being, it does happen. I live in a relatively quiet part of Southern California, nowhere particularly noteworthy in terms of crime. I would agree three in a year is suspicious, but it could be a similar case to what happened to me: a rather bold (or stupid) delivery driver marking packages as “delivered” in order to steal them.
I used to decry the fact that companies would delegate decision making to automated systems with no means to escalate to a human for review - I'm actively in favour of automation in general, but it seemed insane to me that they'd accept the machine's decision 100% of the time, rather than taking it as a 99% efficiency gain and letting a human correct the 1% of obvious failures when they're flagged.
What I'm seeing that seems much worse recently is the humans sticking just as rigidly to these absurd decisions as the machine would have done. These are all wildly varying in severity, but they seem like the same root problem of rigidity over common sense: just this week there's been guns pulled on a teenager because a bag of doritos was flagged as a gun, a £150 fine for tipping half a cup of coffee down the drain (yes, they relented, but only after two days of internet mockery - they originally doubled down even when contacted by the press), and now an Amazon case that cost $20,000 of lawyer time rather than being a ten second conversation along the lines of "Are we sure that was delivered? Well, there's no photo, so I can't be certain... Right, refund it, what's next".
Amazon can be such a shitshow at times. Luckily we still have a lot of alternatives for online shopping here so I try to avoid it when I can. But, sometimes Amazon is the only place to get a hold of some specific items, other than importing them and dealing with days of shipping and sometimes weeks of customs.
Amazon claiming to have proof of delivery and then being unable to provide that proof reminds me of something else I dealt with the other day. This was an item shipped by Amazon, advertised as available and shipped the next day. I needed two, so did order two. The next day I got a strange mail where it said that the shipping date had changed from March 2026 to December of this year. When I checked the listing, it was still shown as available and next day shipping.
As it turns out, depending on the number of items I selected, the delivery date would jump up. Nowhere near the two months out date I had sitting in my mail, but it would change. My best guess is that if I select 2 it is actually a two pack of that item, shipped from elsewhere. But that is never made clear. To me, it comes across as false advertising or just a complete shit show in their inventory management.
Needless to say that I cancelled my initial order and then place two separate orders for the single item. For which I just got a delivery notification that they will in fact be delivered today.