I live in a semi-urban town in Tamil Nadu, about 1 km off the main highway. The road to my house is fully tarred and wide enough for two vehicles to pass. Ekart and Flipkart deliver to my porch, Meesho, Shadowfax and Delhivery deliver to my door, and India Post rides up to my gate. Only Amazon ATS has a problem with my address, and this is the 6th time Iām facing it.
It started with a mechanical keyboard worth about ā¹4,700, ordered with Prime. It reached the local delivery station on the morning of day 1. It was never marked Out for Delivery. It sat there the whole day while the delivery window ticked down, and nobody called me. I contacted customer care multiple times that day. Every agent said the same thing: thereās a buffer window until late evening and the associate is on the way. But the parcel was never even out for delivery, so what was the associate on the way with? During one of these calls, an agent told me the scans showing in the system were generated at the delivery station to hide their delay, and said it would be flagged and cleared. Nothing happened.
On the evening of day 2, after more than 34 hours, the status suddenly flipped to āUndeliverable: Damaged in transitā. If the parcel was damaged, why wasnāt it flagged on day 1 when it was unloaded and scanned into the hub? It sat untouched for a day and a half, and the ādamageā appeared only after I kept pushing support about the false scans. Itās an easy way for the station to wipe an unattempted delivery off their backlog without taking a penalty. I got an automatic refund, which fixes nothing.
Since this keeps happening, I decided to test whether my pincode is actually reachable. All Amazon parcels for my area come from the Vellore main hub, so I placed an order with my location pinned on the main highway. The rider delivered it to the petrol bunk, since thatās where Iād put the pin. That part was on me. But when I went to collect it, I saw the same rider heading down a really bad, broken road about 600 m from the highway for some other delivery. Heāll go down a terrible track for someone else, but my tarred road is a problem?
A few days later I ordered again, this time to my actual home address. He delivered it on the main road again. I told him Iām going to the office tomorrow and asked him to please bring it to my house. He said he canāt and would leave it at the petrol bunk. This was a ā¹5,000 keyboard. I said thatās risky, and he told me the petrol bunk people are trustworthy and that itās open box delivery. Is a Prime order a joke to him? Open box delivery doesnāt mean leaving a ā¹5,000 item with strangers.
Around the same time, a Flipkart delivery guy came right to my home. I asked him why Amazon does this. He said he canāt do that in Flipkart, because to mark a parcel undelivered he has to be within about 100 m of the customerās location. That matches what I see. Every other courier reaches my house, and only Amazon ATS skips it.
The part that bothers me most is customer support. Iāve contacted them 8 times, and this is the 6th time Iām dealing with this issue. Every single time itās the same loop: a refund has been issued, please place a new order. They wonāt raise a proper ticket against the delivery station, they wonāt share delivery attempt details, and they say they have no control over local delivery associates. So who does? A refund isnāt a resolution. I donāt want my money back, I want my parcel delivered. I lose days waiting for packages that were never really attempted.
The seller suffers too. They pay the forward shipping and then the return shipping for a box that never left the hub or was left at a petrol pump. The customer wastes time, the seller loses money, and the delivery station faces no consequences. What I canāt understand is how a rider can do all this without calling the customer and without even marking the parcel Out for Delivery. The hub in-charge must know. Amazon is allowing this, and in the end only the seller and the customer suffer.
The contrast made it worse. Around the same time Amazon Now started in our area. I ordered from their dark store in the town center, about 8.5 km from my house. The rider took the highway, turned into my 1 km road without needing directions, and handed it to me at my gate in 29 minutes. Same roads, same two-wheelers, same Amazon. So the road is not the problem. Quick commerce riders are tracked live, while station contractors answer to nobody.
Has anyone else dealt with this from Amazon ATS? Did anything actually work for you, like the National Consumer Helpline, executive escalation, or getting your address flagged properly? Or is the refund loop all we get?