Last Sunday, I went online and ordered several packs of flashlight batteries from a West Coast vendor. My delivery options included standard shipping, which was free, as I’d met the required minimum purchase; two-day-shipping, at about $10; or overnight shipping, at about $20. Since there was no rush, I opted for the slowest method and paid no fee.
So I was more than a bit surprised when, Monday afternoon, barely 24 hours after placing my weekend order, the batteries arrived. Which begs the question of when these goods may have shown up, had I chosen one of the paid options. It would appear that I may actually have delayed the order, had I chosen two-day shipping.
This isn’t instant gratification, exactly, although it’s clearly aspirational. My choice of standard shipping implies (a) that I don’t need the product in a hurry and/or (b) that I’m unwilling to pay for faster delivery. In either case, the company exceeds my expectations by plunking that package on my doorstep the next day. Little does the company realize that I consider this game exactly that ”“ a bit of grandstanding that officially costs me nothing, but costs the vendor a boatload.
Nor do I really believe that I’m paying nothing for this value-added service. It may not be obvious where the charge is hidden ”“ perhaps it’s buried in the price of some other product. But this magical, unsolicited next-day delivery is hardly “free.”
How did we get to the stage that next-day delivery is increasingly common, whether we choose it or not?
Of the many possible answers, one stands out. Though the world laughed when Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos introduced the idea of delivery by drone, the underlying concept was no joke. Amazon would attempt same-day delivery in certain markets, in order to compete with local brick-and-mortar stores.
The idea, of course, is that the ever-voracious Amazon will compete on any playing field it chooses. The bad news is that, if Bezos succeeds, he may well put many local merchants out of business. The good news is that he has upped the ante for online retailers, in general.
We have Bezos to thank for raising the standards for online shopping and making online stores more responsive. This is a win-win for Internet shopping, overall.
But Bezos has gone too far, creating the illusion that there’s an inherent urgency to online purchases ”“ that we need everything we order ASAP. Although it’s patently untrue, it sounds sufficiently compelling that it’s irresistible. And other online sellers have followed suit, thus, the nearly instantaneous arrival of my batteries.
While there’s an admirable customer service ethic at work here, there should be no doubt that this is fostering the wrong things. In the era of Twitter and Instagram, of everything-at-your-fingertips-right-now, Bezos is proposing yet one more form of needless and costly immediacy, when it’s mostly beside the point. If we become addicted to getting everything now, without waiting, Amazon will have achieved its dubious goal.
— Joan Silverman writes op-eds, essays and book reviews. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, and Dallas Morning News.
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