by The Creeping Spleen » Sun Oct 04, 2020 3:00 pm
Right. This is going back about twelve years.
Like I said, there was some special, super-duper limited edition X-Box due out. GLA-1 had its own allocation of the things, and every one was spoken for on pre-order.
They came to us from the vendor in cases of four units per case, eight cases per pallet.
Now, I only heard about this from my mate on the opposite shift a couple of days later, and according to him it went something like this...
Things are going fine. The packages are going through all the different parts of the process, flying into the back of Royal Mail trucks and onward (eventually) to customers.
It's idly noted that the stock of X-Boxes seems to be running a bit low. Numbers are checked, and they're way off.
Then someone has the bright idea to actually open things up, and physically inspect the product.
It was at that point that they realised that they'd been shipping out whole cases rather than individual units.
TECHNICAL BIT
Amazon's process goes like this.
Inbound Dock: goods come into the building on pallets. Pallets are broken down into boxes.
Receive: boxes of goods are further broken down to individual units or multiples in the case of multipacks, and scanned into stock.
Stow: the individual units/multipacks are scanned into their stock location on the shelves.
Pick: once a customer order comes through, the item/items are scanned out of the stock location and put on a trolley.
Pack: the trolleys go to a holding area, and are taken to the packing stations.
Ship: once the orders are packed, they go down a conveyor belt, shipping label goes on, and through a big sorting machine that sorts the stuff into the different postal carriers - Royal Mail First Class, Second Class, Special Delivery etc. Then they get put in the back of a truck. Once the truck is around 90% it gets closed up, and the driver drives off.
Back to the story - Much huddling in corners and whispered conversations from Managers and Team Leads.
Phone calls to Senior Managers, higher and higher up the food chain it goes.
Phone calls to the Royal Mail parcel depot. Nope, sorry, already on their way to customers.
So after a wee while, emails got sent out to affected customers. And to their credit, quite a few owned up and Amazon arranged for the surplus consoles to be returned. However, there were a few who basically shrugged their shoulders and said "Dunno what you're on about pal."
Baws were booted back at Amazon, heads rolled, one or two Managers and Team Leads lost their jobs
That was multiple times that the cases went through all six parts of the process before it was queried.
Curiously enough, shortly afterwards, several of these fabby doo X-Boxes popped up for sale on eBay going for well below retail price...
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.