Amazon launched in Australia on Tuesday and both needing networking cables and wanting to try out their newly established systems, I made a purchase and that arrived today.
Given I live in a regional city of Wodonga, I expected a few days for the package to be delivered, as thatโs what the initial confirmation email suggested. Despite the estimate of a 3-day deliver, today the parcel was delivered in just 2.
My first order from Amazon Australia was 6x Cat 6 Ethernet cables from the Amazon Basics range. For those unfamiliar with this branding, its basically Amazonโs house brand, products shipped under their own label, while most goods on their site are from 3rd party providers. Despite the AmazonBasics products being available in Australia, the labelling and the .com.au version clearly hasnโt yet been updated.
As you can see in the packaging, the international nature means the lengths of the cables are printed in both imperial and metric numbers. The primary number is clearly measured in feet, with them being nice round numbers, 5 and 25 feet, with our meter lengths being a little weird as 1.52m and 7.62m. This is a little awkward given Aussies are used to buying in whole numbers like 1, 3, 5, 10 meter lengths. Behind my home theatre setup, this isnโt a problem for me personally, but it is worth noting if youโre buying from Amazon in Australia today.
Now for the delivery detail. After submitting the order through Amazon.com.au, I received an email confirmation shortly after, on Tuesday morning. This morning (Thursday) I received an email from Amazon to inform me the package was arriving today. Much to my delight, a 2-day to the door turn around is the service I had hoped for (again regional area), this gives me confidence in ordering products in the future.
It was in this email that I spotted something that gave rise for concern.
The supposedly highly automated Amazon distrobution system seems to have at least some component of humans entering data. The reason I know that is that my address is registered on Amazon as Killara, VIC 3691. So how does the tracking email arrive with โDelivering to NSW 3691โ, that canโt have come from the same database field I submitted. It may be a result of some step in the process still containing an element of data entry by a human, that got it wrong.
The only other explanation is an API connection between Amazon and Australia Post failed to match my address and failed badly. There is a Killara in NSW, but not with the same postcode. After reading this, I fully expected the package to be sent to the wrong location, but thankfully the distribution points in the system, relied on the postcode, not the state field and my package arrived safely.
At the end of the day, the first experience with Amazon Australia was a good one, so Iโll be using Amazon in the future to buy goods, but Iโll still be price matching with other sites, at least until Amazon Prime arrives.
