Ya that’s just a bunch of hyperbole. Hanlon’s Razor is where I would go instead…
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity .
It’s like people worrying about a plane crash while driving a car to the airport.
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I had a driver tell me his metrics take hit when a customer claims they didn’t receive a package, but that may be a policy of the local company that delivers Prime. I wonder if they get dinged for undeliverable? Probably not.
Amazon blames everyone but themselves. Considering Amazon does not verify addresses, yeah I would bet the drivers are at “fault”
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It’s like how sellers are treated. If your offer has substantially more claims than competing offers, you’re the problem. Amazon has some internal average problem rate among all it’s drivers, and when one of them exceeds it by a certain amount the bot disciplines or fires them.
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Many of you may be missing the point on this 
Drivers work on metrics. If a driver is running late, and in danger of failing to meet their X amount of deliveries in an hour, the simplest thing for them to do is tag some of their remaining shipments for the shift as “Refused” or unable to deliver.
We get tons of returns for these 2 reasons. ALL OF THEM are smile van deliveries. I did a little experiment about a year ago with this and created an excel sheet with the link to every order that was refused or unable to deliver over a 30 day period.
87% of them were reordered almost immediately.
How exactly does a buyer “refuse” a delivery anyway? Amazon doesn’t ring the doorbell when they deliver. There must be an inordinate amount of people sitting on their front porches, at all hours of the day, telling Amazon drivers to pound sand with the delivery THEY ordered. 
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Maybe the delivery guy took the dog barking at them in the front yard as “don’t deliver here.”
That one is actually valid though. I wouldn’t cross a dog’s path to make the delivery, I’d either throw it and not give a crap if it breaks or mark it as refused/undeliverable. Seeing how UPS rarely has this issue though, I would still say the issue is incompetence/laziness.
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We must have a dog I don’t know about. Prime Drivers ALWAYS throw our packages up the 14 stone steps that lead to our front door. I have security cameras all over my house and a big monitor above all of my work monitors to watch what goes on in the outside world while I work 18 hours a day. I see almost every delivery we get and they are always tossed.
It’s funny when they throw it and it bounces to a place that can’t be photographed and then they have to walk up the stairs to move it so they can take their picture.
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Sounds like a job for
Let us not forget how easy Amazon is to rush to judgement…
Wow
What does someone’s smart home devices have to do with being abusive to a delivery driver?
Even if the allegations were true, or even worse (let’s say the driver was actually assaulted), that could be justification to mark that person’s address as “do not deliver,” but their home electronics have literally nothing to do with it.
I will save myself the typing.
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Ok, I think I understand the issue here. His devices needed to be logged into an Amazon.com account in order to function, and his Amazon account was suspended during the investigation (which isn’t totally unreasonable).
I would never set up my home where I’d need to log into my Amazon account (or any other account) to turn on the lights. I actually had things like nest thermostats, and shades that I could use a smartphone app to control, but those ALSO worked on their own. If the wifi goes out or the online account gets locked out, those devices don’t just stop working, you just can’t control them remotely anymore.
Lesson here is don’t integrate Amazon’s crap into your house’s electrical systems. Requiring an Amazon.com account to work is a crappy design that nobody should tolerate.
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Uh, I think it is totally unreasonable to shut down someone’s personal property BEFORE completing the investigation. I don’t think Apple should be able to turn off your phone because an employee mistook your sheets drying outside for KKK membership, then simply turn it back on when wrong, without an apology or compensation.
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The unreasonable part here is the fact the devices stopped working if the associated Amazon account was shut down. Considering that Amazon accounts, both buyer and seller, are routinely blocked for numerous reasons (the fact something racist was involved here made for a flashy headline, but if his account got blocked for something like a credit card chargeback, the result would be the same), a “smart home” setup that requires an Amazon.com account is arguably defective in itself.
It’s SOP for Amazon to block buyer accounts during investigations, most of the time it has to do with verifying a credit card used in a manner they deemed suspicious.
The issue here is Amazon’s crappy device design. Iphones don’t stop working if your apple account stops working. Making the device stop working if the associated Amazon account is locked is pretty ridiculous, especially since Amazon knows that their bots suspend numerous accounts every day.
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I disagree. I think it is intentional like everything else DRM.
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I consider DRM “crappy design”
I’m sure they did it intentionally, but that still makes it a terrible product
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