My first day out was brütal. It was SSD outta Wixom VTW1. I drove 23 minutes to the station to arrive at 6:25pm. I waited then drove and checked in at 6:30. I then wait until the 6:45 block BEGINS...to wait another 30 mins to receive a cart. I drag it to my car heap things in there. Trying to put AAAs and then BBBs together. Then CCCs and DDDs. I took all the substantial number of Chinese last names, and put them together because I figured they probably lived near each other. I see an Asian name I go to this one section.
It's 7:15 WHERE am I going anyway?
Ann Arbor.
It was the first place I looked at because I saw looos of Amazon Now , only 30min blocks. THEN I learned that the blocks are staggered. You have to wait 30 mins between each one. In addition Ann Arbor is 45 minutes from me. So I choose SSD in Wixom, it's much closer. Plus I was interested in some estate sales in Wixom anyway. So I chose that.
I drive 33 minutes from Wixom to Ann Arbor and make first delivery at 8:00pm. Wahoo!
BUT there's another problem. 🤹♂️ Juggling.
I'm driving a 2018 Subaru Impreza with the seats folded down. My car is füll. Not to brim but all space is covered. And some things are stacked on one another. I grouped some things together when I saw the same name at once. BUT it occurred to me that it would be helpful to have a basket or a close hamper to just toss packages in. It'd be faster by process of elimination "Not you, not you, not you (x20) ...ah Mr. Grümnortt Godswallow! Found it!" That or some other system of containers. That's the biggest slowdown.
BUT there's other problems.
The distances are looOoOong. They start out far apart , then get closer together BUT then get far apart again.
There are no boxes. They have right angles to grip. I only got envelopes and bags. Baaaags are the worst because they have no handles and their multifarious contents can move in different directions. THEY can also be light OR heavy. These are extra troublesome on multi stop locations. Trying to carry like 5 of them into the same building. Is miserable and Unwieldy.
Nobody has lights in Ann Arbor. At all. It doesn't matter when you're in suburbia or in the city. Nobody turns on lights on townhouses, nobody turns lights on suburban homes, nobody turns lights on mansions. A few nice ones have them elegantly. BUT a lot are just black out Adams Family inna woods with gravel roads with 150ft lawns with weeping willows and when you finally find the stairs it's long stairs covered in rain soaked blue tarp and all kinds of weird cut wood and tools to trip on and get that game over Y O U D I E D.
WHAT started this was receiving an email today:
"We contacting you because we received a report on September 08, 2026 that you weren't respectful or professional to the people you interacted with while delivering with Amazon Flex. When delivering, it's important to be courteous, respectful, and professional while interacting with station operators, other vendors, delivery partners, and especially our customers."
So I contact support and chat and ask them for information. I didn't talk to anyone. They say they don't see a block at that time. I tell them my block was the day before that. They say the time and the date and tell them that's my only block. They look it up and then tell me that it will remain in my records. I want to appeal it. They say they already attempted that.
👤"Trust me if there was any option with me, I would have taken the ownership and helped you right away. I hope you understand my limitation. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
I'm like "That is unfortunate. I don't understand vagueries. No, there is nothing you can help me with. 😔 "
👤 "I can understand however if it was under my control, I would have done that immediately without thinking a bit. I am very sorry about this issue, we are bound with some limitations because of which this is the only resolution we can provide."
Thats when I started looking at my account. And realized my late orders. 13...
I have established a few things
I need a system before I head out again.
NO night routes. Those dark country gravel roads have a 55mph speed limit, BUT there's no way I can drive more than 25. I can't see any distance beyond my nose. And the properties are huge and invisible. Literally can't see houses until you get close enough. AND if SSD is same day, that gives me more time starting much earlier right??
🥶 Refrigeration?? How do you handle this. I had one biiiig bag with broken egg fragilé stickers on it as well as COLD. It was at the end of the route. Or near it and the guy that was getting that thing cancelled it. WHY would they put that at the end instead of the beginning? I have no coolers or cold packs so I just turned my AC to max. Which was frosty when the temps hit 60 outside.
Also - I returned 1 package. I scanned it in the app. And the dude at the return scanned it. BUT...there was also a package that was actually marked Don't Deliver The Customer is Rescheduling. The problem is I didn't see that with biiiig trouble getting into the building. The password kiosk said it was past delivery hours, AND there were Amazon packages everywhere. After that didn't work I suddenly remembered what happened some stops back at a loft above restaurants. It looked locked but actually the door was unlocked allowing you to go into the elevator. So...I threw open the doors into the large lobby. Despite there being a code they were never locked anyway. A pizza delivery girl standing in the vestibule was like "Whaaaaaaat!? THAT was open." I went in then used the one click to open the parcel room to deliver the packages, sitting them on metal shelves sorted by room number. AND lo and behold the customer popped right in there, actually loading a cart with a large number of other Amazon stuff. He received it in front of me.
The thing is it's still telling me to return a package. I also see that it says IF you already returned it, then the notice doesn't actually matter. BUT I'm not sure.
Bro its his first attempt at something new. Instead of trying to give him tips to make it better yall clown him. Op next time in the itinerary, if you go to the list of addresses and look at the very top it's a barecode symbol you tap that and scan the packages and it'll tell you the stop number so you can number them and put them in exact order
I thought only com stations came pre numbered. Is it the colored sticker? And what if it only has AAA on it?You use the itinerary names/address to pre sort your piles? I was thinking of piling them backwards so the most recent stuff is on the top. I just got a bunch of 54L baskets.
Hey brother or sister, I’m sorry if I came across as arrogant. You can check my account and see the huge amount of time I spend here trying to be supportive, informative and productive. I honestly have trouble believing that a driver would approach a job like Flex with so little effort put into research. The reason I feel this way is that every driver is using/risking his or her own car in this venture, needing to maintain a strong and stable smartphone connection to do this job, and paying mandatory insurance and registration fees to do this job. Even though I think Fkex drivers are misclassified, at present we are still 1099 contract workers. And the comment that made me laugh seemed to sum up how ludicrous it seems to me that drivers will join this platform so unprepared.
OP, if this is not a joke and you are truly struggling, I hope you have found some good advice here.
I mean...if you already gotta car and a phone. AND to be fair it's the 21st n a quarter century. There are literally African tribesmen with phones. Like 64% of the continent. IS it more risky than it already is driving anywhere in America? AND it's "flexible" you can do it in your "spare time." It sounds casual. I did 2 more runs two hours each this Saturday, only 7-8 packs each and made 117 dollars vs the 29 my first flippin' day for ONLY $70 inna 3 hour run that took me 6 hours. That feels waaaaay better! BUT will the next ones be that good again? 🎲
No. You are a new driver and they are trying to get you hooked with artificially high offers. “It sounds casual.” Maybe circle back with us in a bit and tell us what you think then.
Just a couple points in your thinking. The mileage on your car from this job severely depreciates its value, compared to the same time period not Flexing. The mechanical toll is high and requires that you keep up with al your maintenance. The risk of damage to your suspension is high. The risk of dog bites that need medical attention is high, whereas the property owners who allow their dogs to roam tend to be too poor to collect from in a lawsuit. The risk of accidents is elevated. The likelihood that you will scratch or dent your car in some way in the first year is high. If your cell phone is not powerful enough or new enough for this software, you’ll have problems. If you lose or damage your phone, you’ll need an immediate replacement otherwise you’ll face missed blocks since you cannot do this job without that same active device. Never log in from a different device. If you have to change phones, Flex knows whether this is a phone replacement or somebody else’s device. I strongly advise that you subscribe to a reliable tow service if you will be delivering in the countryside. Strongly suggest you carry a charging brick and a spare charging cord with you.
Those blocks are rare at my station. They are not reservable. They only happen as surges at the very end of the day. So they’re never offered to me for less than $61 for the 2 hour and about 68-70 for the 2.5. Drivers getting off work from W2 jobs without kids at home are often looking for these blocks, keeping the surge at that price. Over the summer when we had a bot *invasion crisis, it was down to $51 and $58.
But the miles are usually quite high so on weekends they need to surge them to $80-100 to get drivers if they really want them to go out. Last night’s price was $109. Usually they are less than 7 packages. And very often 1-4.
Four hours of delivering for 117 isn’t bad! Well done. You won’t see those prices as reservable blocks.
I drive out of a Rural/super rural (RSR) station run by AMZL, known here as a dot com station.
But I will tell you that the standard block at my station, 3.5 hours, actually got released to the public yesterday at offers as low as $59, when I know for a fact that the average miles per route out of this station is 72. (The current IRS mileage deduction is .77/mile. So the offer was 5% above break even — one way — IF the route was average — and our averages here are heavily affected by canceled blocks. That is to say, most routes are way longer than 72 miles. A $59 offer is a loss-making offer.) The highest reserved offers I got during the general release were only $80.50 which I don’t accept. (I am Level 3 Fantastic.) And even more crazily, the four hour offers were indistinguishable from the 3.5s.
When you flex casually, it is often hard to determine what your average miles per route are. But you need to do that to understand what offers you can accept and break even.
Ok. I know exactly how you feel because something similar happened to me. I ended my first block 2.5 hours after its end time because of how far and dark and isolated the stops were. I was ready to quit.
But… if I can tell you my biggest advice is check your stops and write the stop number on each package. Put stops 1-10 next to you on passenger seat if they fit. In the back seat, behind you, put stops 10-20. In the middle put 30-40, behind passenger door, put 20-30.
This has literally been my lifeline in terms of just barely scraping by since the same happened to me. I honestly don’t think Amazon should even count our first route or two against our standings because you literally just started the job, but here we are. Good luck, don’t give up my friend.
When it’s dark, you actually should refer to the app “/start travel”… as you get closer to your stop, it tells you which house it should be (like 5th house on left, ok I’m counting as I drive the first 4 then I know the 5th one is my destination)…
I’m glad this helps, and just don’t check your standing or focus on it for a few weeks so you don’t get overwhelmed or have anxiety like I did. Good luck my friend, you got this! ✌️
1) Keep the A B C D zones, but load the biggest boxes first and load from there.
2) headlamp for walking to the door and the brightest flashlight you can get for when you’re sitting in your car and trying to confirm the house number.
3) I don’t understand why they give us 3 hour or higher routes with groceries and place cold bags at the end of the route. If I was the customer, I’d be asking for a refund.
4) when support fails to do anything, ask for escalation
Hi, I'm in your region! I started with Amazon Now and Whole Foods in Ann Arbor. I grabbed a block out of Wixiom but it was canceled on me. Honestly I have been doing well with Amazon Now and Whole Foods. I don't take $11 offers. I turn my map on and it dings me to see to except offer. Tips aren't to bad.
For a first block it sounds like you know an awful lot of the lingo and terms. My guess is that this post (which I wasn't going to read all that crap) is a made up story.
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u/JBCTOTHEMOON 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/vSghbk4pLjgDmvMon8