An instance where drop-shipping or the equivalent can be useful:
A few years ago, as part of wanting to support my local shops, I asked my local store owner didn't stock the item (a particular grill tray) but showed me the item on Amazon, said "is this it?", I said yes, so he ordered it from Amazon which I could've done. Instead of convenient Amazon delivery to my home, I had to return to the store later to collect it, plus pay the couple of quid mark-up representing the shop owner's profit. (I didn't stay annoyed. It's part of living fairly remotely. Due to his premises' small footprint he might do that quite often, to keep customers happy.)
I made a mental note that I could make use of this at some point.
Yesterday I ordered a ££££ high-end 10-ink colour printer from a local shop who's ordering it from the manufacturer or possibly Amazon as I showed the shop owner the Amazon page and its decent price. It's modern tech and high-value thus a potential target for a dishonest courier. I'm prepared to pay the £25 mark-up for his profit because I know I won't receive an empty box - if an empty box turns up the shop-owner deals with it not me, he said "that's what insurance is for" (would insurance cover it??).
I did that because there've been repeated reports over the past few years of Amazon customers facing frustration when high-value items such as TVs and electronics went missing en route to delivery, believed to have been stolen by couriers or tampered with, and Amazon did not promptly refund them and indeed treated customers badly. I've just googled to double-check and in several documented cases Amazon insisted that items had been delivered based on systems like One-Time Passcodes (OTP) or parcel-tracking, and sometimes refused to "believe" customer claims that items were missing or stolen, particularly if the package had been marked as delivered or if the OTP had been used. Customers had to escalate their complaints, provide police reports, or end up in lengthy correspondence to finally receive a refund, with some only succeeding after media involvement or intervention by financial institutions. I believe this can still happen, so in this case getting a shop owner to effectively drop-ship can work, especially as I understand the Amazon customers concerned were individuals whereas deliveries to commercial premises didn't have the problem or perhaps kept quiet about it or were more readily believed by Amazon.
I hope the chances of the shop owner receiving an empty box are slim, but if he does I'll update here. Otherwise, all is fine and I'm off playing with my new printer toy.
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