Amazon Prime Air delivery drones are going viral for the wrong reasons. That’s because it seems they keep dropping packages onto concrete from 10 feet in the air.
Multiple videos of Amazon Prime Air drones dropping packages onto hard surfaces from several feet in the air have been circulating on social media. Along with broader safety concerns, these videos have also raised concerns about product damage.
Rightfully so, as it turns out. In one video, YouTuber Tamara Hancock places an order for a plastic bottle of blue raspberry syrup and watches as the drone carelessly drops it onto her driveway from about 10 feet up. The video then shows that the bottle inside has a broken, leaking cap when she opens the package.
In another video posted on TikTok, an Amazon Prime Air drone dropped a woman’s package on a grassy slope near her house. The package then rolls a few times before coming to a rest near the sidewalk.
Don’t try to catch your package
While many people suggested that once you hear the drone coming, and you will hear it because they are extremely loud, just run outside and try to catch it. Unfortunately, as the same TikToker demonstrated, that doesn’t work.
Also, getting anywhere near one of these drones is not advisable, as they have crashed into buildings several times. It got so bad that at one point, the program was temporarily halted.
Another TikTok video showed an Amazon Prime Air delivery drone blowing other, already-delivered packages around a home’s driveway. “Amazon drone pulled up, dropped the boxes at the edge of the driveway, hovered like it was thinking about fixing it… then was like ‘nah, my shift over’ and flew away,” the TikToker wrote.
Then there is the whole noise issue
In one town, Bloomfield Township, Michigan, residents are not exactly thrilled the service has come to town.
“I’m not sure if it’s something our society needs. It’s extra noise. It’s our personal place and we like it to be quiet,” David Peterson, a Bloomfield Township resident, told WXYZ News. “The more time goes on and the more technology advances for all these things that are supposed to make our lives easier, I’m not sold on it.”
“Prime Air’s goal is to provide customers with fast, reliable delivery across a broad selection of over 60,000 products,” said an Amazon spokesperson in an email. “The response from customers using Prime Air has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve invested in purpose-built packaging specifically engineered to protect items throughout the flight and during the final delivery to the customer. We apologized to the customer for the inconvenience this caused and, in the rare instances when products don’t arrive as expected, we make it right. We continuously take learnings from incidents like this to improve the delivery experience for customers and the community.”