# Amazon Flex - 3rd Houston Warehouse?



## cw09

Howdy folks,

Is anyone aware of a 3rd Houston area Amazon warehouse/fulfillment center going in?

Per my perusing of other threads (including the long, 57 page one), there is currently:

1) Houston (Way Out West Blvd) - Prime Now only
2) Humble - Online packages only

I just got my Flex background check approved yesterday and when went to select an area on the drop down list the only option was "Willowbrook DH01". I suspect I have the "online packages only" app/access (app version is 3.0.2801.0, for what it's worth).

Is anyone aware of a warehouse out in the Willowbrook area? It's a bit of a bummer because I live 10 min from Way Out West and 35 min (plus tolls) from Willowbrook. I emailed Amazon Flex support to ask if it is possible to change specific work locations but haven't heard back (and my never).

So far, I did not get on next week's schedule and haven't picked up any blocks. I also haven't heard anything about Willowbrook having an Amazon warehouse (nor did the Google machine turn up anything) which makes me think they may be filling up the driver queue in preparation of opening a new warehouse (hopefully Prime Now, but probably not). Amazon Flex in Houston is still advertising like crazy on Craigslist (5 posts a day), so something's gotta be going on.

Any Houston Flex drivers hear anything? Maybe ask around at Humble/Way Out West warehouses?


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## nighthawk398

If it's anything like Dallas scheduling is now very very rare they prefer people pick their time 10 p.m. the day before rather scheduling in advance that way they're having more people show up then they were


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## cw09

nighthawk398 said:


> If it's anything like Dallas scheduling is now very very rare they prefer people pick their time 10 p.m. the day before rather scheduling in advance that way they're having more people show up then they were


Yeah, I checked at 10 PM last night and again midnight--nothing. Nothing throughout the day either. The different warehouse name makes me think it might not even be up and running yet (so, there will be no blocks whatsoever). Rather, they are just getting people queued up....but I hope not!


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## cw09

Another thing I noticed, when setting up availability I selected a start time and it automatically selected an end time for me, 2 hours later. Is this the default for both Prime Now and Online people? Or would the "Prime Now" app/access select 2 hour blocks automatically and the "Online" one do 4?


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## cw09

Looks like this; the only one on the list--is it possible for Amazon Flex to force you into one or two certain choices? Or if they just block availability for any other service areas?


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## Danitica05

I cant find the address of the willowbrook warehouse anyone knows it?


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## cw09

Danitica05 said:


> I cant find the address of the willowbrook warehouse anyone knows it?


Did you pick up any blocks for that warehouse location yet?


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## Danitica05

cw09 said:


> Did you pick up any blocks for that warehouse location yet?


No no yet is it even open? I cant even find where it is


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## cw09

Danitica05 said:


> No no yet is it even open? I cant even find where it is


I don't think it's open yet, I can't find any info on it either. That's why I posted this thread: to see if anyone has heard about it.


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## Danitica05

cw09 said:


> I don't think it's open yet, I can't find any info on it either. That's why I posted this thread: to see if anyone has heard about it.


Someone in the amazon lfex group in facebook said that it was going to open yesterday but I still got nothing


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## cw09

Still no blocks coming up for Willowbrook, I think they are still in the starting stages.

Regarding location, I did a permit search for "Amazon" with City of Houston and came up with permits being sold for this address (which is in the Willowbrook area): *11720 N GESSNER RD *(possibly Suite B or Suite 5)

There were a ton of permits, all for "new warehouse" types of things. Not saying that this is definitely the location, but the clues fit the bill. If I get some time later I'll drive by and see what's there (there's just a picture of an empty field on Google Street View).

Attachment has the permit search results.


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## cw09

Thanks for the like, uberbomber--now I can finally post links! Sheesh!


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## uberbomber

Lol. No problem. Let me know if you need help with anything else.


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## cw09

Today I went by the location that (I think) the Willowbrook warehouse is (or will be....see below). The overall picture still fit: the warehouse is in the "willowbrook" area and the City of Houston permits (with Amazon's name on them) were posted in the window, but it doesn't look anywhere close to being open. There appears to be no Amazon activity there at this time, no sign, no nothing. Building is still being finished; when I was there they were finishing concrete in the parking area right in front of the office area. Granted, construction finishing work can sometimes be very quick at the end, but I would say its _*at least*_ 2-3 weeks out.

See the photos attached to this post.

I emailed Flex Support to ask if I can be switched to Way Out West (UTX3) until Willowbrook opens. They'll probably say no, but hey, you never know.


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## Danitica05

Def it is but is faar of beong finished and suplort doesnt answer any question about it


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## cw09

Danitica05 said:


> Def it is but is faar of beong finished and suplort doesnt answer any question about it


Yeah, it's a little crazy. I do recall reading posts in this forum from back in November/December. Several people were saying they got on-boarded but didn't get hours for almost 4 weeks. It sounded as though Amazon was filling up the driver queue before getting into full operation.


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## Queenz22

I got assigned to the willowbrook location as well, being the only option in the drop down selection. I hope I can start working soon, this place needs to hurry and open up!


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## Velvet Hammer

Queenz22 said:


> I got assigned to the willowbrook location as well, being the only option in the drop down selection. I hope I can start working soon, this place needs to hurry and open up!


Ditto!


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## UTX1

cw09 said:


> I emailed Flex Support to ask if I can be switched to Way Out West (UTX3) until Willowbrook opens.
> They'll probably say no, but hey, you never know.


Good detective work. I like to see people go out there and get answers.
My suggestion about transfer/reassignment is to ask 3 or 4 times, even
after you get an email that says something to the effect of "no",

It might go something like, "can I transfer ?" "no"
"can I transfer ?" "no" "can I transfer ?" "no"
"can I transfer ?" "well, okay. Do you want to transfer ?"

I've worked at several amazon sites, before and since flex launched.
Each time there was some kind of song and dance do go through beforehand.
No meant not possible, which meant not right now, which meant not today,
which really meant okay you can transfer. Good Luck at UTX3 !


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## cw09

UTX1 said:


> Good Luck at UTX3 !


Thanks! Yeah, hopefully it will work out. I live near UTX3 so it would be nice to be assigned there. I'm sure there are Flex drivers living in north Houston that would rather be at Willowbrook, so maybe it will even out a bit when Willowbrook opens.


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## cw09

Heard back from Flex support. They said they need drivers in Humble and Willowbrook and gave instructions for clearing data, selecting a new area, etc. Only thing is that the area list STILL only has Willowbrook. So I emailed them again....and now to wait 3 days for a reply.

What's annoying is that they are still advertising on craigslist (5 posts a day) for Houston but don't have anywhere to send them. They are going to spend time/money on-boarding drivers now who are not going to stick around for 2 months waiting for a warehouse go to into operation...


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## Sugarplumdip

cw09 said:


> Heard back from Flex support. They said they need drivers in Humble and Willowbrook and gave instructions for clearing data, selecting a new area, etc. Only thing is that the area list STILL only has Willowbrook. So I emailed them again....and now to wait 3 days for a reply.
> 
> What's annoying is that they are still advertising on craigslist (5 posts a day) for Houston but don't have anywhere to send them. They are going to spend time/money on-boarding drivers now who are not going to stick around for 2 months waiting for a warehouse go to into operation...


So what were the instructions .. Im having the same issues


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## cw09

Sugarplumdip said:


> So what were the instructions .. Im having the same issues


There is another thread for how to change your delivery area/warehouse. Use the search.

But, we are probably all in the same boat--Willbrook will probably still be the only one one the list.


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## Shelby GT500

So what I'm understanding from this is Flex hiring now for the Humble and soon to open Willowbrook locations. But if you were only offered Humble in the drop down on the app that's where you will wind up? I live in Katy; guess I'd better get cracking at trying to change to Willowbrook. 

Does anyone know what would happen if you just happened to slither down to 290 without an assigned route? Could you pick up one if you are not assigned to work from there ?


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## Houston Driver

Has anyone gotten any work out of the Willowbrook location yet?


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## Velvet Hammer

Houston Driver said:


> Has anyone gotten any work out of the Willowbrook location yet?


Nope.


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## Sugarplumdip

They are saying the 13th..


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## cw09

Who is "they"?


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## Sugarplumdip

cw09 said:


> Who is "they"?


Now its supposed to be the 15th .. I went to the humble location and talked to a manager


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## Houston Driver

I emailed Amazon Flex yesterday and got a very fast response stating that the Willowbrook location would not be open until August and they did not have an exact date but I would receive an email about a week before they started making deliveries.


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## cw09

Apparently Willobrook is now open. On the Houston Amazon Flex Driver Facebook group someone posted that they dropped a block for today. I went into the app and the block was visible, so they are indeed scheduling for Willowbrook.

Will post more info as I get it.


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## cw09

Today I worked 11-3 at Willowbrook. As we all sorta knew/expected/suspected it is indeed located at 11720 N Gessner, Building 5. Seemed kinda "quiet" as though they weren't quite up to full speed. I stopped back by to drop a return around 2:45 PM and all the docks were empty and they were rolling the security cart back inside, so I guess no evening routes today.

Wound up with about 25 packages. Due to some location issues with the app, one return, and two that were way outside my area, it took about 4.5 hours total. Not too much back tracking in the route though.

Pick up was simple. Drove up, parked, checked in (showed ID and received a Flex badge/lanyard), and then backed the car up to the dock and started scanning. I had issues with my phone scanning (lousy camera on a cheap phone) but had success when I focused the camera on the QR code rather than the barcodes. The employees had thrown a couple of extra boxes in that were a different zip code than the others and didn't think it was an issue--definitely a watch out for the future. Another watch out is boxes with markings on them such as "UTL" (Unable To Locate). If another driver couldn't find the mystery address yesterday then why do I think I have a shot at it? That one was my only return; I'll be more sharp-eyed in the future.

I wound up entering all the stops in routing app on another device (iPhone) and letting it optimize the route. For the first section it was the same route the Flex app was giving me. For the second section the Flex app wanted me to do the stops in the reverse order.

There were a few instances where the Flex app wanted to send me to the next location by a weird route so I stuck with Waze most of the time. Also a couple of situations where the geo-location indicator of a delivery address was WAY off from the actual address. Had to call support for that. Also an issue where the customer put their address as Periwinkle St when it is actually Periwinkle Ln; both roads exist, about 1/2 mile apart but their house number only exists in Periwinkle Lane (but they told Amazon their address was Periwinkle Street).

Overall, not bad. Gonna continue to try to make my methods and organization more efficient. I could not make ANY sense of the various codes on the packages to see if there was a logical order they should be arranged by. I wound up marking them with a pen 1-25 to indicate the stop # from the routing app. After completing the last delivery the app wanted me to go back to the warehouse for more....NOPE.

Time for a beer.


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## CarmenFlexDriver

cw09 said:


> I wound up entering all the stops in routing app on another device (iPhone) and letting it optimize the route. For the first section it was the same route the Flex app was giving me. For the second section the Flex app wanted me to do the stops in the reverse order.
> 
> Also a couple of situations where the geo-location indicator of a delivery address was WAY off from the actual address. Had to call support for that.
> 
> Also an issue where the customer put their address as Periwinkle St when it is actually Periwinkle Ln; both roads exist, about 1/2 mile apart but their house number only exists in Periwinkle Lane (but they told Amazon their address was Periwinkle Street).


Interesting notes about entering the stops in another app. Most certainly good info. I noticed today that the first half of my stops were good, all together, same neighborhoods, efficient stops. 2nd half, all out of wack and at least 4 times the navigation had no clue how to route me to the address. Finally took out my ipad and opened google maps and found them.

Fix for the geo location problem...when you see your out of the circle(yellow) simply move towards the circle physically with the phone either by walking or driving. Had to do it twice today. Sometimes you're just a few feet out sometimes you have to drive around the block. Circle turns green, hit back button, continue. Finish the scanning and drop location while still in the good location then drive back to drop off.

You can't fix everything......i've noticed some discrepencies with addresses and those i'll usually knock on the door try to get customer to answer or call them. If not they get dropped where app says to drop. Let amazon sort it out, i've done my part.


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## melissafj77

Hi {I am in Humble can I ask you guys what areas ( zip codes) does willowbrook delivers to? just curious Humble works fine for me since i am in the spring/woodlands area and about 20-30 minutes from warehouse.

also if the geo is away from 


cw09 said:


> Also a couple of situations where the geo-location indicator of a delivery address was WAY off from the actual address. Had to call support for that.
> 
> Time for a beer.


You dont have to call support you need to get the navigation thing started and then click on the help icon then the "I am at the address but my gps isnt working" and it will reset itself so you can either scan or add the barcode and deliver, I used to spend time with them on the phone till i learned this.\
what i hate are appartment complexes getting in then finding the appartments then getting out actually turning car off climbing stairts TAKES TOO LONG


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## uberbomber

melissafj77 said:


> Hi {I am in Humble can I ask you guys what areas ( zip codes) does willowbrook delivers to? just curious Humble works fine for me since i am in the spring/woodlands area and about 20-30 minutes from warehouse.
> 
> also if the geo is away from


If you live in the Spring/Woodlands area, then it's best that you stay at Humble. The Humble location is much more organized than the Willowbrook location right now. To answer your question: the closest zip code I have seen is 77090. Most of the routes though, are around 290, 610, Beltway, Westheimer, etc.


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## Jim Nobody

Thanks guys, your posts help a lot


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