# Scan individual packages instead of bags



## getawaycar (Jul 10, 2017)

Usually I scan the bags but recently at the warehouse the vests said we had to scan each package due to some problem with the system. Seems like this is happening more frequently which is a headache. It happened to me twice in a row last week at the Irvine warehouse where normally you have to scan bags and normally they don't want you scanning individually (unless they aren't in a bag).


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## Shangsta (Aug 15, 2016)

Yeah I have never scanned a bag. Its pretty easy to scan while you organize.

I've also seen reports of drivers scanning a bag and getting a package on their itinerary they never physically touched.


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## jester121 (Sep 6, 2016)

Shangsta said:


> I've also seen reports of drivers scanning a bag and getting a package on their itinerary they never physically touched.


Yup, from me. I don't scan totes ever, and I'm never the one holding up the line to get out the door.


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

Shangsta said:


> I've also seen reports of drivers scanning a bag and getting a package on their itinerary they never physically touched.


Eh, it's not a huge deal, especially if it's near the end of the route. Just mark it missing. Often they'll find it at the WH before the route is over too (you can tell because it won't have you go back).
Scanning bags not only helps with speeding up things HUGELY, but also allows for a quick and easy way to see what was in the bag vs. not when you go to scan them at delivery. Makes it easier to know which ones are the big ones.
Though here in Vegas most of our routes don't even have bags any more. They just toss them on the racks, sometimes not even sorted very well. Having to scan each of those is a nightmare....thankfully USUALLY there are separate grouped barcodes for us to scan.


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## Brandon Wilson (Aug 13, 2017)

My station doesn't put barcodes on totes. We scan everything individually. It takes about 15 minutes assuming there isn't someone holding the line.


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## poopyhead (Jul 8, 2016)

Shangsta said:


> Yeah I have never scanned a bag. Its pretty easy to scan while you organize.
> 
> I've also seen reports of drivers scanning a bag and getting a package on their itinerary they never physically touched.


Or you get an extra package that the driver could potential steal since its not accounted for.


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## getawaycar (Jul 10, 2017)

At the Irvine warehouse they are constantly telling you the bags MUST be scanned.
Unless there is a technical issue with the bag that's what you have to do.

I have heard drivers getting yelled at for not scanning bags. This warehouse is very busy and many drivers are slow when scanning individual packages, so that's probably why. If everyone had to scan the packages you would be waiting in line all day.


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## Randompanzy (Dec 18, 2015)

getawaycar said:


> At the Irvine warehouse they are constantly telling you the bags MUST be scanned.
> Unless there is a technical issue with the bag that's what you have to do.
> 
> I have heard drivers getting yelled at for not scanning bags. This warehouse is very busy and many drivers are slow when scanning individual packages, so that's probably why. If everyone had to scan the packages you would be waiting in line all day.


Still I wouldn't scan the bags. Because if there is a misroute in the bag you are stuck with it. Worst if something is missing thay should be in the bag. Happened to me twice after that never will scan bags again


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

I've never had any out of route packages that actually scan when scanning bags, if that's what you mean by "misroute". And you're not stuck with it if that happens because you can give it to the WH workers (because any smart person will look at their itinerary and map before they leave)....you're hardly obligated to take anything not on your route.


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## tone17 (Sep 9, 2016)

If something is missing you just mark it as missing. Happens more than it should. You should always check your map before leaving to be sure you don't have any mis-sortted packages.


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## Cynergie (Apr 10, 2017)

getawaycar said:


> At the Irvine warehouse they are constantly telling you the bags MUST be scanned.
> Unless there is a technical issue with the bag that's what you have to do.
> 
> I have heard drivers getting yelled at for not scanning bags. This warehouse is very busy and many drivers are slow when scanning individual packages, so that's probably why. If everyone had to scan the packages you would be waiting in line all day.


Seriously ppl. What's the worst the Amazon drones and/or blue shirt Nazis could possibly do to you? Re-channel their displaced anger and frustration by yelling at you even louder? Because quite frankly, WH personnel don't have any means of hurting your income potential aka deactivate you. Especially since you haven't broken any Amazon corp rules. They don't have the power to do this. Only Amazon can.

Besides this, you only get blocked from a WH in the app when you miss enough blocks. Or get caught cherry picking which routes you want to take. Or make a habit of refusing to take all the packages assigned to your route. So WH personnel threatening to block you from delivering for that WH for not scanning totes is 100% B$, workplace bullying, and ILLEGAL. It's YOU and not them who is accountable for any missing/undelivered pkgs and/or concessions from failure to validate your route before leaving the WH.

So the Amazon drone ants and their blue vest Gruppenführers can't block/deactivate you for insisting to individually scan each package. Only Amazon has that power. And Amazon WILL deactivate you if you have enough missing packages in your route (from failing to check all pkgs in tote before leaving the WH) and/or bust the concession metric.

Don't allow yourself to be bullied at the WHs. If a bottleneck at the WH exists, that is a clear indicator the Amazon WH management are operationally dysfunctional. It's an Amazon WH management issue and not the drivers. A good WH mgr would plan for a traffic flow layout that allows parallel driver loading and free traffic flow once drivers enter the WH. All the WH I've been to in Bay Area have this sort of logistic planning. They all allow for free traffic movement of Flex, Amazon IC drivers and Amazon personnel inside and outside the WH. The best WH I've been to has several queues based on block length i.e. 4h, 3.5h, 3hr etc. So the moment you enter the WH,you're directed to one of these queues where you park your vehicle beside a cart preloaded with packages. All you need do is pull up behind the car in your queue and begin sort/loading your vehicle. And once done, simply drive around the the other drivers ahead of you in the free lane reserved for traffic. You're in and out in 5-10 mins tops.

Once again, if you find yourself the object of displaced Amazon employee anger management, or stuck in rush hour trying to enter/exit a WH, then that's a failure on part of the Amazon management. Their failure at effective logistic management are NOT my cross to bear.


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## poopyhead (Jul 8, 2016)

For a while there was a sign at our location that said do not scan bags in big capital letters. They did not want us scanning bags. They wanted us scanning every individual package. What I would do is just count the packages quick and then scan the bag to make sure the count matches up.


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## poopyhead (Jul 8, 2016)

Today i saw a new sign that said its ok to scan bags now. I took a photo of part of the sign.











Cynergie said:


> Seriously ppl. What's the worst the Amazon drones and/or blue shirt Nazis could possibly do to you? Re-channel their displaced anger and frustration by yelling at you even louder? Because quite frankly, WH personnel don't have any means of hurting your income potential aka deactivate you. Especially since you haven't broken any Amazon corp rules. They don't have the power to do this. Only Amazon can.
> 
> Besides this, you only get blocked from a WH in the app when you miss enough blocks. Or get caught cherry picking which routes you want to take. Or make a habit of refusing to take all the packages assigned to your route. So WH personnel threatening to block you from delivering for that WH for not scanning totes is 100% B$, workplace bullying, and ILLEGAL. It's YOU and not them who is accountable for any missing/undelivered pkgs and/or concessions from failure to validate your route before leaving the WH.
> 
> ...


Geez it must be stressful at the warehouses you all work at. Everyone is nice here.


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## oicu812 (Aug 29, 2016)

At the warehouse I work at, the QR code are often obscured by markers and wouldn't scan.


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## Randompanzy (Dec 18, 2015)

CatchyMusicLover said:


> I've never had any out of route packages that actually scan when scanning bags, if that's what you mean by "misroute". And you're not stuck with it if that happens because you can give it to the WH workers (because any smart person will look at their itinerary and map before they leave)....you're hardly obligated to take anything not on your route.


My point is it isn't faster if you have to check every package anyways. Once you can check your map it's already on your itinerary. Rather not leave it to the wh to remove the a package from my itinerary they are bad enough scanning in returned packages as it is.

To each their own though


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## qshi (Sep 12, 2017)

In my first trip, I scanned a bag and couldn't find a package in my car. I called the customer support and was asked to mark the missing. So I'm always scanning each packages to make sure I record what I receive.


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## jester121 (Sep 6, 2016)

Strangely, I've not heard anecdotal evidence that they deactivate drivers for marking packages as Missing in the app, so I'm surprised there isn't more pilfering and plundering going on -- scan the bag, get on the road, and then play some Amazon Box Roulette with a box in your back seat that feels like it might contain a nice prize. Mark it as missing in the app, the warehouse gets blamed, rinse and repeat every week or two... just enough to avoid suspicion.

Like I said, I never ever scan the totes, it's always individual check-in for me. If I'm taking responsibility for X number of packages, that's what I'm driving away with -- not "six toteloads of packages".


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

Randompanzy said:


> My point is it isn't faster if you have to check every package anyways. Once you can check your map it's already on your itinerary. Rather not leave it to the wh to remove the a package from my itinerary they are bad enough scanning in returned packages as it is.


Never had a problem with the WH removing it on the rare occasion it's needed. It's usually off by the time my route's done. Again, it seems silly to me to waste the extra time just in case it's not fine on the very rare occasions - and again, I can't even remember the last time I even had something outside my route IN MY APP where I didn't physically scan the package individually myself in the first place.
I mean, especially now here in Vegas with the bagless system of just having the zone barcodes on magnets, scanning 6 vs 60 is such a huge difference it boggles me anyone would ever want to deal with it.


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## enigmaquip (Sep 2, 2016)

If you mark a pkg missing it'll come off your 'problem' area of your itinerary when that pkg is scanned again by the warehouse workers, or another driver. So pkg missing's are a big deal if it gets scanned again


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## Flexibility (Oct 2, 2016)

jester121 said:


> Strangely, I've not heard anecdotal evidence that they deactivate drivers for marking packages as Missing in the app, so I'm surprised there isn't more pilfering and plundering going on -- scan the bag, get on the road, and then play some Amazon Box Roulette with a box in your back seat that feels like it might contain a nice prize. Mark it as missing in the app, the warehouse gets blamed, rinse and repeat every week or two... just enough to avoid suspicion.
> 
> Like I said, I never ever scan the totes, it's always individual check-in for me. If I'm taking responsibility for X number of packages, that's what I'm driving away with -- not "six toteloads of packages".


I follow this advice, because I read it here from experienced drivers AND I have suffered the mistakes, before I heard about it here. If I were to scan every tote or bag, typically there is a missort in most. It is common and maybe on your map it doesn't seem far off your path but it shouldn't be there. I scan every individual package and then compare my count with theirs.

I thought I was being tested the other day...has anyone else had that experience?


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

Flexibility said:


> If I were to scan every tote or bag, typically there is a missort in most. It is common and maybe on your map it doesn't seem far off your path but it shouldn't be there. I scan every individual package and then compare my count with theirs.


You can also check the list in your phone to be sure there's nothing out of the 'zoenes'. But again, I almost never -- if ever -- had something out of my zone list where I didn't actually specifically scan the package individually, Sometimes there's one or two out of order, yes, but they are still in the correct zone for the route.


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## jester121 (Sep 6, 2016)

Flexibility said:


> I thought I was being tested the other day...has anyone else had that experience?


I maintain that Amazon is far too disorganized and busy to have time for such shenanigans. Maybe someday.


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## RickCMC (Feb 4, 2017)

Scanning just the bags sounds like a great idea and a way to save time, but in my experience the problem is sometimes when you scan a bag, the scan count in the app is lower than the actual amount of packages in he bag, and then you have to find the packages that weren't included in the bag scan. I'll scan the bags but then count out the number of packages in the bag to make sure it matches with what the app says.


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## oicu812 (Aug 29, 2016)

Wait till the switch away from using bags. It's already started in some places. My app already doesn't say scan bags anymore for the last couple of iOS updates.


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## CatchyMusicLover (Sep 18, 2015)

Yeah, as I said above, we don't use bags any more, just magnets on a barcode. Which makes it longer to load (can't bring the bags to the front door, can't just dump them out) on top of which everything on the racks is a mess. Plus with bags you can easily identify oversized out-of-bags packages when out delivering. But alas....


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