[Short Story, Original Content] Amazon.com vs Walmart’s Jet.com: Fast Delivery War + Question For You At The End!

The most eventful birthday gift ever.

“Hi dad.” Kacie’s voice raced past behind me.
“Hi Kacie, why are you running around the house?”

She comes back from her room. “Just sorting out a few more things before tomorrow dad. I can’t wait” She jumps a tiny bit, claps her hands and rubs the palms together.

“Tomorrow?” Why is she so excited about tomorrow?

“Dad! Tomorrow. 15th August 2025. My birthday. Friends coming over. Party. Fun. Gifts Dad, remember?” Her hands now down, her fists clenched.

“Aaaa… I am just messing with you.” I say with a big smile.
She says nothing, turns around and goes back to her room.

Damn, I did forget. Shit, I have yet to buy the gift she wanted. I make a quick dash back to my computer. A new post on Steemit grabs my attention but it will have to wait. I type the name of the bluetooth smart bracelet she is after and first result from the search is this new online items-finder shop everyone is talking about. The items is listed with the same price on both amazon.com and jet.com

The battle between amazon.com and Wallmart’s jet.com has reached new heights not only in terms of offering better deals but especially in promoting and guaranteeing faster deliveries.This new items-finder website is capitalising on it. I read more details about this intermediary shopping site and I learn that if you place an order through them you will save 10% on the listed price of the item and the site’s very own RobotBuyer places the order for that item with the seller offering the cheapest listed price.

Where it gets interesting is in the case where both amazon.com and jet.com list the same item at the same price. RobotBuyer will place the order with both amazon.com and jet.com! This last detail is what everyone is talking about, I read more to understand how it works

RobotBuyer uses affiliate links for both sites. Their affiliate commission works towards covering the 10% discount I would receive plus they have backend products and services they will market to me. RobotBuyer places the order with both shopping sites because both offer the same delivery rules to the customer. ‘If for whatever reason you change mind you can simply refuse the parcel without even opening it and the purchase will be refunded.’

In other words, you simply accept whichever parcel arrives first and refuse the one arriving second and of course you only pay for one item with a 10% discount as a bonus. Last time I placed an order online with a shopping site I actually received the wrong item. If I was to order with this new items-finder site my benefit is that having both big shopping sites sending out the item I have double chance to receive the correct item, a non damaged item and to receive it on time. I am desperate to receive this item by tomorrow before noon.

If I place the order within the next 30 minutes I will receive the item delivered by Amazon Drone or Jet Drone tomorrow morning at 9am Estimated Time. There you go, order placed. Finger crossed all goes well, Kacie will be happy to receive her birthday gift on time and my neck will be saved.

The rest of the evening progresses normally, then bed time for all.

...The morning after...**

Today is Kacie’s birthday, I got an early start, been up for a couple of hours when at 8am I receive a text message: ‘Your order has been cleared for dispatch and should be with you at 9am. We will send you another text message five minutes before delivery arrives. Please make sure your Amazon Landing Pad is ready. Thank you for shopping with amazon.com’
Ok, I guess Amazon may win this battle…

BEEP BEEP another text message: ‘Your order is ready for dispatch. Estimated time for delivery is 9am. Please make sure your Jet Landing Pad is ready for our friendly Jet Drone landing. You will receive a text message a few minutes before the arrival of the JetDrone. Thank you for shopping with jet.com.

Oh dear, both texts within a few seconds, this is going to be close. I am really curious to see which drone arrives first.

Amazon had an head start with the whole drone thing. Walmart bought jet.com in 2016 to compete against Amazon for online sales but Amazon Drones kept Amazon a step ahead. It was cooler to receive delivery by drones. You could get a faster delivery if you lived within 15 miles of an Amazon warehouse. A few years later Walmart empowered jet.com with their own fleet of Drones. New drones with a patented Jet technology effectively making jet.com the only online shop with jet powered drones!

In reality these are Jet Burst-Drones and cannot sustain constant jet-powered travel. They are like Amazon Drones plus the Jet Drone uses jet-bursts for a faster vertical take off. It is reported that Amazon Drones take 20 seconds to get up to 120m altitude before initiating their travel towards the customer. Jet Drones only needs 5 seconds to reach the same altitude.

During travel Jet Drones have a limited number of Jet Bursts available to boost their speed. Both types of Drones can travel at 100Km per hour. But during a Jet Burst the Jet Drone is supposed to be able to reach a speed of 150Km per hour. Tech news recently reported that in reality Jet Bursts are rarely used during horizontal travel because each burst can be expensive therefore he Jet Drone only uses one Jet Burst for take off and only uses additional bursts if delivery was initiated too late and additional Jet Bursts are required to reach the customer by the estimated delivery time.

Fact is that with these faster drones jet.com managed to get a temporary advantage over amazon’s delivery time. Amazon answer was not to come up with faster drones, apparently competing new jet-powered drones are much more expensive to buy and run than the current amazon drones. Amazon answered with opening new warehouse drone-centres bringing the drones closer to the customer and Amazon did this by taking over a failed retail chain for very little money therefore adding plenty new warehouse-drone-sites at low cost.

Jet.com also changed the rules with their Landing Pads. With the Amazon original landing pad the Drone used to unload the item from the underbelly cargo-doors and went away. jet.com Landing Pad offered the customer the option to Accept or Refuse a delivery. The Jet Drone lands and the customer has 10 minutes to press Accept or Refuse button on the landing pad. If no button is pressed the Jet Drone assumes delivery is accepted, unloads the parcel and flies back to base.
Eventually Amazon implemented the same feature on their own Landing Pads.

Ok, let’s put those landing pads down in the rear garden then make some coffee, drones should be here soon.

Beep Beep, Beep Beep. 8:55 am, two messages. Oookaay, both drones should be here in 5 minutes, this is going to be interesting. I better go outside and start looking at the sky, I got to see which one gets here first.

“Morning dad” Kacie mumbled, her gaze looking down at the floor. Not sure if she is mumbling because she is only half awake or because she thinks I forgot about her birthday and possibly forgot about her gift.

“Morning young lady, you look a bit older today”

She stops but her gaze still points to the floor, her face covered by her messy long hair. “Really dad? That’s the best thing you could come up with?”

“Actually I wasn’t sure if you were awake or sleep-walking. Just testing”

She raises her head and looks at me “Actually I don’t know, a bit of both I guess. Why are you going to the garden this early, the party hasn’t started yet you know?”
I don’t think she was asking for a ‘Happy Birthday’, she knows every year I only say ‘Happy Birthday’ after lunch, our usual gift giving time. “It’s a beautiful day Kacie, I just want to get some fresh air and sip my coffee out there in the garden”

“Enjoy your coffee dad” she pats me on the shoulder and keeps walking towards the bathroom.

“Will do, thanks”

Lovely bright day outside, Kacie is going to have a nice party. All I need now before I can relax is for the present to arrive.

I bring my coffee mug to my lips, loop up at the sky… Oh heavens. I see two drones getting close. One coming from South, that’ s the Amazon Drone and the other from South East is the Jet Drone. Both are slowing down as they approach the area close to the house. Text messages beep on my phone. I don’t need to read them I know exactly what the messages are about.

They must be 50 meters away from each other… What! For a moment I thought the Jet Drone exploded, it actually released glowing bits off in all direction, it looked like when an helicopter releases counter-measure flares, this is odd. I didn’t order the fireworks treatment.

Wait… they are both picking up speed, What! I can’t believe my eyes, the Amazon Drone just shot something towards the Jet Drone! Am I seeing things?

The Jet Drone uses a Jet Burst to quickly dodge the… missile? Missile from the Amazon Drone? If I hadn’t prepared the coffee myself I would swear someone put some fast acting hallucinogen drug in it. But I know the coffee is just fine.

Maybe the counter-flares from the Jet Drone triggered some sort of Amazon defence system to switch on? What am I talking about? These things are not supposed to be armed let alone dog-fight each other. Plus I need my parcel all in one piece for heaven’s sake.

Now they are both flying over my garden, circling it, coming and going. The Jet Drone shoots something in the direction of the Amazon Drone. This ‘something’ is travelling not that fast… it just exploded into three faster projectiles going flying fast towards the Amazon Done which quickly comes to an halt and rapidly drops in altitude avoiding the attack then slows the descent eventually flies back up.

The Amazon Drone is now fling behind the JetDrone, chasing it. It this really happening?

The Jet Drone slows down, stops and descends toward my garden. The Amazon Drone stops right on top of the Jet Drone, maybe twenty meters higher than the JetDrone. The JetDrone hovers then it Jet Bursts vertically upwards towards the Amazon Drone! That’s a fast ascend. The Amazon Drone tries to move out of the way but the Jet Drone collides against the underbelly of the Amazon Drone. Both drones wobble in mid air moving erratically then back to smoothly circling the garden.

Wait i can see the Amazon Drone underbelly cargo-door is half open. The impact… oh shit my gift is in there, is it going to fall off? The Jet Drone positions itself about 30 meters above the Jet Landing Pad and slowly starts its descend. The Amazon Drone stops circling and oh gosh it is now flying straight towards the descending Jet Drone!

I hear a bang as the Amazon Drone collides into the side of the Jet Drone now only 15 meters away from the ground. They bounce off each other and wobble in mid air. Slowly each Drone moves to about 20 meters right above their respective landing pads and descend to the pads.

The Amazon Drone with the cargo-door half broken sitting on its landing pad and the Jet Drone with a few dents and a clanking noise coming from the spinning blades is sitting on its own landing pad.

Here I am standing in front of two Delivery Drones that literally fought for my custom. Each landing pad has two big soft buttons for me to press. On each pad one button reads Accept and the other reads Refuse.

Which delivery should I accept, the one from the Amazon Drone or the one from the Jet Drone?

The Jet Drone didn’t attack first but it may have triggered the fight by releasing the counter-flares. The Amazon Drone shot the first missile but it may have been in reaction to the counter-flares from the Jet Drone. I cannot say for sure which drone is responsible for initiating the fight and they both landed at the same time.

Oh my… which one do I send back home with a refusal?

(Based on my non-fiction news post: https://steemit.com/money/@readwriteshare/amazon-s-drone-vs-walmart-jet-next-step-teleport-pads-in-your-home )