How orders reach a delivery partner

Routing

Each package is mapped by hand in our admin to one service at one delivery partner, and an order goes to that service. Where a package also has a backup mapping, the backup is tried when the first attempt is rejected. A failed item goes back in the queue and is retried, up to three attempts in all.

A partner whose last connection check failed is skipped for fifteen minutes before it is tried again.

What is watched while an order runs

The order system polls the partner for the progress of open orders. Every ten minutes a check flags orders that are late against their package's delivery window, stuck before hand-off, partly delivered, failed or cancelled; the worst go out as an alert and the rest in a daily digest to our team. An order the partner cancels without delivering anything is retried once.

What is not done

• Delivery partners are not scored, ranked, put on probation or demoted. Nothing in the system computes a supplier score.
• There is no cap on how much of the order flow one partner takes. Routing is whatever the mappings say.
• Orders are not sampled for inspection, and the accounts delivered are not audited.
• There is no weekly review cycle. Mappings change when our team changes them.

Refills

A refill request is read by our team and, when approved, sent to the partner that delivered the order, provided that partner's service accepts refills. Drops and refills has the rules.