Locked out of your own Amazon package: Thank you, mobile phone provider!

With bandwidth throttled, picking up packages from the Amazon Locker can become frustrating.

The most important thing first: It is very unlikely that you will meet the same fate as me. Even if it is essentially something that affects many of you, at least indirectly.

What is the crux of this story? My problem arose from mobile bandwidth throttling. It takes effect when your monthly data volume from your mobile phone is used up.

As a rule, this throttling is so severe that you can hardly surf the web with your mobile phone. I’ve commented on this elsewhere:

➡️ It’s a cheek what Telekom, Vodafone & Co. allow themselves in terms of mobile data volume

In combination with an Amazon Packstation (or an Amazon Locker), this has now led to me standing helplessly in front of the pick-up station and initially having no chance of getting my package.

Contingency plan just in case

Nothing works without a smartphone

I didn’t know until recently that Amazon called its own Packstations Amazon Locker offers to pick up parcels. Probably also because they weren’t in my immediate vicinity.

In the meantime, that has changed. In the case of this fairly newly set up locker, however, you absolutely need a smartphone to pick up packages.

With the Amazon app, your own account and activated Bluetooth function, the desired compartment can be opened at the pick-up station in no time at all. Provided you get to the appropriate app function.

With a throttled connection, navigating through the Amazon app becomes a game of patience.

No chance in the Amazon app: I was recently in Munich to attend our summer party and forgot to connect to the wifi at the hotel. That’s why my data volume was completely used up.

A sensible use of the Amazon app is no longer conceivable, as the picture above shows as an example.

With such low bandwidth, it even becomes a challenge to access your own account overview. Not to mention my orders, the details of said amazon locker order and the open pickup wizard.

A second cell phone comes to the rescue

So, no longer thinking about my throttled bandwidth, I stood helplessly in front of the Amazon Locker shown below. The location also does not offer public WLAN.

For the time being, all that remained for me was the desperate hope that at some point, despite the snail internet, I would still be able to get to the desired position in the Amazon app. After about ten minutes my patience was gone.

Waiting until July or until the throttling was lifted was also not an option. After all, you only have three working days to pick up your order from the Amazon Locker. So what now?

You can’t get in here – at least not without a cell phone, a working Amazon app and Bluetooth.

The first solution that came to my mind:

• Armed with my wife’s cell phone, we drove to the Amazon Locker again
• Set up a mobile WiFi hotspot on your smartphone
• Connect my own cell phone to this hotspot and finally have enough bandwidth again

Alternatively, I could have logged into the Amazon app on my wife’s cell phone, which occurred to me on the spot.

Another variant: At home, before driving to the Amazon Locker, call up the appropriate page in the app on my cell phone and hope that it is still active and can be called up by the time I get there.

However, such alternative options would not even be necessary if the throttling of the mobile Internet were not so strong that one almost felt no Internet at all.

And the moral of the story?

Don’t trust your seemingly ubiquitous internet access! Or to put it another way: I’m so used to being able to use the internet anywhere and anytime that it’s only in cases like this that I realize how dependent I’ve become on it.

It is easy to prevent your own mobile data volume from being gone. And if it does happen, you have to keep that in the back of your mind. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still find the throttling to be too strong if the worst comes to the worst.

I don’t expect to be able to watch YouTube videos in Full HD at 60 FPS. But at least in the Amazon app it should be possible to get to the locker assistant.

If you’ve gotten a taste for nagging, I’d like to conclude by reading the following column about my Wi-Fi experiences with the ICE. The frustration has to go!

Have you ever gotten into trouble because you used up your mobile data allowance? Do you find the strong throttling of the mobile phone provider, which usually takes effect, to be appropriate or would you at least wish for a little more bandwidth? And are you an Amazon Locker user yourself or do you prefer to always have packages delivered directly to your home? Feel free to write it in the comments!