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The story
In Japan’s first-ever survey focused specifically on delivery workers, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare found that more than 40% of respondents had experienced “customer harassment” (kasuhara) on the job. On 5channel (Japan’s largest anonymous forum), users compared how courteous different carriers are — Yamato, Sagawa, Amazon — and swapped horror stories about misdeliveries and redelivery mix-ups, with some calling for a blacklist system for abusive customers.
Published Aug 25 (Tue), 1:03 PM JST
Yomiuri Shimbun Online
As demand for home delivery keeps climbing, so does “customer harassment” directed at the people who deliver it. In the health ministry’s first survey targeting the delivery industry specifically, more than 40% of respondents said they had experienced such harassment — far higher than the rate found in surveys spanning all industries. Some observers argue that Japan’s famously meticulous delivery standards may themselves be inviting the abuse, and a number of companies have begun taking a firmer stance in response. (By Kai Nishimura and Ryowa Kashiwabara)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article
What people said
Customers are just as much hostages to their own packages, you know.
If you act arrogant, they might handle your package roughly, so I stay humble too.
I only ever say thanks, but don't make them force a delivery through when it's not needed.
If there's an unavoidable reason, fine — but shipping something out ON the scheduled delivery date and taking two more days to arrive is just taking the mick.
And being late on top of that? Unforgivable.
Actually — I once figured a package wouldn't make it in time, so I ordered the same item again with paid express shipping, and the second one arrived first. Total 'konozama' moment (a pun on Amazon's name meaning roughly 'this sorry state' — a well-worn meme for Amazon delivery fails).
Was it really that much higher before?
A blacklist that just refuses to accept deliveries to them at all would work too.
There's also the one where you specify the parcel locker, it's open and free, but they take the package back anyway and it just sits for days.
Still never cursed anyone out over it though.
Exactly. People who look down on others for no reason and lash out are basically animals — uneducated scum at rock bottom.
Do people really fight that much over timing?
Sometimes you're home waiting and they still drop a 'you weren't home' notice in your mailbox without even ringing, so you never get the package.
Me: 'Hello, yes?'
Seino [Transportation, a major trucking/freight company]: 'You there??'
Me: 'Uh… who is this…?'
Seino: 'Great, you're home! Be right up!'
Me: 'Wait, what?!'
*Ding-dong*, door opens
Seino: 'Right here, tap tap' (tapping the signature box with his finger)
Honestly that's thoughtful of them. No problem at all.
Sagawa [Express] occasionally has a bad apple.
The self-employed contractor types, like Amazon's drivers, have a lot of rough ones.
You've got to be careful filing complaints with Sagawa.
I once sent an inquiry through their site along the lines of 'isn't this running late?' and got a direct callback from the branch office chewing me out — 'don't send us garbage complaints like 'it's slow,' cut it out' — really let me have it.
Haven't filed a single complaint since. Complain and you're the one who gets yelled at on the phone.
For Yamato's 'Takkyubin' parcel service, uniformed company employees deliver politely.
With Amazon too, the ones who show up in a gray Hiace van — official contracted agents, I guess — are clean-cut, normal people.
The ones everyone complains about are the solo independent operators who show up in a kei-van [small box truck]; maybe 10% of those are actually decent.
I specifically order because next-day delivery is available, and then they deliver it to the wrong address — and I'm told 'we'll retrieve it and redeliver, please wait one more day,' over and over, multiple times.
I eventually contacted customer service and told them to get their act together already, but when it kept happening anyway, I just stopped ordering from them.
If the residential map data is wrong, you'll get misdelivered again and again. Worth double-checking.
Have you considered that maybe you live somewhere that's just easy to misdeliver to?
Wasn't a courier, but this was mail — I once had a postal carrier who kept misdelivering for a while, stuffing other people's mail in my box. Ended up delivering it to the right people myself.
I've never had a dispute with Yamato or Sagawa where we just couldn't communicate. You explain the issue and it's 'ah, I see — let's handle it this way.'
Amazon's contract 'DeliPro' drivers are awful though.
I was waiting for a delivery promised by 9pm. It never came, but it got marked as delivered.
Called the next day — they said they ran into 'my husband' out front and left the package there.
Even if they did run into someone who looked like a family member out front, you'd hand it to them directly — what's with 'leaving it at the door'?
On top of that it was right after a typhoon with strong winds, and the item was in a light little box — leave it at the entrance and it's guaranteed to blow away.
I told them, I'm not even angry, just tell me the truth — you never actually delivered it, right? They just kept insisting they'd left it at the door.
The next day or so, I get a call saying someone found the box after it blew away and brought it to their branch office, and they'd deliver it to me.
No, hold on — if the box had my address on it and someone in the neighborhood found it after it blew away, they'd take it to a police box or straight to my house, not drive it thirty minutes to your branch office. Stop lying to me!
This is the kind of exhausting mess you only get into with Amazon.
There's a line from a delivery driver in the film 'Last Mile':
'If I killed every customer who annoyed me, I'd have a hundred prior convictions by now.'
I've given a can of coffee to a driver who had to redeliver to me a few times.
What kind of logic is that?
It's a specific carrier making the mistake, so it can only be their own failure to double-check.
Long-established carriers hand-correct their maps and share the fixes with staff, so they can handle odd address numbering. But with subcontracted drivers who don't have that continuity, it's plausible they're seeing the address for the first time, or haven't been there in a while and forgot.
That would be good. Also make it so you can tell who's driving each vehicle — that should cut down on traffic incidents too. Mutual monitoring is what matters.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has surveyed “customer harassment” (kasuhara) across industries before, but this is its first survey aimed squarely at delivery workers — and the >40% rate it found significantly exceeds those broader, all-industry results. Kasuhara only became a formal policy term in the past few years; Tokyo enacted an ordinance against it in 2024, and firms have been slow to build reporting channels, which is why the original headline notes it’s “hard to speak up about the abuse.” Context matters here: Japan’s home-delivery system is unusually exacting by global standards — narrow delivery-time windows, free unlimited redelivery requests, and doorstep precision that customers have come to expect as baseline service, not a bonus. That expectation gap is what the article’s experts point to as a possible driver of the abuse.
The thread didn’t dispute that harassment happens; it split over who’s actually to blame for bad delivery experiences. One camp cast complaining customers as failed, resentful people lashing out at workers beneath them. The other insisted many complaints are legitimate service failures — false “not home” notices, ignored delivery-locker instructions, redelivery loops — and that drivers, not customers, are often at fault.
What the thread surfaces but never explains for outside readers is the structural split within the industry itself: Yamato and Sagawa use uniformed, directly employed staff, while Amazon leans heavily on subcontracted, often uniform-less solo operators (the “DeliPro” gig-style drivers), a two-tier labor model that maps closely onto which carrier posters called trustworthy versus chaotic.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (News速報+, “Breaking News+”) thread “Delivery Workers Cursed Out as ‘Useless,’ ‘Idiots,’ ‘Get It Here Now’ — Over 40% of Industry Reports Customer Harassment, ‘Hard to Speak Up About the Abuse’.”
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