"I Know Your Game, Amazon" Topic

I've been ordering from Amazon for years without any issues. I almost always choose Free Shipping because I'm rarely in a rush to get my stuff. The routine has always been a) place the order, b) Amazon ships it within a day or a day and a half, and c) it arrives in a respectable amount of time.

However, with my last three orders, it's taken them forever to get the stuff shipped. My current order, which I placed four days ago, still says "Preparing for Shipment". My last order was "Preparing for Shipment" for a week.

What grinds my gears is that they tell you you can have it by X date if you choose Two Day Shipping ("Activate Your Amazon Prime Membership!"). My previous experiences were that Two Day Shipping meant they used a premium level service via whatever carrier (UPS, FedEx, etc.) and Free Shipping went by slow boat. Now I'm starting to suspect that Free Shipping means "We'll get around to it when we feel like it…" and is also a ploy to make people sign up for Amazon Prime out of frustration.

What makes it doubly annoying is they recently opened a big distribution center about 30 minutes away, so I get to pay sales tax to boot!

I suspect that's exactly what they are doing. in their defense, however, so many have become prime members that their workforce is probably straining to get the prime orders out first.

I usually go the slow route as well, since there is a distribution center 15mi away from me, as well as one in the Philly region and IIRC Delaware. I get to pay sales tax now too… :(

Point is, however, I experience both scenarios: either it ships so fast using free delivery that paying for it is not worthwhile, or it takes a while to get it. I did once have a package languish in NJ for like a week for no apparent reason, but I think that was a shipper issue rather than Amazon…

Damon.

I think the issue from their perspective is, if you get it within 2 days anyway, what is the point of prime? Also, some times things have to come in from a different distribution center to the one where they're shipping most of the order, so they wait for that to come in and ship it together.

If you get prime, you see this where part of you order comes from NJ, and another part from cali, and they ship separately so as to arrive within the 2 day window, and you even get both packages on the same day. Don't forget, amazon runs at a loss most quarters, and that is almost entirely from shipping costs.

We have Prime, I don't regret it. It saves us enough to pay for itself (compared to cheapest shipping, which is what I'd otherwise use), we get two day shipping instead of whatever, and we get access to all that Amazon Prime free video on the smart TV. We watched Orphan Black that way, and that alone was worth it. There are other benefits to Prime, too, but we haven't used them yet.

It's a bit like Ryanair; What happens when EVERYBODY orders 'priority boarding'…?

Here's a new wrinkle I haven't seen before!

I checked the status Thursday morning and it said "Shipping Today". Great!

I checked the status Friday and it said "Shipping Today". Okay.

I checked the status Saturday morning and it said "Shipping Today". Hmm.