Amazon S-L-O-W shipping

[jlgerk]

exact same stuff here

complained yesterday - re order - prommised today

yea right

edit:
first thing I said was "Stop useing ParcelPool"

[David M]

Another thing I noticed, if Free Shipping, but not Prime, I often get an email saying they don't ship to Hawaii.

David

Ninole Resident
Please visit vacation.ninolehawaii.com

[Lin W]

Just got off the phone with Amazon "customer service." I placed an in-stock, four-item, all-Prime, $185 order on 7/29 and received an immediate email confirming that order and giving an arrival date of Tue, 8/4. Today is 8/5 and so far it hasn't even shipped. I pay with my Amazon store card for the 5% reward, then pay it off as soon as the charges hit. This time, during the time since I ordered, Amazon arbitrarily upped my store card limit without my asking so there's way more credit there than I'll ever use. Now, after 20 minutes listening to a CS agent blather about not being able to figure out why the order hadn't shipped, why the four items ordered had been split into six shipments, and then telling me that they were holding it up waiting for payment to go through, I lost it and demanded a supervisor. A few more minutes on hold and I talked to a supervisor who was also unable to figure out what was going on but promised that the entire order would ship today, that he would follow up with a phone call tomorrow to confirm shipment, and offered me $30 off the order for my trouble. He did say that it would be standard shipping and take two days so I'm assuming Amazon Prime standard shipping is the two-day FedEx same as always? Hard to pin any of them down to a firm answer about anything. Guess there's nothing else to do but wait for the follow-up call tomorrow and, hopefully, delivery by Friday.

FYI, there's a new online service challenging Amazon, supposed to be 30% cheaper and way faster. It's called Jet (jet.com) and is getting great reviews. Not sure how it works quite but something about the more you buy the more you save? Unfortunately, since they're just starting up, they don't service Hawai'i yet but if they're as good as reported, it won't be long 'til they're big enough to include the usual exclusions; i.e, Hawai'i, Alaska, PO Boxes and APO addresses, etc. Something to keep an eye on for the future.





I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.

[kalakoa]

first thing I said was "Stop useing ParcelPool"

Unfortunately you have no say in the shipping method Amazon may choose, even if you pay for the shipping yourself.

[terracore]

quote:

---

Originally posted by David M

Another thing I noticed, if Free Shipping, but not Prime, I often get an email saying they don't ship to Hawaii.

---

Amazon has three main business models for selling hard goods:

1) Items they buy at wholesale and sell and ship directly.
2) Merchants who ship items to amazon that amazon sells directly and ships. (The merchant pays amazon storage and fulfillment fees (that include shipping costs))
3) Merchants who list items on amazon that amazon collects payment for, but the merchant stocks and ships the items (amazon charges them listing and fulfillment/processing fees).

Items 1-2 often qualify for "prime" because amazon ships the product, even when the merchant is paying to store the items being stored in amazon's warehouses.

Under #3, amazon has nothing to do with the shipping policies of the merchant, so often times they do not ship to Alaska/Hawaii. It's sort of like buying/selling on eBay "buy it now" except its a little less transparent that amazon is just a product lister and payment processor. Some of the products in #3 are actually shipped directly from China even though they have a USPS delivery confirmation/tracking number.

[terracore]

I've been watching the amazon shipping trend for some time and have used the online chat feature to glean some information from their representatives. Amazon's shipping model has shifted from getting products out the door as quickly as possible to only meeting the delivery schedule and there is a very good reason for it. Instead of saying a product will ship in X days, they now say it will arrive in X days. That allows their algorithms to guestimate the cheapest possible shipping cost for them in hopes it can be bundled with a future order. For example, if you order something with a 7 day delivery schedule and they know from your purchase history that you order frequently, they may decide to delay shipping your order so that they can possibly ship two or more orders at once and save a lot in shipping costs. A lot of this depends on your order history and if the type of items you are projected to purchase can leave from the same warehouse. If all goes well, your order is delayed a few days, goes out by parcel pool, and finger crossed it meets the delivery timeframe. Now if four days have passed and you haven't made another order, they take a loss that time because now to meet the delivery schedule they can't use parcel pool, they have to use FedEx 2-day. Many frequent customers have amazon subscriptions. I've noticed more and more items are getting bundled with my subscription shipment and my subscription shipment date gets moved around slightly to accommodate their shipping roulette.

There is no such thing as "free" shipping, its a marketing gimmick. Amazon has found a way to minimize their shipping cost losses by changing their shipping strategy from shipping quickly to merely meeting a delivery schedule. (there is no guaranteed delivery schedule with prime to Alaska/Hawaii, we get it when we get it). Prime members on the mainland are now offered a discount on the product price option at ordering time if they agree to get their prime shipment by an alternate arrival date rather than the standard 2-day prime.

ETA: clarity

[Lee M-S]

So if I order less often, I'll get faster shipping? I wonder how far they look back at order history.

><(((*< ... ><(("< ... ><('< ... >o>

[terracore]

If you don't have prime it might not be an issue. "Free standard shipping" has always been slow. For that matter, shipping to Hawaii for anybody has been slow for almost a year. Frankly, I don't think there is anything you can to make a difference if you are in Alaska or Hawaii. Considering that almost nobody ships here for "free" it's not like Amazon has to do anything to try and appease us.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

I placed two orders Sunday night (one personal, one business) and they were shipped together today with FedEx to arrive Thursday.
I don't have Prime, and requested the Free Standard Shipping.

[PunaMauka2]

Rather than create a whole new thread, I'll try ask here...

Anyone notice a rather sudden slowdown in Netflix deliveries? We noticed this happening beginning 3 or 4 months ago, around the time this thread about Amazon was started. The timing also roughly coincides with when our new postmaster finished the transition of taking over at our post office. Trying to figure out where the change occurred. Certain indications may suggest the new postmaster, but thought I'd ask here if others have experienced same.