Amazon S-L-O-W shipping

[Amrita]

Two of many of my packages, larger, got shipped by the new Amazon flights from mainland using their own planes to HNL and then very sloly, 10 days, by barge from HNL to Hilo. I asked why the delay at the P.O. and she verified it was by barge and then she shrugged. No point in "going off" at a P.O. employee, not her fault. I suspect it is the HNL post office that makes the decision on the transportion from there to here. Amazon stopped using FedEx a while back.

[eigoya]

Not on Amazon, but I ordered a package 12/10 which had either 2 day (extra) or two week shipping through USPS via FedEx(who knew?). I didnt need it too quick, so opted for latter. After four days, it shipped, and I tracked it from the east coast in and out of Chino CA twice (in between Albuquerque, Oklahoma and another CA unknown city). Now it has been handed off from FedEx to USPS and has languished nearly two weeks in pre-pickup. Estimated date lengthened, and now is at 1/09/2020. I can't understand the trip to took around the country or where or why it sits. Wouldn't it be better to send it on? What actually happens to packages?

[knieft]

I suspect Amazon loses money on Hawaii orders, relative to urban mainland orders. I sometimes send items from Amazon to my daughter in Portland, OR, (occasionally for her to send on to Pahoa when something won’t ship to Hawaii) and she gets them within two days every time. If Amazon delivers with its own system, I will get a photo of the delivered item outside her apartment door. (No porch pirates yet.

Amazon appears to be expanding its own parallel delivery system. More and more an item will not make it to USPS until several legs of arriving and departing an “Amazon facility”. And more and more the item will go all the way to a Honolulu Amazon facility and sit for a couple few days, and then appears magically at the Pahoa PO.

I don’t expect the Prime mainland style two day shipping to Hawaii. It’s an added 5+ hour plane ride. Still frustrating when something ends up on the barge. I am just happy Amazon appears to making sustainable changes to Hawaii shipping rather than say the dreaded “48 contiguous states” like so many other companies’ free shipping. I often thought Prime should be more expensive for Hawaii, but never happened.

In contrast, I ordered two of the same very discounted items from Best Buy on December 4th. Free shipping. Email saying it will be delivered sooner than expected. But they used UPS sure save or something like that. It is “delivered” to San Mateo CA on December 8th and then turned over to USPS, and then it goes to the dreaded San Francisco USPS facility to get on the barge. Arrived three days ago. At least one did. The other disappeared at San Mateo. UPS tracking has it turned over to USPS. USPS tracking has it “USPS awaiting item”.

Chat support on BestBuy.com a couple days ago. Lengthy chat about the situation and finally they agree to send replacement. But I don’t want it going on the barge. So they agree to UPS two day shipping. Next day instead of a shipping email I get a refund. The item was no longer on sale and someone or bot must have noticed the two day UPS would be very expensive and changed it.

Anyway, for all the inconsistency on amazon shipping lately, I am glad they still do “Prime shipping” to Hawaii and hope the kinks will get worked out.

OtherWorldComputing (macsales.com) appears to have thrown Hawaii under the bus as far as shipping goes. Only USPS option is now next day delivery or something which is prohibitive. Crutchfield stills does good by Hawaii.

Walmart and Target online still seem to be trying to figure out Hawaii and I don’t buy enough from either to have a feel for it. And then there is Home Depot. And the “order it online in the store” and it ships to CA and barges the rest of the way. And I’ll never figure out Costco.com, but more and more it seems undoable, shippingwise.

In any case, I think our added first world problem in Hawaii regarding shipping is “incidental, not integral”* Enjoy the sunny afternoon with a full catchment.

Cheers,
Kirt
*Harold and Maude

[Punatic007]

You get free shipping to Hawaii for orders over $25, without Prime.

[Guest]

"OtherWorldComputing (macsales.com) appears to have thrown Hawaii under the bus as far as shipping goes."

I like OWC.. but as you noted their shipping rates are now prohibited. Though an interesting thing to note is you can purchase most OWC products on Amazon and with Prime avoid most of the shipping costs all together.

[terracore]

quote:

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Originally posted by Punatic007

You get free shipping to Hawaii for orders over $25, without Prime.

---

Prime members get 5% cash back with the credit card.... let's just call it 4% because anybody gets 1% without prime membership. So far the membership has been "free" but as we use Amazon less and less the time will probably come when we dump the membership. Or maybe just activate it once or twice per year to stock up on supplies and binge watch Prime video. You can get a 30-day membership for $12.99.

[terracore]

Amazon is really outdoing itself lately. I have a few orders placed over a month ago that haven't shipped, several more placed 3 weeks ago, and also almost everything ordered since then also hasn't shipped. All of these items were listed "in stock" when I ordered them, and still are.

Crossing the 1 month threshold is a new one, and last night I got an email from them apologizing for the delay for those orders, and instructing me to click a link affirming I still want the item, otherwise they would cancel the orders. (I think this is a throwback to the mail order days before email etc where if a company couldn't deliver a product within a month they had to send the person a postcard asking if they wanted to wait longer or get a refund. But also an "out" for them to not ship something if somebody ignores their email).

I've been trying to order from anywhere else or buying locally so long as I could accept the financials of doing so, as almost everybody else ships within a day of receiving the order, but at this point some of the things I ordered from Amazon with no ship date in sight are delaying projects I need to make progress on. So today I tried chatting with an associate.

"As per here, upon placing the items on the Month of March, there's an issue of delay from the items. If the item isn't readily available in the nearest fulfillment center, we need to obtain it from another fulfillment center and it takes additional time to ship your package."

"Yes, I totally understand your frustrations, Terracore. However, as you may know, upon placing the order, the availability of the item depends on the customer who's also placed the item on the same date or time. To the growth of Amazon, we strive to maintain the best service we can provide to our valued customers. In this case, my apologies for causing such inconvenience to you.

But thank you for bringing this to our end, it definitely help us to improve our service. We'll take appropriate action on each and every factor which cons-equated for this failure of our standards.

However, as of the moment, to be honest with you, the availability or the information of the item's shipping is not within my reach. So I am humbly asking you if you are still willing so give us a chance to deliver the item or would you like me to help you to check similar items with different seller?"

[check similar items with different seller]

(No other sellers.)

"Let me connect you to a member of the team that will best be able to help you with this. It will only take a moment."

.........

"I can see that you're contacting us with orders that hasn't been processed yet"

"Upon checking those package hasn't been processed yet. We encounter delay on those packages. You may try to cancel the order and try to reorder...I'm not sure what causes the delay. The problem here is that there's a possibility that the order may not go through...there's a possibility that the package might be stock in the shipping process"

Is there somebody who does know why I'm not getting my stuff?

"I'm sorry but no one will be able to give more about aobu the packages"

The chat window then closed and went to a survey asking about my experience. Basically I got a big middle finger for asking where my stuff is.

[AaronM]

Howling. I am howling with laughter. At least I am not the only one.

Hope yer stuff appears soon!

[SSGSurf]

My two latest orders that were "delivered" took 2-3 weeks for "in-stock" items. I didn't push the issue because I was out of state anyway. I have good 2-day delivery to my son in college on the mainland, but Hawaii is dropping off.

I have numerous friends and family with the same issues with Amazon to Hawaii getting progressively slower. Notice shipping is now worded "5-7 days once item is shipped."

As of last week Wednesday, I had five separate orders on my Prime Business account, 14 items all "In Stock." The oldest order was placed almost three weeks ago.

Well, last week Wednesday I canceled all of these orders and found the exact same or comparable items on eBay. Some shipped the same day, and I received two items last Friday, two yesterday, and the remainder is due to deliver tomorrow (Monday). All were free shipping.

Amazon better pull its head out of its ass, because I don't even care about Prime Video or other Prime services.

[AinaAKai]

50% of my Amazon boxes come opened. Also, 1 out of 10 things I order come damaged.