+1 I've had the same experience trying to get $35 of "qualifying goods" into my cart to only see that they weren't really telling the truth and having to pay for shipping with Prime for next day.

Oh and through some weird ability to rename time "next day" now means 2 days and "2 day" means 3 day delivery. Same day usually does mean same day -- which used to have a lot of items available for that but recently has seemed to have gone down. Still impressed that it can be done.

It sounds to me like the algorithm is deliberately trying to outsource some of the "free" shipping cost to customers.

It's sort of like that bank transaction-ordering scandal from a few years ago, where banks ordered transactions unintuitively to maximize overdraft penalties.

They already outsource fixing the errors made by their algorithms to customers and the businesses that ship for Amazon.

Lol.

"Hey, lets merge these two colors, what could possibly go wrong?" is an algorithmic decision made by Amazon that happens far too frequently after I've gone home or to bed. :p