> ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items.

I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro area (though not quite inside the perimeter). Before I joined Prime, even a non-Prime eligible item would tend to arrive in 1-2 days.

I did call Amazon about the issue several months ago, and they offered me gift card credit equal to the non-Prime shipping cost of all shipments that didn't meet the guaranteed date, and since then I've only had one late shipment. It definitely pays to contact them about it; I know from working for a company that sells on Amazon that the customer is treated like royalty whenever there's an issue, whether it's with Marketplace or Amazon direct sales.

I've had the opposite. Shipments supposed to be delivered on monday delivered on saturday or sunday. And promptly lost because I ship to a business address that is closed on the weekend. Infuriating watching it state delivered on a sunday at 3pm when I know it's going to be lost.

I swear I've had amazon ask me if it was alright to deliver to a new address on weekends. Maybe that's a recent feature?

There is a flag. They sometimes ignore it.

Prime in the UK is next day, and whenever they miss that they give you a free month of prime, which was essentially getting me prime for free. I gave up in the end because the waiting in was getting too expensive

Where do you live? I always get prime deliveries on time, and increasingly I get them same day if order before noon I think.

There were a whole selection of reasons for delay, including repeatedly giving the wrong address to the courier and continuing to use Yodel years after it stopped being funny. You are basically heavily dependent on your location relative to the dispatch warehouse, the courier's depot, whether your driver is overloaded, and whether your driver is a ring-and-run type.

Previous to buying Prime, I ordered things that would be in a "Preparing to Ship" status for a week before actually shipping out. Upon contacting Amazon they informed me that they literally will not ship for a period of time if you got the over $35 free shipping deal. I complained and told them that was bullcrap and I didn't know that and I needed the things the next day and they overnighted them to me but still I was surprised. They basically admitted they'll hold things to make sure that shipping takes longer!

This is likely true, but for a less nefarious reasons. It's very unlikely they received your order and were sitting around twirling their thumbs until the last possible moment.

Instead Amazon has algos that know exactly when they need to get an item in the mail to make it before the deadline. Every time an order comes in, the pickers list is updated.

Meaning that every time a customers order comes in with a tighter deadline, their order will be picked prior to yours, until you deadline is sufficiently close (or there is a lack of more pressing orders) for your items to make it to the top of the list.

I'm pretty sure it is for nefarious reasons. For the last year or two (maybe more), Amazon has never failed to deliver my free shipping (non-prime) orders in 1-2 days from when they ship. Since this would be a disincentive to subscribe to Prime if they shipped it within a day or so of receiving the order, they just do nothing for 4 or 5 days so that it arrives in the 5-8 day quoted window.

Its clearly in their best interest to push people to subscribe to Prime to recover their costs, their order fulfillment is so streamlined that a standard free shipment and a prime shipment probably cost the same in 95% of cases.

I agree that it's crap, but why would you use the Super Saver Slow Shipping for something you needed the next day?

It sounds like they needed it the next day after they called support, at which point they had already waited some time without it shipping.

Good point. Still sounds like the commenter expected it before the guaranteed date, but maybe Amazon just screwed it up that badly.

The guy above is correct. The order said 5-8 days and I ordered it on Monday and needed it Saturday. 5 days could have possibly allowed it to arrive on time even within the window and I had past experiences where Amazon had just shoved stuff in the mail and it arrived in 2 days. HOWEVER, they waited until Thursday to even start the shipment process because then it would've arrived on/around Tuesday of the next week making it 7ish days which is the longer of the range as well.