Indeed. It's gotten to the point that if I want something fast, I'll actually avoid Amazon and instead find some merchant who will ship the item USPS Priority Mail which is very reasonably priced and reliably arrives in 3 days.

The biggest problem are merchants that for some reason insist that they can only use UPS/Fedex, which is a complete ripoff to Hawaii. I don't understand how they get any business for their "ground" service here, given that it's usually about the same price as 2-day air but takes a week.