If they miss their 2-day shipping guarantee then you call CS, complain, and get a free month of Prime added. Ad infinitum. A way to increase your chances of missed 2-day shipping is to spread out your item orders so it gives them more opportunities to screw up. This also increases their costs of S&H across the entire logistics chain and maximizes the usage of your Prime membership. Plus it feels like every day is Christmas when a new random Amazon item is coming in.
Another key is to order stuff that weighs a lot (40lbs+). Last time I did FBA the UPS rate for Amazon shipping was ~50 cents / lb . So if you're getting a 40lb item (especially if it has weird dimensions) they're likely not paying much lower than $15-20 to get that to your door in 2 days.
> Another key is to order stuff that weighs a lot (40lbs+). Last time I did FBA the UPS rate for Amazon shipping was ~50 cents / lb . So if you're getting a 40lb item (especially if it has weird dimensions) they're likely not paying much lower than $15-20 to get that to your door in 2 days.
This is like overeating at a buffet to feel like you got your money’s worth.
You can either use amazon because you’ve decided you need it or you can actually stop giving them money and recommend others do so. That is a much bigger threat to them. Continuing to use prime and buying things you don’t need from Amazon isn’t being “hostile” to Amazon.
http://time.com/money/5288702/amazon-return-policy-ban/
It's like card counting at a casino. Even if you're technically within the rules, you'll still get walked to the door.
As an aside: I canceled prime long ago. Couldn't be happier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290
I've found that now what they do is just give you delivery dates that aren't 2 days in the future, even when in stock. Sometimes I've had orders on Monday with ETAs of Friday, with prime, in stock (no notice on the page saying extra processing or out of stock).
Amazon lost one of my packages (they were delivering it themselves).
No biggie by itself, but the apology mail did not lead to a reimbursement. Instead, I had to go to the website, and go through a dozen of steps that really felt like they were here to make me decide it is not worth my time.
Great way to lose my confidence in the company ..
I feel bad doing this, because I know these packages are coming in via air, truck, boat, etc and batching is significantly more efficient.
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/amazon-stops-giving-a-free-mon...
In 3 years, we've had only a handful of deliveries that haven't arrived on time. I only cared about 2 of those, and on both occasions they gave me a free month of Prime after I sent a single, short email saying delivery was late. Pretty amazing customer service, especially for the UK!
Amazon isn't always the cheapest (altho they usually are, or are very close), but their customer service is great, and if I have issues they make returns really simple. This is the reason I buy more stuff from Amazon than from anywhere else.
I should add, I've never (knowingly) had any counterfeits from Amazon, and don't personally know of anyone who has, but it seems from HN it's a much bigger issue in the US than in the UK.
Were they beat up in transit, and take forever? Oh most definitely, one was even lost somehow; however they were so undervalued it was worth the fact they were bound to screw up.
They will only do this 12 times a year. You can also request that they give you the late item for free.
The dark pattern the retail side now seem to employ is listing everything under the 2-day shipping Prime label, but not _actually_ shipping it for several days to weeks. Sure, they technically honor 2-day shipping once they actually ship, but as an end user, if something listed as 2-day shipping takes 8 days to be delivered... it isn't actually 2 day shipping.
It used to be go to amazon, enable the "Only Show Prime items" filter, and BAM, get your item 2 days later. Now the prime label is completely useless. You've got to manually investigate each option to see when it will actually be delivered. God help you if you mindlessly decide to change the color on the product page and expect the shipping date to hold.
Obviously a vastly smaller selection, but the prices are competitive and often cheaper than Amazon at this point. Feels good breaking away from Amazon as I was only shopping there from the momentum of what was once a good company.
Aren't many (maybe most) of these fake reviews done through Amazon Mechanical Turk? It's like instead of taking the cost to moderate the reviews, they decided to monetize them. Why pay money, when you can earn it?
I know a lot of them come though Facebook. There hundreds of groups (like this one https://www.facebook.com/groups/amznlove/), where sellers are soliciting fake reviews in exchange for free product and PayPal refunds and commissions.
Here's the Washington Post article that describes this practice: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant...
Here's a page that came up after a quick Google search that appears to be a review solication howto: https://www.amzfinder.com/blog/top-100-facebook-groups-list-...
That's crazy because I'm in Canada and it's the reverse. I don't care about the free 2 day shipping because I usually get it quicker using their actual free shipping.
I used the free 2 day shipping of Prime a few time in the past using the student discount but each time, they ship the day after, which still means I receive it in 2 days. When I get the free shipping, more often than not, they ship it the same day and I receive pretty quickly. It's like on Prime they still hope I'm going to buy the overnight shipping while not on it they just ship whenever they can.
Prime Photos/Amazon Cloud Drive has been my most used Prime perk, probably. I use it a ton as a Dropbox alternative (it's not as nice as Dropbox but whatever). Followed closely by Prime Video. Then Prime Music, which I actually don't use on purpose but allows our Echo to 'just work' when it comes to playing music (I often forget to say "...on Spotify") especially themed stations. Twitch Prime is a thing I don't use much, but happy to be ad-free there. Not sure how they do ads anyway.
Honestly I think Prime Video alone is worth the subscription.
I ordered SUV tires from Tire Rack, and they had them to me in 18 hours.
2 day shipping on their end is wildly misleading.