Prime customers get pretty much anything delivered in two days.
I still haven't figured out how they do it. I ordered two obscure oil filters, and they were delivered within a day. I think they had driver go into a local automotive store, and buy them?
Anyhoo, they were cheaper than the store price.
(I don't hate Amazon. I'm pretty amazed how effient they are. I never thought I would pay for Prime, but that MGM buy was brilliant. Local retailers need to up their game. I'm getting tired of being quoted a cheaper price online, just to pay more if I go in to buy. Automotive parts stores are notoriorious for this behavior.)
So? That has nothing to do with my comment.
Amazon used to let you select a shipping speed! The benefit of Prime was that two-day shipping was free, not that it made anything any faster.
You can no longer do this. Amazon will tell you how long they plan to take to deliver the item. Do you want it faster than that? Suck it up. Did it, in fact, take longer? Suck it up.
In New Zealand it can easily take 2 months for packages to arrive from overseas, if at all. In Taiwan I could buy locally-produced electronics and had it delivered in less than a week, and I thought myself lucky - but overseas packages got lost twice (maybe 10% of the time) due to not having a Chinese address written on them.
The long shipping times, combined with moving house periodically to keep a low rent, mean my buying habits usually involve splurging on $$$ of online shopping once a year or two.
Asking girlfriend/parents to forward parcels from Taiwan/France delays it even more. I'm still waiting for my Christmas 2020 present: "Oh, I'll just put something else in!" Friends have been even worse: some belt clip cases would only ship to the US, and a friend there still hasn't sent them on (after buying them in 2014). Similar story with a magnetic iPhone cable from Korea (2016). I've basically given up on ever getting those parcels.
Also import fees are all over the place: on Amazon, a Sabrent Rocket Q 8TB SSD costs $1399 + $992 fees (USD) to ship to NZ. The price to Australia is $1399 + $216 fees. I could fly to Brisbane and back for cheaper than that!
Some products (e.g. MacBook Pro A1494 battery for A1398) can't even be shipped at all: OWC and iFixit won't send lithium-ion batteries overseas due to federal regulations. The third-party knockoffs that are available in NZ are faulty, and broke my logic board. Trying to get a new battery is an ongoing struggle for me, and has been since I noticed the swelling in September 2020. I can only dream of the convenience of 2 day shipping.
They literally told me they wouldn't reply to my emails anymore. It's total crap, they are using the Prime subs of rural customers to pay for same-day delivery in the cities, and hoping we won't notice.
So, yes, it is regional, but I have not even seen the words "Prime Two-Day" on any Amazon checkout in well over a year.
- You complained to customer service about shipping speeds to a low population area
- Customer service refunds your Prime Subscription with a bonus ABOVE your purchase price
- You emailed [email protected] and got it escalated to Amazon higher-ups, who take the time to address your concerns (even if unsatisfactory)
After all of that you're upset at Amazon? What's the outcome you're expecting here? I can't even get the first thing you got in that list from any local retailer.
Presumably for Amazon to stop advertising Prime 2-day shipping to market segments that it won't be able to deliver on that promise to.
That seemed clear from the sentence "they are using the Prime subs of rural customers to pay for same-day delivery in the cities."
- Customer Service refunded 25% of my subscription one time, and then about a week later a sympathetic supervisor/manager reviewed my delivery history and agreed it was sub-par and gave me a 100% refund. I was very honest with him that I had already received 25%, he didn't care. This has been the only person at Amazon who has understood my issue, but he was powerless to fix it.
- The higher-ups did not try to address my issue. They tried to gaslight me into believing that I didn't have a problem. They kept going back to the "orders take time to process before shipment", which I had explained over and over again that was not my issue. Once my item ships, it takes easily twice as long as it used to arrive.
Lastly, they tried to blame the carrier (usually UPS). Which is also BS, I am able to purchase shoes from Zappos (an Amazon company, BTW), and they arrive THE NEXT DAY. When I pointed that out to them, that is when they told me they would no longer be responding to my emails. I completely understand it is more expensive to ship packages to rural America, but I'm not the one advertising "Prime 2-Day Shipping" to anywhere in the lower 48 states. I just want them to be honest with me and tell me straight-up that I'm not worth a Prime membership anymore.
If they miss their shipping deadline, just select the return reason as defective, or item "not as described" or whatever, and it will let you return it for full refund.
I need something by date X, Amazon says they will deliver by X-1, they actually deliver on X+2, so I buy from a physical store on X because I still need it on X, and now I have an extra item and it's not my fault.
I mean, if someone here is an Amazon manager and can convince their engineers to add an "shipping delayed" option to the list for free return reasons, I'm all for it, and I'll use it.
Returning for the wrong reason just creates more work while you end up with nothing, and creates waste as the returns usually end up in the trash while the seller loses money and reputation for something they can't control.
If you order before 3pm, same day delivery is available for $9.
If you're a procrastinator, yes. About 10 years ago I started buying winter holiday gifts in August. :) But only for my partner.
Gifts generally have strict deadlines. Sadly, Amazon has stopped offering any shipping speed guarantees -- there is no longer even an option in the purchase flow. It will get there when it gets there.
They won't refund if they miss their own self-imposed shipping deadlines, either.