I got Amazon Prime for free 2-day delivery. Lately, it seems as if they’ve been missing a lot of deadlines.
It’s usually not a big deal, nothing I order on-line is critical. But a Christmas gift came late, and now a book is delayed another week. December 28th to January 14th? Seems like a long time. I could have the book from Barnes & Noble at Har Mar today, if I had known it would take so long. The extra five bucks would have been worth it.
When part of your sales pitch is prompt delivery, customers expect prompt delivery. When the merchandise doesn’t arrive as promised, you first lose credibility, then sales. This is not a good look for you, Amazon.
Joe Doakes
This is how companies that are “too big to fail”, faill
Agreed, for the last 9 months Amazon has been delivering, to me a Prime member, consistently within a 4 to 6 day window. It is rare and an exception for them to deliver within 2 days. Also Amazon is increasingly allowing knock-off vendors to sell and ship as though they are the brand item you wanted – this occasions a lot of returns. Amazon is losing control of their backend, meanwhile WalMart with their superior distribution network is starting to make serious inroads to Amazon’s market particularly in rural and sub/exurban areas.
I got Amazon Prime for free 2-day delivery.
Let’s not let them off the hook too easily. You *paid* for Amazon Prime to get 2-day delivery. And then other services that you may or may not use or even care about were added, 2-day delivery became 2-ish-day delivery and the price was increased. I mean, this has been my experience.
I think it is worth mentioning that the various states, including MN, greedy pigs that they are, had a hand in this too. For years, a guy could avoid paying sales tax by buying from Amazon, a nice little discount. And Amazon used delivery services that *could* guarantee 2-day delivery.
And then these various states threatened lawsuits and all sorts of costly, legal consequences and a deal was negotiated. I think (ie, my perception is) that Amazon agreed to charge appropriate sales taxes by building at least one warehouse in each state so as to create a local presence that has to charge sales tax. On the upside for Amazon, the warehouse uses USPS to deliver the products – I mean, how hard is to get something delivered from Shakopee in a timely, if not 2-day, manner? Probably costs less for Amazon. Everybody’s happy.
But then the various details and the devil show up. Let’s say you live in Windom or Foley or Baudette; well, that 2-day thing might well be three. And let’s add a day when the warehouse doesn’t have your stuff – I mean, Amazon is pretty fast about getting stuff from warehouse to warehouse, but that’s an extra day. And there’s the people working in the warehouse: the work is hard, grueling even, and last I heard not everyone working there is a model employee (*cough*Somali*cough*).
But hey! With Prime you can see Moonstruck (starring Cher, a wonderful life-affirming movie) for *free*. On your computer. Or you could buy a Fire-thing device to show it on your TV (and listen to your conversations). There’s a special this week on those Fire-things. A new one could be yours in only two days.
Interesting, Pig. Makes sense.
“meanwhile WalMart with their superior distribution network is starting to make serious inroads”
Maybe pig, but they’re not doing it with my greenbacks. Although I’m not a fan of it, it’s not their predatory purchasing that has lost my business, and it’s certainly not their refusal to pay high school dropouts $20 an hour to tell customers they don’t know where the Elmer’s glue is kept; it’s the damned surveillance and anti-theft infrastructure.
I don’t blame them for protecting their merchandise, but if they need a camera every 5′ in the aisles, enough outside to make the their stores look like the NSA parking lot, and 3 reserved parking spaces up front for cop cars, it’s a signal to me that WalMart isn’t the kind of place the wife and I should be frequenting.
But what finally did it for me was the camera at their do-it-yourself checkouts. Not only do we have to do the work other stores pay people to do, they put the video of you doing it right up in your grill. It says to me “Yeah, we’re recording you, scumbag, so don’t try anything fancy”.
There are multiple problems with Prime these days as far as delivery goes. Amazon has gotten so big so fast that their distribution networks can’t keep up. Add that into their divorce from FedEx, and their on-time rate has definitely gone down.
The observation on crap products exploding on Amazon is also spot on. I’ve scaled back many purchases from brands or sellers I don’t know on Amazon because the lying on some many products has become so pervasive that it’s just not worth the hassle. You learn over time places to avoid (e.g. never buy a monitor at NewEgg unless you want to be stuck with one with dead pixels, since they require 10+ pixels before they’ll take it back), and Amazon is rapidly becoming such a place for me for anything other than name brand kit.
In short, Amazon is becoming eBay slowly but surely. And that’s a shame.
I agree with Pig Bodine.
I don’t even look for Amazon deliveries in the first two days. If it happens, great, but I’ve long forgotten about “two-day shipping.”
And the knock-offs! Good grief. I see more and more comments, some with pictures as proof, that third party vendors or whatever they’re called are sending out fakes. I no longer will buy anything that says it’s “Sold by ____ and Fulfilled by Amazon.”
Given their shoplifting losses ($3 billion per year), can you blame them?
Which gets back to the “not the kind of place the wife and (Swiftee) should be frequenting” thing.
At least in MN, Walmart hasn’t posted no weapons allowed, so that’s in their favor.
” it’s the damned surveillance and anti-theft infrastructure.”
Compared to the surveillance that Alexa and the Fire products undertake in your home on an ongoing basis Walmart (and Target for that matter) are benign.
The reprobates view Walmart as “a pipeline in the prison industrial complex” that overincarcerates Democrat voters – i view the 3 reserved police parking places as a plus..