I have had Amazon Prime for a while now. It comes with a variety of perks but the only reason I have it is for the free two day shipping (their video selection mostly sucks).
The shipping guarantee is where it is at but more and more I am seeing caveats and exceptions and whatnot.
Sometimes you specify “Prime” as a filter and somehow, maybe because they have one thing that will ship in two days, you get a list of things that will come in weeks.
The two day shtick is a bit of a dodge too.
Order today but it processes tomorrow
Don’t do weekends
So, order on Monday processes on Tuesday, ships on Wednesday arrives in two days on Friday.
This is not true of all things on Amazon. Often shipping is crazy fast. But not always and you never know.
I have had a few items I needed for work and needed them “now” relying on the Prime promise only to be left in the lurch.
Seems to me the issue is Amazon third party providers. Amazon need to put the screws to them and make them live up to the promise or not be on Amazon.
I don’t have Prime but I simply don’t order from third party sellers. It has to be “Sold by” or Fulfilled by" Amazon.
I have had to make an exception a couple of times but neither was urgently needed.
I’ve had nothing but incredible results with Prime. A few times they have “made me offers” if I’m willing to accept later delivery, along the line of $X off next purchase, or a free kindle book voucher.
I’ve never had a problem with Prime deliveries ie “Sold by” or “Fulfilled by” Amazon stuff (and Prime means one day delivery in mainland UK). Third-party stuff I’ve had a couple of problems with, but Amazon are pretty good at sorting out disputes in my experience.
Are you sure the listing/seller specified Prime 2-day shipping? I don’t recall ever seeing third-party sellers listed as “Prime” unless it’s “Fulfilled by Amazon.”
I have ticked the box on the side specifying “Prime”.
Is that what you mean?
Even doing so I get dodgy results (although seems to depend on the product…things like t-shirts with funny quips will list as Prime but take much longer).
For other things products specified as “Prime” will not register till the following day even if ordered early in the day.
I get lots of things from Prime as promised and it is great but there are a lot taking advantage and really pushing that promise (and yeah…third party sellers).
Normally you see the “Prime” logo next to the price. And when you put it in the cart and check out, it should say “Choose your Prime delivery option”, and one of the options will be the 2-day shipping (probably the default). If you didn’t see these, you probably ordered from one of the sellers that did not offer Prime shipping.
Even if you searched for a product and specified Prime as a filter, that just means there’s at least one seller of that product that offers Prime shipping. If you get to the product listing and there’s a Prime logo next to the price, then the “Add to Cart” button will add a Prime purchase option to the cart. If you don’t, there may still be a Prime seller but they have a higher price, or is not in stock. You can still manually select a Prime seller (e.g. if you’re willing to pay more for it) by clicking on the “Other sellers” option.
On the left side you can filter your search by ticking the “Prime” box which supposedly gives you only the results that will meet the 2-day shipping commitment.
Orders before 2pm will ship that day. Orders after 2pm will ship the next day. There may be a hiccup if shipping is supposed to happen on Sunday, but often I find that things do ship Sunday.
And even if it takes an extra day to get to you, the shipping cost nothing. IMO it’s better to save on shipping costs than to be sure to get everything within 48 hours. My opinion on that might change if I found that a majority of things I ordered were taking 3-4 days to get to me, but in the early 12 years I’ve had Amazon Prime, that has not (yet) been the case.
As other’s said, always have to check to make sure the item says that it “sold and shipped by Amazon” or at least says “prime” on the item listing. I always check the Prime button when searching, but as you noticed, plenty of non-prime items get through that filter. How, I don’t know, but they do.
Someone else also mentioned that you have to buy the item before a certain time, so that will set you back a day if you aren’t careful. Order Tuesday morning and you’ll get your item Thursday. Order Friday afternoon and you could end up waiting until Wednesday (barring Sunday delivery or Amazon just moving faster than normal).
The thing to make a habit of is to check the delivery date on the check out page, it’ll tell you right there when to expect the package. You have to be careful, plenty of times, the date on the item page can be different than the date on the checkout page. Either because you changed something (color, size, quantity etc) or the item page said “prime delivery available once item is in stock” or “item requires 1-2 days for processing” or some other wording.
Don’t get me wrong, prime delivery is great, you just have to pay attention and never feel bad about pulling up a chat window and telling them that you didn’t get a package on the day you were supposed to. IME they’ll extend your Prime subscription by a month. You’re paying them a lot of extra money and if they’re not going to hold up their end of the bargain you deserve to get something back.
I order a ton of stuff from Amazon, I probably have something show up late 4 or 5 times a year and I call them on it 2-4 times a year about it.
I order from Amazon quite a lot and it certainly does not happen like that all the time (the 48 hour shipping).
Often it does but not all the time. Especially when it is not them fulfilling the order (even though the merchant is listing as Prime shipping which is my beef).
I think some of these sellers have maybe 20 items under the item description and a percentage are Prime (multiple colors of a pillow case with only white and black as Prime). So you select the non-Prime one because it isn’t very obvious that the Prime label only applies to a percentage of the items. This is one way this problem occurs.
I am pretty sure I have also seen something look like it’s Prime all the way through until you get into the final checkout and then it looks like it is out of stock but will be shipped in two days when it is restocked.
I have never had either of these problems when I make sure it is fulfilled by Amazon or from Amazon.
Amazon Prime video streaming and music are well worth the price by themselves. The torture of going through Amazon’s website to do almost anything other than make purchases offsets this value completely. I’ve calculated that Amazon actually owes me $4.53/year and someday I am going to sue for it.
That only selects listings for which there’s at least one Prime seller available. As I said earlier, the default (corresponding to the price being displayed, and the one you get by pressing the “Add to Cart” or “One-click” button) may not be a Prime seller. It usually is, but not always.
Sometimes there are different options for that product (color, size, etc), and only some of those options are available with Prime shipping. Sometimes the seller that offers Prime shipping is out of stock, but another non-Prime seller has it in stock, and therefore that’s the default selection.
I had that happen not too long ago. Looking for a clothing item. Found it with good reviews and the prime option. Ordered it and a few days later when it hadn’t arrived (and hadn’t even shipped yet), I went to check on it. As it turns out, the specific color/size combination that I chose, meant that it not only wasn’t prime but the seller was in the UK. It took about 2 weeks to get to me.
Even Ebay gives you a head’s up when you’re buying internationally. The only way to even find this out was to go to the sellers store front and look for their contact details and the only reason I even did that was because it was taking so long and I checked the reviews and noticed other people mentioning that they didn’t realize that it was coming from so far away.
It’s on me for not realizing that it wasn’t Prime when I changed the color or size, but it’s on Amazon for not telling me I was buying something from another country. I saw a few other reviews that also said something about wanting to try a different size, but it wasn’t worth the time or money at that point and they were just going to toss what they got and start over rather then ship something back to the UK on their dime and wait 2 weeks for a new item.
Yeah, I have no idea what you mean when you say “especially when it’s not fulfilled by Amazon.” There is no Prime when it’s not fulfilled by Amazon. It’s a prerequisite. There is no such thing as a “Prime merchant,” there are merchants who have Amazon warehouse and ship some of their merchandise. Prime shipping is available for that merchandise because of Amazon – the merchant has nothing to do with it.
Whenever I order eligible Prime iitems there’s a guaranteed delivery date on the checkout page. For me they have about a 95% success rate. Anytime the stuff doesn’t arrive on time I send them a message and they extend my membership a month.
On Thursday I finally pulled the trigger on a guitar I’ve had my eye on, mostly because the checkout page said it had the Prime guarantee to arrive tomorrow. The confirmation email said it would arrive tomorrow (Sunday). Well, it never shipped on Friday, and finally they shipped it today to arrive on Monday. Not a big fat hairy deal, but don’t lie to me about it. I changed my plans to be home on Sunday for naught. It’s just irrritating. Exactly where do you send a message to get a free Prime month? Sounds good to me as recompense for this annoying irritation.
I hate to give the seller a ratings ding for a FBA item that is late.
At the bottom, under “Let Us Help You” click on “Help”. Scroll down, under Browse Help Topics, click on “Need More Help”, then “Contact Us” from the pop up menu. After you sign in, it’ll take you to your recent orders. Scroll down to “2) Tell us more about your issue” and choose “Where’s My Stuff” and “Shipment is late”, scroll down and pick the option you want and go from there. Personally, I’d suggest you pick chat.
When the box pops up, give them the order number and a short version of what you said above and hit enter. You’ll get a few canned messages while they check to see what’s going on and then they’ll apologize and offer to extend your prime membership by a month. Accept the deal, say thanks, they’ll ask you if there’s anything else they can help you with, say no, close the window and that’s that.
And no, you really can’t give a product a bad review because Amazon shipped it one day late.
ETA, I just looked at your post again. They may make you wait until tomorrow, after the shipment has actually missed the deadline before they offer you a credit.