It had previously been my experience that items purchased through Amazon and shipped using their “Super Saver” shipping promotion (free shipping on $25 or more in purchases) arrived in a very timely fashion, usually just a few days after the order was placed. Within the past year or so, this seems to have changed. There now seems to be a period of time where items will just sit in the warehouse before being sent out, even when they’re listed as being in stock, if I select the free shipping option.
Has anyone else noticed this happening? Do you think that Amazon has deliberately introduced an artificial delay in an attempt to discourage people from using the free shipping?
I have noticed that it is inconsistent. Sometimes things ship when they say they will. Sometimes they ship earlier. I’m impressed enough because I don’t think I’ve ever had anything ship AFTER they promised they would.
If I were to guess (and I will, since this is IMHO and not GQ) I would say that they are probably not deliberately holding things back to make the more expensive option look better, but rather prioritizing the tighter deadline items over yours. If there is space to send it quickly they will, if there is too much high priority stuff they’ll hold it back. I would think that they would do what they can to avoid huge stockpiles of stuff. I would also think that the Super Saver method introduces some flexibility into their processes to allow for maximizing efficiency: with a looser deadline they can choose to hold some shipments back if the logistics would work out better that way - they don’t really have that option if they’ve promised it’ll be at your door in two days.
Or maybe I’m completely off base and warehouse space is cheap and they do hold stuff back hoping next time you’ll pay more
I used to use it and then had something take more than 120 days to ship and I decided it wasn’t that good of a deal. I now simply use their “prime” shipping and am much happier with it.
I order from online and I can say when I get the “free shipping” which is always advertised as slower, so there is no con here, it always comes EXACTLY when promised, I never get it sooner.
That said, I ordered 2 CDs off Amazon a private seller and ordered them on Saturday morning and Monday afternoon they were both in my mailbox. From two different private sellers. It was the standard US Post Office first class rate.
So that must’ve been time right.
But when it comes to the free shipping, if I watch the tracking online and such, through UPS or FedEx or whatever, it always arrives exactly the day they said it would, never before and never after, well at least for me
I do not believe that Amazon is purposefully delaying packages in their warehouses just to convince people to pay more for shipping, although it’s certainly possible.
I do believe that Amazon is capturing all the efficiency gains it possibly can, and that means that the free-shipped stuff is at the absolute end of the queue. If there’s a little space left on the truck, your package might go on. But Amazon has very complex models for how much space they’ll need, and how to minimize their costs that there usually isn’t space on that truck most of the time. There’s probably some weekly and seasonal use cycles that make it more efficient to ship things out on particular days.
To an outside observer, these might look very similar.
You could test this by, say, ordering the same thing to be shipped free to you every day for a week or two. If there really is some slack in the system on some days, then I’d expect that your packages would clump up. You’d get several on some days (when there was extra capacity), and none on some others. If Amazon was just delaying packages, then I’d expect that you’d receive them at the same intervals that you ordered them.
Funny, I just ordered something from Amazon using the free super saver shipping option.
I ordered it Wednesday afternoon and it arrived this morning (Friday). That’s less than 48 hours between placing the order and having it on my doorstep. I was very impressed.
Sure it’s possible that they want people to spend the $70 or so a year for Prime.
But… I have Prime, and someone’s losing money on it when they will ship pretty much anything overnight for $3.99 or by two-day service for free.
Ship that new 125-pound table saw overnight for four bucks? You bet I took them up on that offer! UPS Ground for that would have been $90. Overnight Saver is $285. I have no idea where they’re making up that $281. Must be making it up in volume.
I do know that the Prime service is liberating for me in that I don’t have to think about consolidating orders or waiting to amass enough for free shipping - last week I ordered a book costing about nine bucks without a second thought, and since their main distribution center is so close, it showed up the next day on free shipping.
I ordered something Sunday and they didn’t ship it till yesterday (Thursday). There’s a distribution center nearby, so I’m hoping I’ll receive it tomorrow, but I may not get it till next week. Luckily, neither book I ordered was a matter of urgency.
The “free shipping goes at the end of the queue” theory people have been presenting here makes a lot of sense to me. I’ll have to try that out on the person with whom I was discussing whether or not Amazon Prime was worth it for the free shipping.
Prime has been worth it for me. I used to order an extra book just to get to $24.99 and free shipping, and shipping was often very slow. I love it. The book usually ships the same day and I have it 3 days after ordering. Also, it comes via UPS or FedEx. The old way, it came through the mail, which meant I had to go pick it up – no mail delivery where I live.
I don’t order from them often enough to make it worth paying for improved service – though I maintain my wish list there, 9 times out of 10 I order it (whatever “it” is at any given time) used from half dot com. On this occasion, the book was unusually cheap for a new copy at Amazon, so I plucked something off the wish list to get to $25 as a special treat for myself.
Yep. I ordered something the 4th and they didn’t bother to mail it until the 10th. It did arrive 3 days after that, though. And yes, things I’ve ordered have been taking longer to ship out over the last year or so too.
I buy other things from them as well. In fact, almost anything that I think about buying online, I first check to see if Amazon has it, what the price is and if it qualifies for Prime. Many times I will find the price on Amazon is the same as it is on other sites with shipping, but the other sites don’t ship two-day air. So it often works out better for me to get it from Amazon.
I have Prime, and have wondered about this, too. Many times I’ve ordered a single item for less than $10, and gotten the two-day shipping for free. Unless they have an amazing deal with UPS, I don’t see how they can make money like that.
Hrm, I like the idea that Amazon is sending the packages out during ebbs in the shipping cycle. It hadn’t occured to me that there would be buying patterns like that, but in retrospect, duh. Presumably the queue-bumping only happened within the past couple of years, which would then be why the delay was introduced.
1.) Amazon ships so much that they do probably have an amazing deal with UPS. My company does all of our inter-office and client mail through UPS, and I can tell you that our rates are usually significantly lower than the posted ones.
2.) Amazon probably makes up the rest of the money through increased volume in purchases and the people who sign up for Prime but don’t use it that much.
