I’m not in the US, so I have to use a package forwarding service when I buy from Amazon. The last time, I got hit by extra charges because they round up each package to 0.5 kg, and some packages are e.g. 0.2 kg. I see some items are sold by Amazon, some items are fulfilled by Amazon, and some are flat out by other sellers.
So which kinds of items will come in a single package? Do all items sold by Amazon ship together? I wonder if they have several warehouses. How about things fulfilled by Amazon? Oh and is Super Saver Shipping an indicator?
You’re correct; I have had any number of multiple-item orders with Amazon ship in different parts, despite them all directly coming from Amazon. It’s clear that, they have different warehouses / distribution centers, and not every item is stocked in every center.
I don’t think that Super Saver shipping is an indicator; it seems to be generally available on most things that Amazon offers directly, and seems to be more a function of “I’m willing to let you use the cheapest shipping method” than “it’s all going to come from one place”. Before I had Amazon Prime, I usually used Super Saver, and still had the “items shipping separately” issue.
Amazon has multiple warehouses. They will attempt to ship things together but if one warehouse doesn’t have everything then they have to use multiple shipments.
Fulfilled by Amazon means the product in question isn’t being sold by Amazon (you’re actually buying it from a third party) but it is stored in an Amazon warehouse somewhere and Amazon will ship it.
In stock/out of stock items are also a problem. They will ship in-stock items first. You can request that they delay the entire shipment until everything is in stock to minimize shipments but I don’t think even that guarantees a single shipment.
Oh… but at least when choosing between an additional product sold by Amazon and the same product sold by another company $0.10 cheaper, I know to choose the one sold by Amazon, at least there’s a better chance of it arriving together.
I bought two identical measuring spoon sets from Amazon. To do this, I picked a quantity of two for a particular item when adding it to my cart. They shipped from different warehouses in different states. So yeah, it’s hard to tell what might or might not ship together.
And it’s actually “worse” when you are an Amazon Prime member. Sometimes I’d order 3 items from Amazon on Monday (all of them sold by Amazon, and in stock) and find 3 boxes on my doorstep on Wednesday.
The exception is their “subscribe and save” service - these usually get consolidated to 1 shipment a month, and you get a discount. But it’s only available for certain items (mostly food and other consumables).
You can get some idea if you look at the end, right before you finalize your order, they will group the items they know they have to ship separately into different groups, with items that might come together under a single “Delivery estimate 1/2/13 to 1/5/13” and another set of items that almost definitely won’t come together under another heading like “Delivery estimate 1/3/13 to 1/7/13”. Sometimes the dates are the same, but you get one heading for each set of items Amazon is initially planning on shipping together. Super saver shipping is better for getting more items together because it essentially means “ship this item to another warehouse or wait for the item to get replenished, if we can ship multiple items together”. But that is going to be unpredictable at best because super saver ultimately means whatever is cheapest for amazon. You get the opposite problem with Prime if you subscribe to that, where everything comes in separate boxes.
Well, if I buy something from Amazon and another thing from another seller, odds of them arriving together = 0% If I buy everything from Amazon, odds are >= 0%
Well by “from Amazon” I meant both sold by Amazon and fulfilled by Amazon. Other sellers means shipped by other entities. As long as everything is “from Amazon”, there’s a chance it will ship together.
Yes, agreed. I thought you were speaking of items in the “fulfilled by Amazon” bucket since they could go either way. Clearly items shipping from 3rd parties can’t be bundled with Amazon orders.