![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Amazon Shipping Has Gotten Slower For Non-Prime Members
- Thread starter Megalith
- Start date
I doubt it. Truthfully, 3rd party sellers are typically faster than non-prime shipments from Amazon, because 3rd party sellers ship within 24 hours (in most cases), while Amazon sits on the shipment for at least 2 days. Why? Because if they ship things out UPS ground or USPS priority/first class, you'll get the package within 3 days 90% of the time.
And unlimited storage for photos and music (maybe other media), free music streaming and possibly programmed streams too (not sure on that one).
If you use the other services, it's probably worth the money, but prime shipping is pretty much what free Amazon shipping was 5 years ago (maybe 1 day faster).
YMMV, of course. Transparent and Man in the High Castle have been worth the cost, not to mention the Prime shipping (we do get 2-day in our area), and Prime music which has been very useful for both my wife and me.
We feel it's a great value for what we receive. That said, I think it's shady that Amazon does indeed delay shipments of non-Prime free shipped items.
We started watching MitHC and it was entertaining, but kind of drags. Apparently, it's based on a book, so the ending is already known. Will check out Transparent, though.
For me, Prime Music has the same problems as Video: too little free content and the stuff you want you have to pay for. No ability to download and retain songs if you decide to cancel your membership.
Also, many sites offer large amounts of free storage for video/music. Not something I would pay for.
bonehead123
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,445
Well FWIW....
I've had prime for many years and never had a problem with recieving things on time, and I spend about 10k/per year there, some of which are subscribe & save items.
In fact, I just placed a $400 order for 6 items last night at 7pm, and this morning it says "preparing for shipment, guaranteed delivery by 8pm tomorrow"
And I have NEVER had any problems returning stuff whatsoever....just fill out the return form with 2-3 questions, print my label, and off it goes to ups/fedex etc....
However, I did read the story about them buying a boatload of 18 wheeler trucks & trailers to form their own delivery fleet.... If I were UPS or Fedex, I would be concerned right now... V*E*R*Y concerned !!
I've had prime for many years and never had a problem with recieving things on time, and I spend about 10k/per year there, some of which are subscribe & save items.
In fact, I just placed a $400 order for 6 items last night at 7pm, and this morning it says "preparing for shipment, guaranteed delivery by 8pm tomorrow"
And I have NEVER had any problems returning stuff whatsoever....just fill out the return form with 2-3 questions, print my label, and off it goes to ups/fedex etc....
However, I did read the story about them buying a boatload of 18 wheeler trucks & trailers to form their own delivery fleet.... If I were UPS or Fedex, I would be concerned right now... V*E*R*Y concerned !!
farscapesg1
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2004
- Messages
- 2,646
Just wanted to say that since having Prime for a year, we found it to be the exact opposite. Before we signed up for Prime, we were always needing extra items to reach that magical minimum purchase. TP, shampoo, deodorant, etc. became staples of almost every order to reach the required price for free shipping. At one point I started feeling like we were on one of those Extreme Couponing or Hoarders shows.. except we weren't getting the items for pennies on the dollar
When you have a whole linen full of TP and other toiletries, bought at pretty much full price, something is wrong.Now when we need that $15 dollar item, we can just order it and move on...
drescherjm
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2008
- Messages
- 14,937
I know the feeling but for me I can always add a box of coffee which I order every 2 months anyways.
Subscribe & Save has worked great for us in that regard. Between kitchen, house, and pet supplies we easily have 5 items a month, which gets us 15% off our order (on top of the S&S price).
Johnx64
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2002
- Messages
- 8,906
Prime. Goes from amazon warehouse to UPS who deliver it to the USPS that then deliver it to me.
They also are buying a fleet of 2nd-hand airplanes. So they're cutting out the middle man and doing the deliveries themselves.
Good for them. Hopefully the consumers see the savings via lower prices which in turn will drive more business their way which will make them more profitable.
Sure there is. If you want to keep a song, you buy it. AFAIK, none of the other major services allow you to keep the songs you like when you cancel your subscription.
Weird. If you're close enough for either UPS or USPS to deliver within 2 days, I'd think it'd be cheaper to just choose one carrier or the other. All I know is if my packages arrived late more than once, I'd complain. Whether they give you a credit or extend your sub, it's worth making them pay for their mistakes.
I'm sure this is to increase/maintain profitability. At some point, investors want to see a return, and up to now it hasn't really happened. I gotta believe within 5 years that will no longer be acceptable, especially if companies like Walmart manage to fix their issues.
I dropped the prime for the same reason. I am not interested in their stream/cloud services. I also noticed the price increase over the years. I shop a lot at Costco/Sam's and find far better deals out there with superb hassle free return policy. On top of that, they charge taxes here in IL. There is absolutely no way I would sign up for a prime.
Bladestorm
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2006
- Messages
- 1,232
I've had Prime for many years with zero complaints until last week. 2nd day shipping has become 3 day, and Overnight is now 2nd day. I hope this isn't permanent.
jlbenedict
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- May 22, 2005
- Messages
- 1,967
In addition to shipping, I've noticed that orders seem to take forever to process. I'm not a Prime subscriber, and I've noticed recently that even just as something as simple as order notification updates do not even update, and it takes a week for any order to even show up as shipped.
bonehead123
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,445
A follow up to my earlier post....
My $400/6 item order was guaranteed to arrive by 8pm today, but showed up at 10am
OTOH, I did some research and found out that Amazon has a distribution center about 50 miles away from my house, that may have something to do with it....
And with them creating their own fleet of trucks & aircraft, delivery times should get even better in this situation !
Well worth my $99/year IMHO, but of course, YMMV..........
My $400/6 item order was guaranteed to arrive by 8pm today, but showed up at 10am
OTOH, I did some research and found out that Amazon has a distribution center about 50 miles away from my house, that may have something to do with it....
And with them creating their own fleet of trucks & aircraft, delivery times should get even better in this situation !
Well worth my $99/year IMHO, but of course, YMMV..........
Only once did I get a Prime package late and it was just a day at that. But for $8.33 a month to get 2 day shipping, streaming video and music, and the fact Amazon is typically cheaper and I get cash back from shopping with them makes it very worthwhile to me.
Has it actually gotten worse? Here in the Austin area (Which, to be fair, is a test market for their same day service), I get pretty much everything fast enough that I don't ever really think about it. I ordered a bunch of stuff Sunday that arrived Tuesday of this week. By my count, that's like 1.5 business day shipping. Seems good enough to me <shrug>.
Where Prime really seems to be worth it, though, is in a lot of the stuff that doesn't have the little "Prime" icon, but still gets some sort of free shipping for Prime members.
For example, I bought a shop crane last week (bigass tool for removing engines). It weighs 250 pounds and comes in two boxes, one of which is like eight feet long. This item came with no-cost-to-me slowboat freight shipping. If I'd bought it anywhere else, I'd have paid an extra $150 for that, or had to rent a truck and go pick it up from somewhere, which would have been costly AND a hassle.
The question at hand is for NON-prime users, who frequently (and maybe even consistently) see Amazon sit on their order for several days before shipping it out, simply to create an artificial advantage for Prime membership.
How do you know it's not just a matter of Prime members getting priority, and it legitimately takes them that long to get around to the non-prime ones?
I've never seen anything in their advertising for Prime that suggests they actually Prime orders any faster - it's always just that you get free two day shipping. Twelve days does seem excessive, though.
farscapesg1
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2004
- Messages
- 2,646
I think this is the bigger factor. The number of Prime members continues to rise. According to reports, they increased Prime membership by 3 million users in just 3 months ending June 30th, 2015 for example. Not only that, but granting priority to your membershp customers over non-membership customers makes sense, IMO. Does that mean you just sit on the non-membership orders purposely... not really. Basically you flag each order with a priority, membership orders are flagged higher and filled first and then non-membership orders are filled in the remaining time. Rinse and repeat the next day.
Think of it like having connections at a fancy restaurant. The average joe has to make a reservation days, if now weeks in advance, however because you have an "in" with the owner, are a well known food critic, or whatever... you can call them up that day and get in .
dvsman
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2009
- Messages
- 3,628
I think the question here is whether they are stutter-stepping packages intentionally.
If the workload of the shipping department is say (for arguments sake) 1000 shipments per day and Prime shipments are 500 per day - any non-prime shipments that are in excess of the remaining 500 capacity get pushed back another day or two.
In our imaginary scenario If you get 1000 non-prime orders, 500 would be delayed right away because there isn't enough capacity to handle them, especially since Prime would (and should) always take priority. As a business owner, you would of course prioritize your VIP members over regular customers. That's just common sense.
If the workload of the shipping department is say (for arguments sake) 1000 shipments per day and Prime shipments are 500 per day - any non-prime shipments that are in excess of the remaining 500 capacity get pushed back another day or two.
In our imaginary scenario If you get 1000 non-prime orders, 500 would be delayed right away because there isn't enough capacity to handle them, especially since Prime would (and should) always take priority. As a business owner, you would of course prioritize your VIP members over regular customers. That's just common sense.
Zepher
[H]ipster Replacement
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2001
- Messages
- 20,515
We have Prime Now service in my area!!!!
http://pilotonline.com/business/con...cle_37d73e86-9fc6-5b36-88f4-bbb223b04a89.html
http://pilotonline.com/business/con...cle_37d73e86-9fc6-5b36-88f4-bbb223b04a89.html
Because they managed to ship things out the same day for more than 10 years and it only slowed down after they offered prime and realized that if they ship my non-prime package today, it'll arrive 2-3 days after I order it, which means I have very little incentive to get prime, unless I like making lots of small orders.
By delaying the shipment for 2 or 3 days, they make prime seem like a better value, but most know that it's an artificial value.
BS. If that was true, then using that logic, if everyone got prime, Amazon couldn't deliver packages in 2 days. It's not a coincidence that amazon and later Newegg started taking longer to ship the packages after creating a premium shipping service.
If you like the service, that's fine. I've got it too, but you're gullible if you don't think they're doing this to get more people to buy prime and thus lock them into Amazon's ecosystem
dvsman
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2009
- Messages
- 3,628
Actually, since Prime is a paid service, if everyone got it, they would have the new money to expand their logistics to meet the demand of the new customers. So your logic fails here.
They have new money, and yet non-prime has degraded over time and prime apparently is too.
Stereodude
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2000
- Messages
- 3,285
I ordered a single item last week from Amazon that was in stock & fulfilled by Amazon.com. I'm not a Prime member. I chose the free super saver shipping option and it took Amazon a full 7-8 days to ship it (depending on how you count). Unfortunately, this is becoming the norm, not the exception.