[brwnll]

This is likely true, but for a less nefarious reasons. It's very unlikely they received your order and were sitting around twirling their thumbs until the last possible moment.

Instead Amazon has algos that know exactly when they need to get an item in the mail to make it before the deadline. Every time an order comes in, the pickers list is updated.

Meaning that every time a customers order comes in with a tighter deadline, their order will be picked prior to yours, until you deadline is sufficiently close (or there is a lack of more pressing orders) for your items to make it to the top of the list.

[ac29]

I'm pretty sure it is for nefarious reasons. For the last year or two (maybe more), Amazon has never failed to deliver my free shipping (non-prime) orders in 1-2 days from when they ship. Since this would be a disincentive to subscribe to Prime if they shipped it within a day or so of receiving the order, they just do nothing for 4 or 5 days so that it arrives in the 5-8 day quoted window.

Its clearly in their best interest to push people to subscribe to Prime to recover their costs, their order fulfillment is so streamlined that a standard free shipment and a prime shipment probably cost the same in 95% of cases.