[rbritton]

I suspect Amazon may be overloading their capacity to actually fulfill their promised delivery timeframe (the hotel industry does this a lot with overselling rooms) for the simple reason that most people won't complain or can be placated easily. In the past year or so I've noticed a big change with Amazon Prime in particular to that end. I still get the items ordered after 1-2 days in shipping, but it's increasingly common to not ship for a day or two after the order is placed.

[nickjj]

Without prime it typically takes 4-5 days for the order to go into "preparing for shipment", then 1-2 days for it to be shipped, followed by 2-3 days to get here.

It's kind of sad really. It's like your item is being held hostage because you haven't bought into using Prime.

For the reasons you just mentioned (it takes a day or 2 for it to ship) is the reason I'll never buy Prime. I don't like the idea of paying for a service that says 2-3 day free shipping but rarely comes in time.

Back in the good old days of mid-2000 you could order stuff from NewEgg and you'd get your package in 3-4 days all the time for the same shipping price that takes Amazon 6-10 days.

[dazc]

When an order is stuck in 'preparing for dispatch' it is easier just to cancel the order and try again. The same item magically gets dispatched as normal.