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Ask HN: Anyone else noticing long delivery times with Amazon?
8 points by mjdesa 1627 days ago
I live in the Seattle area, and last week I feel like I started to see a massive spike in delivery times.

I've had a delivery that was supposed to arrive today that's been delayed for 2+ days. And when I look on for the delivery times of basically anything it seems like the expected delivery times are at the tail end of next week.

Just curious is others are seeing this across the country.

5 comments

Seattle (and the rest of western washington) was mostly cut off from eastern washington by road starting late wednesday until a few hours ago today due to a massive amount of snow, closing the mountain passes. I-5 was closed a bit due to flooding as well. Rail through the mountains was also affected, but I don't know timelines.

A lot of goods move the other way (imports come into the western ports and are trucked east), but some goods do come from the eastern part of the state and country.

Staffing is probably also a factor.

My guess is it's staffing. I use Amazon Fresh (for groceries) and Amazon Prime, and it's more apparent with Fresh -- normally I can get everything delivered next day. Fresh didn't have deliveries at all for almost a week around New Year's, and now their earliest deliveries are 2-3 days from today, though it seems to be getting better. Fresh seems to have most items in stock, but only for pickup, not delivery, which is why I suspect it's a staffing issue.

As for Prime, I used to be able to get deliveries 2 days after purchase, but my cart ETA for most items shows 3-4 days at least. It's not a big deal but I've certainly noticed that Amazon doesn't seem to be able to deliver as fast as it used to just last month.

It’s probably related to the Omicron surge which is creating all kinds of logistical hurdles.
Yeah, that's my current thinking as well, but I haven't seen anything about it written anywhere.
During the start of the covid mess, Amazon was unreliable. I started using ebay again. Deliveries were much faster. It doesn't make much sense, but those were the results of my n=1 trial.
Amazon is a week delivery, Walmart is 2+ weeks. Their plus service is a total failure
Remember when "Prime" meant two day delivery? I haven't seen that in years.
It should go without saying it depends on where you live.

In NYC I can order an item in the early hours of the morning and get it by night.

And that's not Amazon Fresh or anything, I've ordered 3d printer parts and had them in less than 24 hours.

At the end of the day I don't really have an issue with Prime taking longer than 2 days though, how much more blood (er sorry "efficiency") can really be squeezed from the stone?

I don’t even live in a big city and I get same day delivery on some stuff. I had an item get here 3 hours after I ordered it once.
I live 15 mins from a DC. Still takes 3+ days 95% of the time