[bombcar]

Prime ain't what it used to be. Used to be reliably 2nd day delivery, by a real shipping company, and good movies added, etc.

Now it's as slow as "free" delivery, by a random contractor who does God knows what to the package, and prices aren't even better than Walmart or Target on many things.

The "avoid subscribing to prime" shuffle you have to do to even order anything anymore drives me away too, I only use Amazon if it's more than 5% cheaper.

[al_borland]

I really have to wonder if non-Prime and Prime deliveries go through the same shipping pipeline to simplify the process.

When I order without Prime, it seems my order just sits for a few days, then it hits my credit card and I get it 2 days later. Almost like giving everyone free 2 day shipping wouldn’t cost them anything at this point, so they just artificially delay normal users to make the service worse.

Occasionally the order will trigger right away and I’ve gotten non-Prime stuff in 1 day with free super saver shipping.

[bombcar]

I suspect they’re doing some “intelligent batching” of some sort to save costs on shipping SOMEWHERE. But it’s all inscrutable to me.

I do miss the “$5 digital credit for forgoing prime shipping” I used to abuse.

[sershe]

A much simple explanation is that each order is assigned a priority f(elapsed time, is prime) prime orders starting much higher so the processing of your order gets delayed behind all the incoming prime orders until its priority catches up due to longer elapsed time

[bombcar]

They obviously have some metric that if you buy something, you’re likely to buy something again within two days so by holding the first shipment until you do the second purchase, they combine shipping and save costs.

[al_borland]

When ordering without Prime it says you have 24 hour (I think) to add other items without incurring additional shipping charges. I don't remember Prime doing this, and there is little benefit to the customer to care, because it's all "free" anyway.

I ordered something on Sunday, I had until Monday to add additional items. I was charged on Wednesday evening, it shipped Thursday (today), and should show up tomorrow.

I can buy the priority method. Sit it on until a lull in demand, or 3-4 days pass, whichever comes first. That's how it feels.

Even though thad had this order for 4 days so far, they are effectively giving me 1-2 day shipping once it finally ships.

[kjkjadksj]

Except they don’t combine shipping on separate orders afaik

[arcbyte]

> it seems my order just sits for a few days, then it hits my credit card and I get it 2 days later

I have Prime and this is the majority of my orders. Lately I have been seeing a lot of free overnight deliveries tho, so maybe something is brewing.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I've never had Prime. Instant gratification isn't a draw for me and I can build up a shopping cart over months between orders. Funnily enough, about 75% of my boxes come with Prime tape on them. It used to signify expedited handling. Now it's just a branding exercise.

[FridayoLeary]

oddly enough some of my ebay orders also come in prime packaging. On that note ebay is a far better shopping experience at least for anything small.

[bombcar]

There's an entire Amazon fulfillment business that many don't know about - if you move enough merchandise with them you get the ability to use their shipping network, which can be pretty darn cheap.

So often it's the company/seller using Amazon for fulfillment; but sometimes it's just someone doing arbitrage between Amazon and eBay.

[browningstreet]

I've wanted to quit Prime a bunch of times, but my recent experiences in the Bay Area:

* Sometimes I want my order on my Prime day, but they insist on delivering it to me 3 hours from when I ordered it.

* When my son got COVID, we ran around town looking for COVID tests. Target was out of them entirely. So I ordered them on Prime and they showed up later that day. A bunch of them. And 3x cheaper than the COVID+FLU tests I found at CVS later that day.

* Yeah, ads on Prime suck. But I'm rewatching a 90s show and ponied up $3/mo for no ads.

Screw Jeff Bezos, but then again.. I got COVID tests when I needed them.

[al_borland]

> Yeah, ads on Prime suck. But I'm rewatching a 90s show and ponied up $3/mo for no ads.

The $3/month for no ads felt like they were nickel-and-diming the customers.

I was paying something like $129/year for Prime. The idea of paying $3/month on top of the $129/year I was paying for Prime felt so petty.

Had they just raised the price of Prime, I probably would have shrugged and carried on. But adding a monthly charge on top of a yearly charge, nope. I was done.

This of course was on top of allowing the store to be flooded with low quality junk being resold from Alibaba, counterfeit products all over the place, pushing to send shipments in their retail boxes, review gaming, them ripping off popular products to sell through their own private labels, and other such practices that have eroded my view and trust of Amazon over the years.

I ordered some headphones from Amazon a month ago, because the company that makes them was sold out in the color I wanted. I felt the need to lookup how to tell authentic from counterfeit headphones while I was waiting for the shipment, so I could validate what I received was real. I’ve received counterfeit goods before from Amazon. I heard they keep everything in the same bin, so it’s luck of the draw when picked (I have no way to validate that). No other store makes me worry about things like this, just Amazon. If brick-and-mortar stores were like this they’d be out of business in a week.

[browningstreet]

I get it -- I go through the same calculus every year. I also have the associated credit card, and.. well.. it all ends up paying for itself in the end.

I'll move to a secondary tier Amazon market where boring retail isn't quite as compromised as the bay area and the equation will probably change for me, but I'm also likely to end up in a rural mountain area and it might be a lifeline for me.

I haven't had issues with Alibaba stuff, and there have been just enough instances where Amazon delivered where local or alts couldn't. Like the light bulbs in my bathroom.. Ace Hardware doesn't stock my item, I couldn't order them elsewhere, but Amazon connected me to a vendor who fulfilled in about 2 weeks. And yes, I went without light in my bathroom for 2 weeks and was looking the whole time.

[doublerabbit]

Now that you can no longer read reviews without an Amazon account, I bypass all things amazon.

[xboxnolifes]

I somewhat feel the opposite. I used to pay for Prime for 2 day shipping when 1 week or more was the norm. Now I don't have Prime and still get 2 day shipping most of the time.

[SilverElfin]

Yep, the shipping is pretty unreliable these days on Amazon.

[fsckboy]

>Prime ain't what it used to be. Used to be reliably 2nd day delivery

Amazon delivery in LA is incredibly fast, frequently it says "will be delivered by 4am"

I hate Amazon, not encouraging anyone, but LA is a special zone.

apart from the free shipping aspect, do they actually delay shipping non prime orders if you live in a metro area? The whole FedEx business model originally was not "you pay extra for overnight" (which you would) but actually "because we deliver everything overnight, we don't need warehouses and all our rolling stock is empty every day, so it's cheaper for us"