[thaumasiotes]

Here in California, Amazon stopped honoring their shipping time "guarantees" years ago. They still say Prime is a two-day guarantee. When you order, they say delivery will take place within two days. Your order will have a scheduled delivery date reflecting that statement.

But later they'll quietly update the scheduled delivery date on your order. If you complain that a package hasn't arrived on time, they'll tell you to wait until it does arrive. If you ask for redress for the late delivery, they'll say no.

Sometimes you actually need to receive a birthday gift before attending the party, you know.

They've also stopped packing their goods in a way that prevents them from being damaged in transit. A book you order from Amazon today will arrive stuffed into a manila envelope that it can barely fit inside. The corners will be damaged.

[b112]

I return all goods even slightly damaged, but take a pic, print it, and include a note.

I do so l, so that returns can see it arrrived in poor shape, not from it being returned.

But... saving 3 cents per package on a box, may be cheaper that an extra return out of 1000?

I imagine the original seller doesn't know (when only shipped but not sold by amazon), so too bad for them, and Amazon even removed the return option "box ok but product damaged".

So I guess much of the cost is born by others.

[blincoln]

Amazon hasn't done a great job of packing for item protection in ~20 years. I honestly don't remember now if they ever did, and I was buying books from them in the late 90s.

In my experience, small single items will usually go in padded mailers, which are the most effective option they seem to offer.

As soon as the item or shipment is big enough for a box, all they've done for as long as I can remember is add enough packing material to fill any empty space, so that items in the box are less likely to bounce around inside the box, but offering no protection against situations like the box as a whole being dropped onto a hard surface.

I stopped ordering hard drives from them about twenty years ago because they refused to pack them safely enough for UPS or FedEx standards.