In my experience, it never pays to get the faster shipping with Amazon.com. I recently made two purchases online. With the first, I went with free shipping. With the second, because I wanted to receive the package sooner, I chose next-day mail. Guess which one shipped right away? Guess which one isn’t scheduled to ship for almost another week? I think Amazon doesn’t like to be rushed. If you feign patience and say, “Send it to me whenever,” they will reward you. But they’ll punish you if you actually want next-day to mean next-day.
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I suspect Amazon has warehouses close enough to most major cities that the faster shipping methods don’t make much difference, at least for common items.
One time I ordered a memory card for my camera. I picked the free shipping. It was already on my desk when I got to work the next day.
That Amazon. Such a tease.
I’ve had the same experience with Chapters.
What’s worse is when they say “we can ship this to you, but it will take us 4 to 6 weeks”–what that really means is “we don’t have any, but we think we can get more”, and that in turn translates into “will be there in a week, or else in four months we’ll send you a note saying we can’t get it and cancel your order”.
Yeah… in this particular case, free shipping seems to me “we’ll ship it right away, but it’ll sit at the post office and you won’t get it for a couple of weeks.” Whereas fast shipping means “Maybe we’ll ship it in a couple of weeks, and who knows? You might even receive it then.”
Both have delivery estimates of next week. Neither package has yet arrived.
Not to exonerate Amazon from guilt here, but I’m sure it also has much to do with their carrier (probably FEDEX).
It is often the case that my shipments reach the customer faster via FEDEX ground than an expedited service (FEDEX 2-day).
AND If you’re shipping internationally with FEDEX, you risk a pretty big chance of your shipment just dissappearing forever (unless you insure it, of course)
Fedex + UPS = Fed Up.