OT Amazon deliveries.

Amazon offer free delivery for item costing over £10. I ordered two widgets that were shown as being in stock. If I had been willing to pay I could have had them delivered the next day. As it was not urgent I chose the free option. These in stock items were not despatched until four days after ordering them. I just wonder what benefit Amazon gain from delaying despatch. Is it because they hope you will pay extra or is there some other reason that I have not realised? Just curious!

Reply to
Peter Crosland
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I always select free delivery and the time varies greatly - sometimes it's next day. I think it depends on how busy they are and various random factors.

What I don't like is that Amazon won't allow you to set free delivery as your default. You have to select it for every purchase.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

Maybe they commit to a "job lot rate" with the couriers, so they delay the free deliveries to smooth out peaks and troughs?

Reply to
Andy Burns

Lots of firms differentiate products, with small increments costing a lot. I found that Amazon were usually quite good about delivering early, but yes if they want you to pay extra for next day delivery they have to hold up the cheapo service deliberately.

Reply to
GB

At a guess it has nothing to do with delivery but staff utilisation. The staff at the Amazon warehouse will pick orders beginning with the ones that have paid for next day delivery. When they have finished them then if any more next day orders have come in they will go back and do those first. Only if there are no more next day delivery orders to pick will the pick yours.

There is probably also something in the system that prevents your order sitting waiting for four weeks or more at times of high orders like Christmas. Say, if your order has still not been picked after five day then put it in the next day queue.

Reply to
Andrew May

Certainly I have had occasions where I've not paid extra for quicker delivery, yet it has arrived at first class speeds.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Your parcel gets put in a queue for picking based largely on space on dispatch vehicles (they ship a known number of lorry loads a day with various carriers). Free delivery gets fitted into an available slot once the paid for options have been scheduled. Once it gets to some time after ordering (IIRC, it's 4 days) if you've still not been scheduled onto a truck then you get a position in the queue to ensure it's not always stuck in waiting state.

If they are quiet, or you are ordering something that happens to fit with a particular courier well (lithium battery containing products often jump the queue for example) then you'll get it early. If you want a promise of early dispatch then you pay. If you feel lucky, you wait :-)

What annoys me is that I (with a prime membership) can't select a delivery day. Orders are automatically delivered next day, but often I want to order something for delivery "the day after next". Not an option :-(

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

Order it the following day?

Reply to
Adrian

I wonder why they might possibly want to do that...?

Reply to
Adrian

Another annoyance... if you have card details stored, there appears to be no way of paying via a different card.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Add another card to your account, you then get offered a choice of which card to use? Mine has my CC and daughters DC for when she wants to buy music.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Order it tomorrow ... simples ;-)

Reply to
Andy Burns

Really? I have a number of cards (business and personal) registered with them, and three different addresses (in two countries)- I've had no trouble choosing how to pay and where to ship, when checking out.

Reply to
S Viemeister

As Dave says... you have to register the other card before placing the order. I try to avoid using them because of their tax avoidance ethics.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Remember the vast majority of stuff on amazon is not actually from amazon: they do the shop site, the payment processing and underwrite the transaction BUT the stuff is being shipped from 'man in a shed' operations quite often.

I had to wait 2 weeks for one part. I guess the guy actually made it specially

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You add the new card to your customer account

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

There's three categories of stuff...

Sold by Amazon. Sold and fulfilled by ManInShed. Sold by ManInShed, fulfilled by Amazon.

Reply to
Adrian

On 12/08/2014 13:02, Tim Lamb wrote: ...

You object to them meeting their statutory obligation to run the business as profitably as possible?

Reply to
Nightjar

I was shot down in flames, on another forum when I made that observation. Apparently it's a myth ....

Reply to
Jethro_uk

Probably worth pointing out that Amazon hiked the price of Prime to £7

9/year a few months ago, so watch out for it auto-renewing.

Not sure how they justified the previous price given that nothing ever turn ed up the next day...

Reply to
mike

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