OT Amazon deliveries.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Order it the following day?

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

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

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.

Order it tomorrow ... simples ;-)

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.

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.

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

You add the new card to your customer account

There's three categories of stuff...

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

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?

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

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

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