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Comment by dingaling | Hacker News Reader

Given that Amazon seldom seem able to even dispatch my orders within two days, I think they'll have to implement some serious upstream process improvements before "30 minutes" becomes anyway imaginable.

In my recent experience the actual physical delivery process is only about one-third of the overall waiting time. But I suppose warehouse processes are less PR-friendly than sexy drone stories.

In contrast vendors selling through ebay consistently have the item inserted into the delivery system on the same day.

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In London, Amazon is consistently able to deliver many items within one hour via courier. It's called Prime Now.

Two-hour delivery is free if you have Prime. One hour is about £5.

On the normal Amazon.co.uk Prime, they dispatch same-day and always deliver next day, usually by ~1pm.

Interesting, thanks for the info. Living in 'the regions' in the UK I wasn't aware of those London services.

It does illustrate why in my experience non-Prime customers are drifting away from Amazon, though. They're sharpening their localised and top-tier delivery experience whilst seemingly letting 'ordinary' orders languish. Whereas I can go to another retailer, or straight to the manufacturer, and have my order on my carpet before Amazon even put it in a delivery lorry.

Depends entirely on what the item is and who the seller is. If it's on the Marketplace, Amazon has almost no involvement is dispatch and delivery. If it's Amazon Fulfilled, they pick up and handle delivery once the seller is ready for dispatch. I think the Prime and Prime Now items are stocked in Amazon's warehouses and allow for full control.

Items which are 'Fulfilled By Amazon' are actually stored in Amazon's warehouses. The seller just ships a bulk order of the item to the warehouse any time stock gets low. Very useful for small or white label manufacturers who get their stock made in China, and don't have any facilities to store it in the US/EU.

https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/...

Yes, I think a big factor is the region your living in. I am studying in Edinburgh and when I order something from Amazon there it usually takes around a week to arrive. But when I'm back home (Germany, NRW) even orders without Prime arrive in 2-3 business days.

Rather surprising given the warehouse is just north of Edinburgh in Fife.

Two hour is "free" but there's both a minimum order amount and driver tip included by default.

Do you have Prime? I don't use it, since I only buy 1 or 2 things off Amazon a year and my experience has been similar to yours. It takes 3-5 days to get an order out, then only 1-3 days actual in-transit shipping time.

My conspiracy theory is that Amazon is making non-Prime purchasing - where you pay a one-off fee - a worse experience so that you'll be "forced" to try Prime. Or at the very least they put non-Prime customers to the back of the warehouse queue more often. All it has done is turned me off Amazon, and I try to buy things someplace else if I can. It helps that I don't live in the US or UK, and our provincial Amazon is a much worse offering compared to those 2.

Of course they are. I'm a Prime-subscriber and love the guaranteed next-day arrival (Germany) of my orders. However when I have to order something from our non-Prime office-/-work-account, Amazon never ships the items on the same day, regardless how early I order. I'm certain this is intentional and I'm ok with it.

Having my frequent orders reliably arrive on the next day is worth the subscription. If you don't think so, you'll have to be patient. I think that's how Amazon sees it too.

I don't have prime and have sometimes gotten same day delivery with free postage by ordering early and getting delivery to a UPS dropoff. I guess they have drivers that just lap the dropoffs. North West UK.

I've had 250 orders with Amazon last year alone, all of them with Amazon Prime - I've had things which arrived a day late, but literally everything dispatched the same day, always. I'm in UK.

Amazon 'told' you they dispatched the same day... but they would, wouldn't they?

Well I always had a tracking number...and parcels which were late were always shown on DPD website as being stuck somewhere in the country, not in Amazon's warehouse.

Aha, I'm used to Amazon Logistics delivering all Prime parcels!

There isn't a lot of guessing when you have a tracking number.

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