Ask HN: What's going on with Amazon Prime shipping times? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's going on with Amazon Prime shipping times?

55 pointslukev44 comments

It used to be that in my area (NC Triangle), most items on Prime were available with 2-day shipping, and often same-day or overnight.

As of the last month or so, the minimum time seems to be 5 days, with a large number of items in the 10-15 day range.

I'm no Amazon lover; I view them much the same way I did Walmart 10-15 years ago. They've recently had a lot of quality issues and the prices aren't as compelling as they used to be. If they can't even offer fast shipping anymore, I can't think of a compelling reason to use them over ordering directly from manufacturers or more niche retailers.

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I cut Amazon some slack during Covid, but once that was over and things were returning to normal, I was still seeing 4-5 day Prime shipping whereas I used to always get 2 days or less.

I saw a post recommending to complain to Amazon, so I did, via their online chat to a CS rep. They amended the shipment I complained about and I got it the next day, and since then, most of my shipments have been within 2 days again.

My advice: complain to Amazon. If everyone did this, it would make a huge difference. If you don't complain, you are basically telling them you're fine with whatever delivery times they want to give you.

Companies are constantly testing to see what they can get away with. It's a race to the bottom to provide you as little as possible while charging you as much as possible.

If we're willing to keep paying for 2 day shipping when we actually get 5-14 day shipping they're perfectly happy to keep pocketing our money without doing what we pay them for. If complaints stop being effective, it's going to take canceling prime.

Completely agree, and I'm ready to do that since I rarely use any other Prime services like video, music, or picture hosting.

In fact, I got in early on Prime where they allowed me to add up to 5 people to my account to get the free shipping (but not Prime Video) and my neighbor is splitting the bill with me. But if they go back to 4-5 day shipping, I'll still cancel it. Amazon might come out ahead if the other 4 decide to buy Prime. As I'm thinking about it, Amazon might want me to cancel Prime to get the others to subscribe! I'm sure they have the statistics to know how likely that is!

From my experience Amazon has terrible customer service. I'm trying to get them to reimburse me for a fraudulent charge and multiple times I got the boilerplate reply that the charges look right to them. No-reply email address of course those bastards.

> After reviewing your Amazon account, we did not find any unauthorized activity. As a result, we did not make any changes to your account.

Now I have to do a credit card dispute which means a new card which means more work. All because no one thought it would be a good idea to cross reference identical credit cards across different accounts. Probably counting on people not noticing. Anything to increase revenue I guess.

Glad to hear that worked out for you, and you're probably right that it would probably help if more people did it. I'm just choosing to vote with my wallet. I purchase far less from Amazon than I did a couple years ago. Like others have mentioned, the quality is a concern in addition to the shipping delays.

My alternative has been to shop other places. Best Buy and Walmart say thank you to Amazon. I am considering dropping Amazon Prime because it is of little value to me now.

I’m in a rural area in New England. There are multiple Amazon warehouses within 20 miles (25 minutes driving) and more than a dozen sighing 40 miles - including a major Amazon air freight hub in Hartford. Shipping times for most items are 7-9 days. It’s worse at the university next town over where it’s 8-10 days plus an extra day for the university. We’ve found that we can ship to an Amazon drop point at a gas station a town over and get 5-7 days.

In contrast, shipping stuff to family in major metro areas has been usually 3-5 days, but with breakage cases of 2+ weeks.

We ordered a bunch of stuff from Target and got it next day. Neither Amazon nor Target regularly run their own delivery vans to my town (technically part of my town gets Amazon vans one day a week).

Also, McMaster Carr still gets me stuff in 2-3 days. Gotta prioritize.

I cancelled Prime a couple years ago and never looked back. The only thing that changed is that when I do order from Amazon, my package sits around in the warehouse for a week before making it to my door in two days. I also started getting things sent from warehouses clear across the country far more often than when I was subscribed. My mother still has Prime and she doesn't get her orders any faster than I get mine.

I'm convinced that Prime isn't faster shipping and instead is simply paying Amazon to cut out artificial delays.

My dad has been complaining about this exact same thing, while I'm staying with him during the holidays I've ordered some stuff to his house as well.

Every single thing he's ordered has been 1-2 days late, every single thing I've ordered has been on time w/ 1 and 2 day shipping. All shipped to the same address, both of us on separate amazon prime accounts. (sample size ~5-10)

Does amazon keep an internal tier-list of customers and prioritize based on this?

Wait till you're based in a non-UK, non-US, non-German country and watch with astonishment as your parcel changes hands with several different sorting depots over the course of WEEKS just to get a tacky little USB charging adapter. Then you learn patience with Amazon.

That depends, at least in the Nordics shipments from Germany usually arrive fast.

Rising fuel prices led to greater consolidation of shipped goods requiring larger loads before they are sent out for delivery. You may have seen the rollout of the larger Amazon vehicles which are practically indistinguishable except for the branding from UPS vehicles. Amazon had said they were going to start doing this even before Covid-19. Now they are in the final stages of becoming another UPS with an online storefront.

It is very likely a combination of it being the holiday season and incredibly bad weather. Anecdotally, there have been a lot more semi truck crashes than usual in my area due to insanely bad road conditions.

This has been going on for a few months now. Not anything recent.

Where I moved, the normal shipping time is 4 to 5 days, USPS.

Since December, it's been 2 weeks.

Usually, it'll arrive a little sooner than they say, though.

Luckily for me, I was getting annoyed with AMZ fake reviews, scammy sellers, and cheap Chinese stuff anyways.

I've been ordering more from manufacturers directly, and getting better stuff delivered faster. I've also been using eBay a lot recently, it's not the wild west it was 15 years ago. Fast shipping, real storefronts. Much better than AMZ for most things.

For stuff I want really quick, I just use Walmart+. They'll usually bring it same day, at worst 2 day shipping.

As an aside, all this has kinda made me wish for a new type of portal. Something similar to ebay, but for legitimate, verified businesses only. Or perhaps even just a portal where I can search, it'll show me prices, but clicking directs me to the store/mfg site to finish?

I wonder if WeChat as a portal facilitates direct-from-manufacturer sales. Is Amazon a contender in China?

I noticed this happening pre-Covid and gave up on Prime. I didn’t use it enough to justify the price anyway. But I was experiencing 3-4 day shipping instead of 2 days. Not a big deal, but it broke the promise of “free 2 day shipping” in my mind which was the whole point of paying for Prime.

Amazon cut inventory sending limits for merchants which means many skus are out of stock. Why did they do this? A combination of fewer employees, fewer warehouses and less space, etc.

Overall trend is going in the wrong direction. They should be helping merchants and providing more space and opening more warehouses.

"They should be ... opening more warehouses."

Opening more warehouses would require hiring more people. I remember reading that turnover among Amazon warehouse workers is exceptionally high. Sooner or later Amazon will have to raise what they pay these workers, which will drive prices for products sold on Amazon to increase.

I think it’s more like they need to make the warehouse jobs easier. Trying to get peak productivity out of people burns them out quickly and they go through so many people they actually burn through the entire job applicant pool.

Best thing to do is cancel prime, it's a low key scam.

It's a joke. It's number one reason for existing is to ship products to you next day, it's a next day delivery service but now they take a week and they have increased the price not lowered it, because Amazon knows people are sheep and they are used to it now, they don't need to win new customers, they can simply lower the service and increase prices which equals more profits.

All the other services Amazon give you with prime are complete junk, they attach a bunch of extremely low quality services onto prime that have nothing to do with online shopping and are much worse than any alternative in order to make it feel like it's worth it.

As a Prime user in the UK I am definitely not experiencing this - I get reliable 24-hour delivery on just about all small to medium-sized things.

The UK is the size of an average US state though, not really comparable.

Personally, it's mostly next day but not always.

As a prime user in the UK, I am definitely experiencing this - Not had a 24 hour delivery in a long time

Where are you living? I live in Lincoln with the logistics depot in Doncaster. I have never had less than a 24 hour delivery, if that what Amazon said they would do, with very good delivery tracking. Of course, some goods may take longer, and you are informed about this.

I'm not a mindless Amazon fanboy, and I think Bezos is a bit of git, but the service I've had over the years has been pretty good.

Although the weather or holidays may exacerbate long delivery times a bit, I've noticed delivery times increasing for at least a year here in the St. Louis area, especially during the last four months. The weather was fine and holidays were far away, so poor logistics and a lack of competitive pressure seem more likely to me.

It's particularly frustrating because delivery for things I need quickly (for example, a PoE switch to replace one that failed) almost always takes nearly a week now, while they offer to deliver non-urgent things (such as Post-It Notes) the next day, if not overnight.

I’ve not experienced that. Many items I’ve ordered in Massachusetts have arrived the next day or even same day. Smaller items have taken the usual 2 days and even import stuff has been within a week.

This is a multi-level problem where I live in Ontario. One of the problems is their preferred courier, something called Intelcom, a virtually unreachable capriciously unreliable company. They often seem to decide not to deliver it on the appointed day. The rest of the problem is Amazon itself. I canceled Prime and just have other vendors ship to the US of the border. I make occasional runs across to pick up parcels.

I'm also in Ontario and Intelcom is my preference in delivery from Amazon. We get a few hours notice and a 4 hour window that has not been missed in 3 years. They even do pickup return well.

Prior to Intelcom the experience was quite a bit worse, especially when Canada Post was prewriting that you didn't answer and not even bringing the package. There are several videos on YouTube of people chasing them down.

I’ve been having the same issue in upstate NY. I’ve actually shown over 6 people that they can just ditch Amazon, and they have.

Honestly spend some time with family and get them to unsubscribe from Prime. We sometimes get too comfortable in the “usual”, but other retailers (looking at you Walmart) are effectively doing a better job than Amazon now.

In my bit of upstate NY Prime hasn’t been two day since 2001. It does make a difference compared to going out to the store. Every other online retailer, however, is trying to impress with shipping.

Yo; I'm in raleigh. Sort of similar? Some items get there in 2 days; some take up to a week, and you generally know when you order. Maybe it has to do with the distro center?

Also in Raleigh. The holidays have a lot to do with it imo.

Counter Anecdote - In Vegas, I've ordered things in the evening, to have them delivered by 6am next day.

Amazon stock is down and you can't have that. I bet they are cutting corners with labor or elsewhere.

Seeing some fluctuations too but nothing dramatic

I don’t know but. “Canceled”

With shipping times going out into the weeks range, IMO it is time to just cut out the middleman and order directly from wish or aliexress.

Yep, I learned about Aliexpress this year and realized that Amazon had basically just become a local cache for them anyway. I'm happy to wait awhile for the cheap plastic nonsense I feel compelled to buy for some reason.

Same strategy. I find ordering at Aliexpress like buying at Costco -- always in more quantity than necessary.

What even are consumer protection laws. Isn't this blatant false advertising. I've dealt with it as well.

Their whole THING with Prime is its two day delivery.

If they can't actually "guarantee" delivery (which is what they claim), then how come there isn't a massive class action lawsuit from Amazon members for false advertising?

Don't you love being in America, where consumer protection is basically nonexistent and companies can just bullshit you, take your money, not provide the services paid, and just go "nyah, nyah, fuck you, just TRY getting your money back."

EDIT: to be clear, and in reference to others: this has been going on for over a year in my city. Confirmed with friends and neighbors. It ISN'T holiday related.

EDIT 2: I am 2 hours from Seattle. Amazon's corporate HQ. If they can't manage two day shipping in their hometown I don't know what the fuck to tell you.

EDIT 3: One of the tricks they like to pull is saying it still only took two days to "ship" after sitting not being shipped on their site for over a week. The interim waiting time before it ships apparently isn't included in the "shipping time." I've had numerous packages sitting in limbo for a week before they ship and deliver.

> As of the last month or so,

What other major event also occurred over "the last month or so"?

That "event" historically results in a significant up-tick in total numbers of sales (and resulting numbers of packages shipped).

Would it not seem reasonable for times to extend when a significant increase in total packages shipped also occurred "as of the last month or so"?

If you're referring to the holidays: this did not occur for the past several years. Typically they will scale up temporary staffing to handle demand. If they failed to do so for some reason, that is also interesting to me.

I doubt they were able to surge hiring. The labor shortage is real nobody wants to work mcjobs, especially with amazons terrible reputation

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