Regarding credit cards, I started using privacy dot com for virtual, merchant-locked cards. It protects against (rare) card details leaks, but, of course, does not give you any points or cashback.
What's ironic is we still make purchases on Amazon that don't require their fast shipping. We're just conditioned to expect it. I'm thinking TVs, books, project supplies, art, etc.
Realizing this was what made me quit Prime years ago, and eventually drive down my Amazon purchases to just a handful of times a year. For the most part, there's really not much of a difference if I get a book tomorrow vs. four days from now, or if I get it from Amazon or from the nearby Target. But there's a lot of infrastructure built up to satisfy this admittedly frivolous expectation of fast delivery.
Are there cases when rapid delivery is necessary and valuable? Absolutely. Are those cases the norm? Not in my life, by an overwhelming margin.
I quit Prime after Amazon replaced "two-day shipping" with "it'll get there when it gets there".
The same is true with two-day Prime. Even if you get to the item, all of a sudden, it's gone.
I think their argument is that it's "Prime" shipping (not two-day), so if their eco-get-it-in-a-week-option is available, that's still a variant of Prime.
My Prime membership ended 3 years ago. These days I just put items in the cart, and place order whenever it reaches $35. If I need an item in a hurry -- which rarely happens -- I go to a store to buy it.
This barely affected me, and I ended up with much fewer impulse purchases.
What's funny though is that the "standard" delivery often takes 5 calendar days. But AliExpress shipments can take as few as 8 calendar days. I ended up spending even less -- well, if the items are manufactured in China, why not just order on AliExpress where you get the same/similar items and pay less.
I think the biggest issue is just the uncertainty. I've been ordering at other places lately and it's just ... frustrating that I have no idea if it'll take them a day or three days to process before shipping.
Yes. Simple as. But a lot of people don't, so it's nice that there's options.
I rarely buy big-ticket items, and these can definitely wait.
Yep, I've come to see it as a general rule that, if the item on Amazon is sold under one of those all-caps gibberish brand names, the same exact item is almost always on AliExpress for 30-50% less.
I care about knowing when it's going to arrive. I don't necessarily need next day delivery, but if something says 2-3 day delivery that doesn't mean it will arrive in 3 days, it means it will arrive 3 days after it's shipped. Which for some major UK retailers can be 3-5 days. All of a sudden your delivery window is 2-8 days.
Also, much of the stuff I buy off Amazon is the sort of "crap" you make a single trip to the dollar store for - lightbulbs, wood filler, bin liners. They're the sort of things that I kind of need when I need them, or shortly after. My parents are the sort of people who will spend 20 minutes doing a quick round trip to the nearest dollar store/supermarket to get one thing, twice a week. I order it on amazon, and know it'll be there by the weekend for me to do whatever I need to do with it.
Yes, people often care about delivery time.
Most of the time, if I'm buying something, it is because I need it for a project, trip, or event. If I could buy it at a store today I would.
Usually I'm not in a huge hurry, and I would happily wait a few days extra if it means workers don't have to pee in a bottle during their night shift. However, a "3-5 days" delivery means there's a pretty decent chance I won't be home and have to go to the other side of town to pick it up - and that's incredibly annoying. So I end up choosing next-day delivery and order it when I know I'll be home the next day.
Why can't I just place an order on Monday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday? Ordering on Friday with a guaranteed delivery on Saturday is already possible, so what's stopping them?
Anybody else? I have no idea how long it'll take them to process my order, how long it takes for it to be processed by DHL/DPD/GLS and how long the actual delivery will take.
One of those things shipped the next day and is currently reported to be arriving tomorrow, which happens to match the stated delivery date.
The other two have yet to ship, but their delivery date has slipped to "December 21 - 24".
Realistically, they look unlikely to arrive before Christmas, and Amazon seems to feel no need to honor their contract.
Interestingly, the "shipped" status is matched to a tracking update that says "package left the shipper facility" with no time or location information. All further updates have a location and a timestamp. (Everything is shipped by Amazon.)
A long time ago I assumed that Amazon removed shipping speed options from their ordering process because, if you itemize shipping separately from the cost of the good, the customer can demand a refund on shipping when you don't provide what you sold.
My current theory is that it's a side effect of deciding they needed to provide shipping in-house instead of buying it from reliable sources. They replaced shipping they could control with shipping they couldn't control, and so they stopped letting you specify the shipping speed you needed. But for some reason they continued advertising shipping speeds they knew they couldn't provide.
Then again I don't have a business that relies on things getting to me fast. I'm just a guy who buys crap online for myself and my family. If I'm getting a book or some electronic doodad it rarely matters to me if I get it tomorrow or in 10 days.
For most Amazon non-business shoppers is getting stuff delivered quickly really an important consideration? I've always assumed that fast shipping, and the importance that Amazon places on it, was at least partly because of their desire for rapid cash flow. That fast shipping was more instituted because of Amazon's accounting needs than because most customers actually needed it. Maybe I'm wrong. It would be nice to hear people's informed opinions on this.
Personally, I feel similarly to you, that most of the time the difference between one day and 1-3 weeks shipping is negligible. However, I think that relies on certain assumptions; I buy most consumable items (food, sponges, soap, etc) in person and almost always have enough to last another month or without buying more. Not everyone does that, some are JITing their daily needs and/or don't have enough free time and energy to make sure everything is always set well in advance (think working single mom, kid needs dress shirt tomorrow for whatever).
I ordered a pair of shoes from a major UK high street store earlier this year who advertised 3 day shipping. Fine, I'm going away next weekend. Except, it turns out their guarantee is from dispatch, which is 3-5 days. It was listed in the small print on the order page, but even the order page still had the "Free 3 day shipping" banner on it. Unsurprisingly, they took 5 days to dispatch, and 3 days to deliver. I actually ended up going into the store to buy them, and returning them when I got home.
Amazon, for all it's faults, if they say next day, it's almost certainly going to arrive next day.
Most websites won't even give you a realistic shipping time (major brands might but the long-tail of online merchants don't). They might say "2-3 day shipping" but that's how long it takes after they ship it, sometimes it can take up a week before they actually ship it. It means than if I buy from anyone but a massive retailer I am rolling the dice on if I'll get something in 2 days or 2+ weeks. Some things can wait 2 weeks but when I'm moving between my house and my parent's house (I visit often) it's really hard to remember "2 weeks before I move locations I need to start directing packages at the other location". The two locations are 3hrs+ apart so I can't just pop over and pick up something sent to the other place.
And you still get free shipping over $35 which covers most anything else.
Prime is too heavily tied to video now, which is a $0 value for me.
In the UK, the only place that I've found beats Amazon for delivery is Argos. For some utterly insane reason, they do their own delivery logistics from my nearest store and it can only be a fleet of vans sitting waiting for an online order to come in. I've _regularly_ had orders delivered in about 15 minutes from them (which is about how long it takes to drive to the nearest store).
There is on browser thought. It doesn’t work on mobile so I usually wait until at computer which is better anyway.
I just don't ever have the problems with Amazon that people complain about online.
For a lot of other stuff, it feels like they've lost their edge on price and shipping.
Often my main reason for using Amazon is that it reduces the friction associated with buying for more retailers. For example worrying about data breaches, being put on spam email lists, etc.