With Amazon, it sits on the shelf for 5 days before it ships and then takes another 5 days to arrive.
With something like walmart, it ships immediately and then takes another 5 days to arrive.
Amazon's in-transit time isn't any faster than other merchants. They all use UPS or Fedex, so no difference there. The only difference is that Amazon takes 5 days to ship while other websites take 1.
Except that there are alternatives to Amazon, hence my use of the word "choice". I'm not saying Amazon doesn't keep its promise. I'm saying when Amazon is compared to its competitors it falls short.
> A super saver shipping promise is 5-7 business days
Actually it's 5-8 business days (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&...) and usually Amazon milks it to its limit. 8 business days equal 10 to 12 real days.
Compare that to merchants that ship immediately. It usually takes 3-5 days to arrive at my home. That's a lot faster than Amazon's 10-12 days.
WSJ actually just published an article on how Amazon is frequently underpriced by other sellers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142412788732342380457902...
There's no one seller that is consistently the lowest price. But Amazon is consistently the slowest in shipping.
It isn't free - the cost of the shipping is baked in the product prices. Walmart's threshold is $45 for no additional charge, shipping to one of their stores is no additional charge, and below the threshold shipping is usually 97c.
In any event this isn't about "can you pay more for faster shipping" which is the case virtually everywhere, but that it seems like Amazon is holding back on their lowest tier before the actual shipping which none of their competitors seem to do.
There is an obvious benefit to them in Prime upsells. Actual logistical reasons seem at odds with the story about huge spending on warehouses.