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Ask HN: Amazon lying about shipping dates?

23 points by a-user-you-like ↗ HN
Lately Amazon told me that an item would arrive in 2 days when I placed the order. I just now received an email that the item I ordered had its shipping date adjusted. It was going to be a month from now, but now Amazon says they can get it to me in 4 days! How lucky am I?

Have others experienced the same, gaslighting from Amazon?

30 comments

[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] thread
PaulHoule
For the past year or so I think Amazon has been making no effort to get Prime packages delivered in 2 days.

It's not unusual on the other hand to get free or affordable 1-day shipping from other retailers like Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Office Depot, Adorama, etc.

I think Amazon figures if you subscribed to Prime for 10 years you are hooked, but every other retailer sees shipping as a way they can impress you.

sokoloff
I had a bunch of terrible experiences with Prime shipping in the first 4-6 months of COVID. That felt understandable to me, and I think it’s improved since then but not nearly back to the level of 2015-2018 performance of Prime.
petee
They ditched the 2-day promise years ago. I'd seen an article somewhere that suggested you can complain to their support about not meeting the 2 day and they might give you some form of rebate or giftcard.

Prime now only means free shipping, thats it. Plenty of 'prime' items have weeks+ delivery estimates.

Btw, they got me hooked on Prime because I have a bunch of photos backed up and no time to transfer them, but cancelling prime immediately deleted your data for some services, like backups. Yay.

PaulHoule
At

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

it still says "You get unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping on eligible items with Amazon Prime, with no minimum spend."

They also claim "Amazon Prime members shipping to select metro areas across the US can choose to receive FREE Same-Day Delivery on a broad selection of items." which is probably a euphemism for "people in the Washington, D.C. area get free same-day shipping which will probably fool politicians into thinking that their constituents get same-day shipping too".

I don't mind if the 2 days is occasionally 3 days but now 2 days is more normally "4 days to 2 weeks" I get mad about it when I think "maybe I'll run out to Target to get this right now but if I can have this in two days I won't and it turns into a week and I feel like a fool." In that case I think it is terribly anti-competitive.

petee
Yes, I've had items sold by Amazon, ship from their own facility, after waiting 4 days to ship even though it was in stock, only to have it relabeled and delivered late by UPS. Ive had items that said next day turn into weeks just after I purchase. Atleast sometimes you can cancel and rebuy for a better delivery date.

Ive gotten the feeling that Amazon doesnt actually know how to do final mile delivery properly, especially considering how much money they waste by sending 4 different vans to my house within a single day

james-skemp
> 4 different vans to my house within a single day

We had this issue in our area when they first started rolling out their delivery, but they've since gotten much better about grouping packages to the same address, no matter who it's addressed to.

(Single family home, in the city.)

Perhaps, like everything else, dependent upon the facility that's used?

petee
Definitely possible but i think there are no more than 2 facilities within any reasonable distance of me. And they've been outsourcing a lot to USPS and 'the other two' lately.

My suspicion is they are inundated and forced to ship anything they get, the minute they get it.

james-skemp
I was thinking more that the facility near you may not be following best practices (if there are any) yet.

I definitely think our facility was just loading things on the truck as they came in at first (especially since things would be on the truck, be near our house, and then go back to the facility, only to be sent back out later).

So I think your second paragraph is correct.

[dead] kderbyma
mikestew
In other words, you don't have answer to the original question, so you took it as an opportunity to vent about Amazon in a non-sequitur fashion because "Amazon" is in the title. Thanks for sharing.
TingPing
I buy a lot from Amazon, too much, and they are incredibly accurate. Almost always 2 day, sometimes same-day. Whenever they don't have an accurate date (third-party seller) it says so. Sometimes USPS does final delivery and they have been delayed once or twice.

This is all in a large city.

jvanderbot
In Los Angeles, the service was a bit spotty. In MN, it's right on. Same day is same day, everything else is one-day except for a few cases not, which are accurately predicted.

I've always been a fan of Amazon's logistics network and cloud infra (not necessarily much else), but now my opinion is invalid since I'm also an employee. So, YMMV.

jvanderbot
Funny, my entire job is based on getting things back to 2day shipping / increasing throughput. I'm a roboticist.

The absolute explosion of amazon's popularity as a seller and storefront has been the source of their prosperity and problems. Growth never magically becomes easy, no matter how big you are.

TaylorAlexander
Fellow robotics engineer here. Actually shipping things on time is hard. But giving the customer realistic expectations seems easier. If items are not shipping on time consistently, then providing some uncertainty in the delivery estimate would be nice. But of course, management probably feels like "2-4 day delivery" sounds bad so instead they project a false confidence in delivery date and then let the customer deal with the implications if delivery slips. This I feel is disrespectful to the customer.
mikestew
It can be inconsistent for sure. I see the most inconsistency when "shipped and sold" by a third-party. FBA ("fulfilled by Amazon"), or whatever the term is for when Amazon stocks and ships it, seems to more consistently meet the 2-day time limit. When it doesn't, the blame can often be placed on the shipping company. Even when the blame is on Amazon, it's a day or two delay, and accompanied by an email with a (usually) accurate reset of expectations.
crazygringo
I use Amazon more than once a week in a major US city, and 95% of the time items are delivered on-time, or frequently earlier (when I choose a slower method like Amazon Day five days out, and it delivers next-day anyways -- or when it says shipping 20 days from now, but it gets shipped four days later).

On the other hand, about 5% of the time an item is several days late, and about half of the time that's due to delay during shipping, and the other half is delay in sending out to ship.

I don't think Amazon is lying. Logistics is just hard. I would guess that in your case, there was only 1 item left in stock and someone else ordered it right before you did and the database wasn't updated in time. Then the "month from now" was the most conservative estimate of when the manufacturer would send more stock, but then the manufacturer sent new stock straight away, and so it's going to take 2 days to arrive to Amazon and process, and another 2 to send to you.

The reliability of Amazon's logistics and shipping, at mega-scale, is essentially state-of-the-art for 2022. But it's not perfect. But that doesn't mean Amazon is "lying" or "gaslighting" -- it's just that no systems are perfect.

PaulHoule
I don't know about reliability but I know many other retailers get me packages more quickly in 2022. Amazon might have been state-of-the-art and maybe it still is if you don't have a prime subscription but if you are already committed to them I think it is like the Fatboy Slim album: "We're number one, why try harder?"
downrightmike
Yes, I live 2 miles from a DC, and they couldn't deliver anything same week even though I have had Prime for a decade
droopyEyelids
I believe a DC (distribution center) only distributes to FCs (fulfillment centers)
kevin_thibedeau
On the opposite side of the coin: I have never had Prime and when I've lived near a distribution center, Amazon will frequently ship packages before the estimated date. In years past they have seemed to withhold shipment until the estimate window arrives but that is less frequent now.
Ancapistani
Two day shipping with Prime is nothing more than a fond memory for me.

As of right now - 1pm on Wednesday - the earliest delivery date listed for Prime items is Monday. In my experience about half of what I order today will get here Monday; the rest may take anywhere from an extra day to an extra week.

LorenPechtel
Third party, shipping is all over the place. Amazon, I can think of only one occasion that they missed the date--and that was UPS goofing up. This was back with the 2-day promise but the package went out ground--from close enough to me that it should have gotten here in time anyway. Unfortunately, it went halfway across the country instead. Somebody obviously put it on the wrong truck.

On the other hand, I have a warehouse in town, most stuff gets here next day.

2143
Did that happen just once, or does it happen all the time?

If it happened just once, it's probably just some warehouse/inventory updation delay or something.

In my country (not USA) Amazon is very punctual, and sometimes I even get things a day early.

drcongo
In the UK, prime is next day delivery, and this "feature" has been annoying the hell out of me for months now. The number of times I've ordered something that says "order in the next X hours to get next day delivery", gone right through the checkout with every step telling me it'll arrive tomorrow, only for tomorrow to come and go and my package to turn up some days later. We don't even get emails about shipping date adjustments here, they just straight up lie to you.
dole
I don't know if it's still prevalent, but I've heard of a... routine where some sellers will sell an item, stretch the delivery date out, and if the item's cost goes down, release it to be shipped. If the price starts trending up, they sit on it and cancel it, later listing for a higher price, basically speculation and attrition.

Edit: I WILL take a moment to complain about getting higher prices on items when signed in on an account than incognito. Sign in and they jump back up.

prirun
I recently (Aug 1st) was on a product page that said "Prime One-Day", but when I ordered it, it said on the confirmation page it would be delivered Aug 11th. That confused me so I checked the product page again and it still said "Prime One-Day". I took a screen shot. I clicked the link to change delivery schedule and it said "Confirm Aug 11 delivery", with no options to change it.

I did an online chat with an Amazon rep, explained the problem, they apologized and changed it to next-day delivery. The rep said that I had to click something on the order page to get 1-day delivery. If that's true, it's a pretty slimy way to treat customers, hoping they won't click that option and thereby saving money on delivery.

1991g
I routinely see the "Buy within x hours for delivery tomorrow!" and after I do so, I get a confirmation email saying it'll be delivered 2 days from now.
JohnHaugeland
I regularly get this and I live just a few blocks from one of their centers

Granted I'm sure my center doesn't have most of what I buy - it's not large - but still it's confounding

stevedewald
Just my personal experience—the estimated delivery at checkout is almost always 1-2 days earlier than in the email confirmation a minute later.
Blackstrat
Amazon has reached a scope and scale that more than warrants antitrust action.