{"id":43,"date":"2009-09-02T19:59:36","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T00:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/?p=43"},"modified":"2017-07-17T13:10:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T18:10:20","slug":"amazon-com-free-shipping-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/02\/amazon-com-free-shipping-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon.com Free Shipping Nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a lot of good experience with Amazon&#8217;s free super saver shipping in the past. My online shopping purchases have dropped over the years and if I couple it with Amazon charging sales tax in Kansas (yet nothing ever <em>ships<\/em> from Kansas) I don&#8217;t shop at Amazon that much. But, as I said I&#8217;ve had good experiences when I do. Things would ship out fast and arrive within a week or so. This last time, it did not go so well.<\/p>\n<p>My Dad was going to India and my cousin asked him to bring her a stethoscope. Normally I bargain hunt and research sellers to get the best deal. Since he was leaving in a couple weeks and I wanted to be sure to avoid any problems I paid a little more and went with Amazon. So I placed the order August 24th. The stethoscope was in stock, so I was literally shown these options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>FREE Super Saver Shipping (5-9 business days)<\/li>\n<li>Standard Shipping (3-5 business days)<\/li>\n<li>Two-Day Shipping (2 business days) &#8211;get it Wednesday, August 26!<\/li>\n<li>One-Day Shipping (1 business day) &#8211;get it Tuesday, August 25!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ll also point out that I had the wrong date for when my Dad was leaving and never should&#8217;ve chosen the free super saver shipping option to begin with. But I learned something valuable about what Amazon does when you choose that option. A week goes by and the order hasn&#8217;t shipped. I&#8217;m a little concerned, but I figure even if it ships today (August 31), I&#8217;ll get it in time.<\/p>\n<p>I get the e-mail it ships, and it has an estimated delivery date of September 5-11, 2009. Unbelievable. The item was in stock, 5-9 days. What in the world? I contact Amazon and they tell me that the 5-9 is transit time. There is also an up to 5 day processing time. And for good measure, unprompted, the CSR tells me they can&#8217;t explain everything on the web site. Really? They can&#8217;t change it to say 5-14 business days? Add an asterisk and note that is only transit time and there is a processing time as well? If people are worried about off-shoring call centers because of accents, don&#8217;t worry, they&#8217;re getting a lot better. This guy was just as rude as anyone with a less noticeable accent. Same terrible experience for less cost (to Amazon).<\/p>\n<p>In the end I signed up for the Amazon Prime trial and had it shipped second day. It showed up second day. My original order showed up on Saturday the 5th. I refused the package and sent it back to Amazon. I dropped the package off at the post office and got a refund on the 16th. I learned to only use the free super saver shipping if you don&#8217;t care when it shows up. Sometimes it&#8217;s fast, sometimes it isn&#8217;t. And when it isn&#8217;t, it can be 5 days longer than you&#8217;re led to believe.<\/p>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 31px; width: 1px; height: 1px;\">\n<table id=\"orderNum0.group\" style=\"display: block;\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"99%\" valign=\"top\"><label for=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed_std-n-us\">Standard Shipping (3-5 business days)<\/label><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td valign=\"top\"><input id=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed_second\" checked=\"checked\" name=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed\" type=\"radio\" value=\"second\" \/><\/td>\n<td width=\"99%\" valign=\"top\"><label for=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed_second\">Two-Day Shipping (2 business days)<\/label> <strong>&#8211;get it Tuesday, September 29!<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td valign=\"top\"><input id=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed_next\" name=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed\" type=\"radio\" value=\"next\" \/><\/td>\n<td width=\"99%\" valign=\"top\"><label for=\"order_188-116000473911_ShippingSpeed_next\">One-Day Shipping (1 business day)<\/label> <strong>&#8211;get it Monday, September 28!<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had a lot of good experience with Amazon&#8217;s free super saver shipping in the past. My online shopping purchases have dropped over the years and if I couple it with Amazon charging sales tax in Kansas (yet nothing ever ships from Kansas) I don&#8217;t shop at Amazon that much. But, as I said I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[271,272,273],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-shopping","tag-amazon","tag-free-super-saver-shipping","tag-shipping-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jitesh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}