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'Amazon Prime is Getting Worse' (fastcompany.com)
Mark Wilson, writing for FastCompany magazine: That little Prime logo used to mean something. Now it feels like a ruse that lulls shoppers into a false sense of security, until they go to checkout and see a shipping arrival date far later than anticipated. This cuts through the greatest promise of Prime. It's not just the free, two-day shipping. It's that it's so reliable, you never have to think for more than a second about buying something. In this sense, Prime was constructed to be great for the consumer (so efficient) and great for businesses (mindless impulse shopping!). I've been a Prime member myself for over a decade, so I've come to expect that the rush of the holiday season will clog the arteries of Amazon's fulfillment centers and delivery services alike and make shipping less than reliable. But anecdotally, to me and many of the people I know and work with, this year, it feels worse than ever.
It doesn't help that we've seen a slow dilution of Prime itself over time, with the rise of Prime Pantry and Add-on Items. They force you to buy a minimum number of items to get the best deal, adding back the very psychic burden Prime had eliminated from the equation of online shopping in the first place. As a result, it can be hard to find true, two-day Prime items that aren't marked up to insane prices by third-party sellers. But Prime was still Prime. This holiday, I've noticed things that are in stock and labeled "Prime" have nonsensical shipping dates. I'm not alone in experiencing Shipping Shock. Complaints about slow Prime shipping abound across the internet. Quora literally has a thread asking, "Has Amazon slowed down their free shipping speed intentionally?" The "top answer" with 22,000 views is a customer rant about late shipments. Many others chime in to confirm the slowdowns, and offer conspiracy theories as to what could be going on.
It doesn't help that we've seen a slow dilution of Prime itself over time, with the rise of Prime Pantry and Add-on Items. They force you to buy a minimum number of items to get the best deal, adding back the very psychic burden Prime had eliminated from the equation of online shopping in the first place. As a result, it can be hard to find true, two-day Prime items that aren't marked up to insane prices by third-party sellers. But Prime was still Prime. This holiday, I've noticed things that are in stock and labeled "Prime" have nonsensical shipping dates. I'm not alone in experiencing Shipping Shock. Complaints about slow Prime shipping abound across the internet. Quora literally has a thread asking, "Has Amazon slowed down their free shipping speed intentionally?" The "top answer" with 22,000 views is a customer rant about late shipments. Many others chime in to confirm the slowdowns, and offer conspiracy theories as to what could be going on.
"Well, screw /. because I just lost my entire post by switching the format to plain text,"
If you are using anything but the classic view, shame on you, you should know better. If your browser doesn't restore form contents on back navigation, shame on you, you picked a crap browser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not just during peak. I think Amazon scales down during non-peak times and performance is almost just as bad.
I been a Prime customer since the year after it launched. I probably returned an item a year; if that. Today, our ordering has only doubled but we return atleast one package a month; primarily due to delivery issues.
I think we are on some "bad customer" list because every once in a while the rep says "You return a lot..."; implying that we shouldn't do that. We always respond with, look the notes and figure out who is at fault.
If we order blue, we shouldn't get red. If we order something gift wrapped, we probably want it before TK... not two weeks after the dinner. No, we aren't going to go to the other neighborhood or even down the street and pick up the bad delivery. No, we are not going to accept a box with a forklift hole in it. No we don't want another brand automatically substituted and billed to us. You credited us because your tracking number became active. Don't recharge me because you didn't get the return in time!
And all this we find out if we inquire or after delivery. I think Amazon just doesn't care anymore. They are more focused on AWS, warehouse automation, and another HQ.