'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.

Comments

Pantry

[mccalli]

Is there anyone on earth who understands their pantry thing? I mean, I can just go to Sainsbury's and order what I want, I don't have to start working out box sizes and filling them up or what have you.

Re: Pantry

[orlanz]

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.

Other Benefits, but Accusations

[crvtec]

Well, screw /. because I just lost my entire post by switching the format to plain text, so here's a summary:

Prime has other benefits, but they keep lowering them.

10+ year Prime member. Been buying since 98 when they sold books. Past 2 months I had packages 'lost' or 'damaged' in transit. Upon the 3rd complaint (I don't regularly complain at all, even when packages are late), they escalated me to a supervisor, at which point I had to explain that all the items that were lost/damaged in transit were the only items in the past few years that I've actually requested 2 day delivery for, and they were supposed to be delivered by *THEIR OWN DELIVERY COMPANY*.

So, I was close to being banned from Amazon for mistakes they made. They couldn't even replace the product (their own 4k Fire TV Box) because when it wasn't delivered, it was $50 than when I ordered it.

Mind you, I do roughly 400-700 orders per year with them (business and personal, and only when they are cheaper), as well as send them referrals through my site.

At my day career, we were (repeatedly) assured by one of their AWS reps that we wouldn't be charged for X services. 2 weeks later, we were billed several K.

They are really doing a great job of shooting themselves in the foot lately.

Re:Other Benefits, but Accusations

[drinkypoo]

"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.

Re:News??

[infolation]

If slashdot is 'tech news', and the subject is Amazon Prime, then we should really be discussing UX design and Dark Patterns. EG

Amazon dark patterns force people to fill up their Amazon pantry

Then when they don't like this, Amazon dark patterns make it more difficult to leave low-rated rather than high-rated reviews

Then if the user wishes to leave Amazon, the user must navigate a complex, non-intuitive chain of commands that do not start with 'close my account'. This chain changes regularly, to ensure that current 'close your amazon account' instructions found on google do not work for more than a few days. I closed my account in March 2018. At that time, this was the process:

1. select 'let us help you'...
2. select 'help'...
3. select 'need more help'...
4. select 'contact us'...
5. choose 'prime or something else'...
6. dropdown, choose 'update account information'...
7. dropdown, choose 'close my account'...
8. user is put into 'chat'...
As soon as the phrase 'I need to close my amazon account' is typed into the chat input, the user is logged out of chat and must repeat the above (I found this 'bug' was repeatable)

At that time, I had to find a way to communicate that I wanted to close my account without using the phrase 'close my account' in chat.

Consum(er)ism

[vikingpower]

This is bitching and griping at a high level. You're a member of an affluent, Western society, with an income you can spend online; you can actually spend it on worthless gadgets like IoT ovens with a videocamera inside and an app, or dildos - or on valuable items like books. You'll get those items, worthless or valuable, delivered to your doorstep. Within days. What the fuck are you complaining about ?

The world is on fire and immersed in ignorance, but hey - dildo delivery delay must be two days, not an hour more.

Re: Consum(er)ism

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely right this is complaining. That's what normal people do when they pay extra for a service but it is not delivered, repeatedly. Or did you forget that Prime is not free?

And search is so gamified it's useless.

[Myself]

Prime has become worse than useless, and it's impossible to find what I want in the search anymore. It's dominated by endless clones of the same item with scarcely-distinguishable gibberish all-caps "names" that all white-label the same FBA and import products.

I've taken to shopping at eBay, which oddly enough, seems to have a more reliable experience and better dispute resolution. I've never had eBay threaten me when I open several disputes within a short time span, because they can look at my transaction history.

eBay has their own issues (shopping cart keeps getting slower, and slower, and slower...) but at least the rest of their offering is improving. They actually added a "group similar items" feature to combat the clones that're clogging Amazon.

Thanks for the reminder. I need to cancel Prime.

Re:And search is so gamified it's useless.

[Solandri]

I really think this is Amazon's biggest weakness. If some competing online shopping site comes around with a more effective search, I'd switch. It's why I still buy most of my computer components from Newegg instead of Amazon. Newegg's search works, and helps you easily eliminate products you're not looking for. (You just have to make sure to set Newegg as the seller to filter out all the crap reseller offerings.)

Works fine for me

[JBMcB]

My wife bought a few of the kid's Christmas presents and they showed up on time. Last-minute I bought a heating pad for my mom that showed up right on time, and that was on Saturday. Beyond that my wife likes the shows on Prime Video, and I've been watching Mr Robot and Endeavor.

Last year I ordered a set of knives (that apparently you can ONLY find on Amazon for some weird reason) for Christmas but used the cheapo shipping to get a few Amazon gift cards. They all showed up well before Christmas.

I'm sure there have been problems but I haven't seen any.

Re:It's the success

[Dogtanian]

Amazon has now 50! planes itself

Amazon has 3 x 10^64 planes?! That's... rather a lot.