After my birthday even though I really liked all of my presents, I decided I still needed to get some headphones, a U2 CD, and a Palm stylus. So I ordered them that night. The headphones and CD were ordered from Amazon, the stylus (I ended up ordering one for each of my two Palms and one extra to defray the shipping cost) from Styluscentral. Monday I got an e-mail from Styluscentral saying my order had shipped. Amazon listed my order as preparing to ship and I was not allowed to change or cancel the order. Today the styluses arrived in the mail. However I checked several times over the last couple of days and Amazon still had my order preparing to ship. When I ordered my AirClick it took weeks for it to arrive and I wasn’t looking forward to that again. I checked out buy.com and nearly placed an order for both of these things for the same price except that buy.com’s free shipping icon disappeared once the headphones were actually in my cart and they wanted $7 for that. Just before writing this entry, Amazon sent an e-mail saying the items had shipped, but that’s still four days before the item shipped. Earlier this year an order of CD’s took 6 days to ship, a headset took 5 days, and it took an amazing 26 days for the AirClick though Amazon warned it wouldn’t ship for 1-2 weeks (still took almost four).
Here’s my solution: don’t let them combine items into one shipment. Even though you would think they have just about everything in a big warehouse somewhere, apparently they have millions of warehouses with one item in each one. So you always end up waiting longer. Also, don’t hesitate to use buy.com who ship faster (on three orders this year they always shipped the next day) and are usually about the same price.
I’ve had mixed experiences with Amazon. I rarely actually buy from Amazon.com itself, but from other vendors. I always check to see where the vendor ships from. I never buy from anywhere that’s really far away unless I don’t care when it arrives. The first thing I ever ordered from Amazon (a strategy guide for a nintendo game) took about 2 months to arrive. My mom had to order that for me. Now I always check the shipping area. I bought most of my CD purchases from a vendor in Florida that usually takes about three days to get to my house.
I’ve been wondering, when they say “Ships in 1-2 days” do they mean that the order leaves the warehouse in 1-2 days, or gets to you in 1-2 days?
“Ships in 1-2 days” means they won’t put it in the mail for 1-2 days. What it probably means is they don’t have any but they know where they can get them. “Ships in 1-2 weeks” means they don’t have them and have no idea when they will get them.
For both of these things I ordered, they said “Ships in 24 hours” but it actually took 4 days. I think what happened was they shipped one of the things to the warehouse where the other thing was which took 3 days, then they sent both things to me in the same box. Hopefully I will get the package tomorrow.
FINALLY I got the headphones today. Amazon’s project tracking says the post office is still waiting to receive the package from the shipper, but that’s probably because USPS doesn’t do tracking very well. So it was kind of a surprise that it was on my doorstep this afternoon.
The headphones sound good, but they really block external noises, so I don’t know that they will be good for walks. Maybe for MARTA or being on a plane.
Ordered two CD’s on the 14th that said they “usually ship within 24 hours”. They shipped on the 18th.