Tuesday I placed an order with Amazon and the item included free shipping. It took some jumping through hoops to find the free shipping and when I finally found it, it said 7-10 days delivery. Regular shipping was 5-7 days and cost about $10. I still wanted my free shipping and then I thought there was no way Amazon was going to sit on my order and make me wait. Even if they pitched it in the mail box it would get here faster.
Anyway, yesterday afternoon I got an email from Amazon saying your order has shipped. Sure enough it was on the UPS truck and will be delivered tomorrow, 72 hours after I ordered it.
Since I had to jump through a few hoops to get the free shipping I figured they were spoofing on the delivery time, and they were.
I almost always do the free shipping with Amazon. Here's what I've found:
You will *usually* get it just as fast as paying for premium shipping. I've often received stuff the next day (when it came from a nearby warehouse), or in a day or two or three. It makes the 'premium' shipping seem like a rip-off.
however....
Once in awhile, when you place an order for multiple items, and one item is backlogged, or has to come from a far warehouse - the whole order gets delayed. With premium shipping, they would ship the available items first.
however...
That's not always the case - sometimes, it is more convenient for them to ship separately, and they do - so one backlogged item may not affect the whole shipment, but you are at their mercy.
What I've learned:
You usually need to hit the $25 mark to qualify for free shipping. If you are ordering a bunch of stuff, break it into separate orders, with each order over $25 to qualify for free shipping. That puts the odds in your favor - if one item is backlogged, it may not impact the entire order, just the items it was ordered with.
DD needed some text books in a hurry. The order got held up because of ONE book. I cancelled the order on that book, re -ordered it with premium shipping on just that one book. That freed the rest of the order for shipping, and we only paid a couple bucks to ship the one book. It would have been much more to put the whole order on premium shipping.
For us, the delays are so seldom it isn't worth the $80 /year for 'free' premium shipping. But, being near Chicago (and relatively close to the Nashville hub), we get good service.
-ERD50
