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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

If so many people weren't sharing access to my my prime membership I would have cancelled it a year or two ago.

Between Walmart and eBay it's rare for Amazon to be the best price for an item or to be the same price and available with two day shipping.

For stuff that isn't time sensitive eBay is the clear winner because I can buy items at little markup as long as I'm willing to wait a month for them to ship from China/Taiwan/HK whereas you'll pay a large premium to buy the same junk and have it shipped from Amazon's warehouses.

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Not to mention that 2 day shipping is no longer a guarantee. I have had multiple items that have not shipped on time, or had long delays.

It seems to be about 50/50 nowadays if something that has the Prime stamp takes 2 days or 5 or more. It used to be a nice comfort knowing I could order some supply up to 2 days before it runs out, and I’d have it at my house when I need it.

But now my confidence in the two day shipping is gone, and I often run to a local Walmart to get the same item for the same price, but guaranteed to be at my house that day.

It seems when I get an item through USPS or UPS it’s on time, but a lot of the packages that go through Amazon’s own shipping service (often a large unmarked van that parks in weird spots!) end up delayed an extra day or two.

I've been using prime since 2010. At first, it was incredible. 2 days, every time, no matter what.

Now it's almost always 3 days because they do the "USPS last mile" bullshit. It never makes it early enough on day 2 to make it on the mail truck for that day. I've complained about this and still the same thing. Before I'd get a free month with a quick chat. Not anymore. Now I get a half-assed apology and have to pull teeth for any sort of compensation.

I don't care about next day. Some people get lucky and say "sometimes it's 1 day!" I don't care. I want 2 day shipping. I want to know when it will arrive and that it will arrive at that time. And it's too inconsistent now for me to rely on.

I've since cancelled my membership - only a few more months now to go.

> USPS last mile

This so much. USPS is literally the worst service I have ever used. If I see an Amazon package switch over to USPS I immediately email and get them to send it again and switch it to FedEx or UPS. You're right though that it is becoming harder to get them to switch it back to a delivery service that actually cares about delivery.

Weird. UPS has always been the worst. I'd say about 50% of UPS packages either get misdelivered or marked as undeliverable for me. The numbers on my street are a little odd, but it's not that hard to actually find my house, and it is listed correctly on Google/Apple maps. No matter how hard I try to get UPS to get on the ball and fix their mistake, nothing ever changes.

USPS, OTOH, never messes up my deliveries.

I've had a couple Prime free trials. Once there were two items I bought that were sold and shipped by Amazon, however, they weren't "Prime eligible" for no reason I could understand. It's just totally confusing to exclude random items from "Prime."

The last three orders I placed from Amazon took over a week to ship. Every product was sold directly from Amazon, and shipped from their New Jersey warehouse to Ohio. It's my opinion that they are intentionally delaying orders that aren't Prime.

I've never been someone who used Amazon for everything, so a Prime membership never made sense. I'd estimate 2-3 orders a year at most. Placing 3 orders in a short time frame was an anomaly. But, all three had abnormally long delays compared to nearly every other retailer.

That's also my experience. I'm in Ireland, ordering (mostly books) through amazon.co.uk (since 2000) so Prime never made sense for me either, but delivery times from the UK have definitely slipped over the past two years. In-stock items 'sold & fulfilled by Amazon' used to ship within 24 hours, but now regularly take 5 days or more to ship. The result is that I shop elsewhere.

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