Really rubbish now? Is this because they want us all to sign up to Prime which I do not want to do. For 1) so much of their products are not covered by the service and 2) I have no wish for the video service at all. Stuff seems to take far longer to come unless of course I pay a premium or is this just me. One last think I tink amazon and the sellers that use their Marketplace have really gone to far the other way when it comes to packaging. I find I am having to send more stuff back because of damage caused by insufficient packaging.
I agree, though I have prime through a work deal I still get terrible delivery times and plenty of boes with no form of padding in them.
I've been pleasantly surprised that a few items for which I chose Super Save delivery recently have arrived within a couple of days. A book I ordered yesterday and with normal postage has just arrived. I haven't ordered anything large or delicate for a while but I've noticed that orders that aren't fulfilled by Amazon have been in the Amazon packaging and all, including those direct from Amazon, have been pretty robust.
I ordered books from Amazon on Monday evening, they arrived (via Super Saver delivery, I do not have Prime) yesterday (Wednesday). If anything it was faster than I expected! Always try to buy direct from Amazon, or at least fulfilled by Amazon, having been burned too many times on Ebay... as such no problems with packaging... I am pretty much slap bang between two Fulfilment centres (Marston Gate & Peterborough) though, so I'd guess that helps my delivery time
My gut feeling based on recent orders is that non-Prime delivery is definitely slower and less reliable than it has been in the past. Where possible, I tend to get stuff delivered to an Amazon Locker rather than my home or workplace and even that service seems to be suffering from slower delivery times.
Whilst I've not noticed an increase in delivery times (I may even have experienced a decrease tbh) I have noticed something else instead. It appears that the pricing for prime marked items is definitely higher than non-prime alternatives, which to me feels a bit off. I would have been fine with this, except Prime is not free, it's actually rather expensive now thanks to the relatively recent price hike. It feels like with Prime goods the delivery costs are being factored in already to an extent, never mind the prime cost, which IMO definitely makes the package seem less attractive. I'm also not so happy with how much tracking you get with prime deliveries. Now I don't mind much for items that are small enough to fit through the letterbox, no need to wait around for those. But for larger orders I'm not so pleased, especially if they're valuable items. It would be nice if more places offered DPD levels of tracking, where you get a time slot and can see where your delivery is in the queue. That's such a time saver right there. Not everything can be delivered to the office address, so for those things somebody needs to be in the house to sign for them. It doesn't quite seem fair to have to ask somebody to waste their day waiting for something or to waste my own time either when other services offer a decent alternative. Sadly most places don't operate with DPD and Amazon does tend to stock almost everything, good returns too so I'll keep using them until something better comes along.
Tried prime and its not much better that the usual service and they charge for the privilege. Its been my experience that they rarely meet their promised delivery times so I dropped it and make do with the free service.
On the handful of occsaions in my past 2 years of Prime membership that a Prime item delivery has not been on time, I have emailled customer services to complain, and had one month of Prime membership added to my account free of charge. I can't speak about the non-Prime deliveries because I didn't buy a lot from Amazon before I signed up for it, but I've ordered a lot of Prime items in the past couple of years and have found their service to be fantastic.
how strange i have prime and all my recent orders have been brilliant. ordered on afternoons and have deleivery first thing in the morning. Never had a package damage or anything like that we used to all for a Christmas presents which would have cost around 30-40 delivery so i think thre £79/year charge is pretty good since you get streaming with that too. I guess sit depends how much stuff you order and if its Prime or not as to the value you receive for the £79/year
IMO Prime can't be beaten for small things where normally the delivery would be tacked on top. Ordering a usb stick, HDMI cable, CD (yes those are still handy at times) or adapter that only costs £2-5 and having it turn up the next day is brilliant. I love how they also deliver on Saturdays, that's really handy. It's not so great if you're buying something larger though. You'll still get it on time, but since it can't be popped through the letterbox somebody needs to be around if you're a little paranoid about item theft like I am. Often other sites will have free delivery with a regular delivery service on larger purchases, which puts them on an even footing with Prime. But unlike prime, I can sometimes get more info about the item's whereabouts. That does depend on the courier though, if I had to use say Parcel Force I'd happily pay extra just to order through Prime instead, at least it might arrive on time with them.
I think they've gone downhill recently too - I nearly always order things on super saver delivery and a couple of times recently they've not even dispatched the item for 4 or 5 days - it then turns up a day or two later but that means a wait of a week or so. Even paying for delivery doesn't seem to help as the last two times I paid for next day delivery it actually took two days to arrive... That (and the price) is what stops me from signing up to Prime...
In my experience, although they do sometimes take a long time to despatch items on Super Saver delivery, I have not had many things fail to arrive within the quoted delivery window and they usually turn-up sooner. Only exceptions have been one or two things sold by third-party sellers turning-up late and one item which was out of stock in the UK and was sourced from Amazon.es (Spain). BTW, I use Prime, annually, when the free trial becomes available.
I've placed a total of 76 orders in 2013, 2014 and 2015 so far. The biggest percentage of those was in 2014. Prime is worth it if you use it enough! I buy most of the Samsung SSDs I use from Amazon now, along with some other components.
I do that when I can, but sometimes it's a pig getting things back home as I can't drive to work (gotta love Central London). Came home once to find the new Kitchenaid on the doorstep, wasn't going to trek back on the tube with that thing for sure. Granted it also would have been harder to steal, but the opportunity was there. Bear in mind that recently theft has become a rising problem where I am, people actually cut through my Dad's motorbike (the chassis itself) in order to separate it from the ground lock! With people like that around, I don't trust a thing outside the door now.
Like Uni, I've never had any real issues, although I am a prime member also. I spent a total of £2500 with them last year over 97 orders, so for me the the cost of prime is easily justifiable. Don't forget you can share your subscription with up to 4 'family' members so you can split the cost down to £16 if you wanted.
Ah, that's different. I always have the van with me at work, so no matter how big an item I'm ordering, from a TV to the three new DeWalt toolboxes I'm expecting early next week, I can always get them home!
Amazon's deliveries seem fine for me and my family. I have Prime on my account so if we're desperate to get something urgently then they hijack my account for next day delivery; we normally do orders on a Friday so that the delivery either comes Saturday, ordered a few things to have delivered using the relatively new Sunday deliveries as well which has gone well. With the majority of our Prime orders shipping with DPD, we don't need to worry about being in as our current local driver is a pretty awesome guy and texts to see if someone's home and if not changes his drop-off order to be a couple of hours later so someone can pop back to the house. For non Prime deliveries, it varies massively depending on the seller. Most of the stuff using the free delivery option comes within the same week, unless the estimated delivery already states that it'll come at a later date. I think we've only ever had to unexpectedly wait a long period for two deliveries in the past 12 months.
Oh good, I'm not the most prolific Amazon customer here! Although I'd say my 45 orders in 2014 equalled your spend A lot of that is for work though, thankfully! It doesn't take a lot of Samsung 840/850 Pro SSD's to make up a grand or two...
We have a problem with Prime deliveries in our area too. My friend has Prime and so far, not one of his products has arrived the next day like they promised. It's a waste of cash in our opinion.
