Monday, July 18, 2016

Amazon – et tu with the reinterpretation of “on time” ? **updated**

Yesterday I railed against Home Depot’s misleading web site.

Today, I am awaiting a shipment of coffee from Amazon using Prime’s two day guaranteed shipping. This, of course, is really three business days, since they need to actually ship the order.

I placed the order on Friday, and a lay-interpretation of “two day shipping” would suggest Sunday delivery. But shippers take weekends off (even if you choose express, time only counts in terms of business days.) So the lay person would think Tuesday instead. The second business day from Friday.

But no, the Amazon interpretation is that you get 24 hours to ship, making Wednesday the “on time” two day delivery. That is actually 6 days from the date of order, but who’s counting :-)

And then there is the Thursday delivery. Amazon actually split the consignment (order) into two separate shipments. The second one being listed as due Thursday, the 4th business day, which in my estimation is 3 day shipping and thus not “on time” in Prime terms.

Yet …

image

Amazon does work in mysterious ways … but this is an area where the mystery is how they manage to get on time from 3 days?

Here is another example …

image

Again … shipping today, arriving 3 days from now. And that’s considered “on time” …

To reiterate: I pay for Prime and I generally order items that offer Prime 2-Day shipping. So why does 3 day shipping now qualify as “on time”? Anyone? Amazon?

** Update: Everything arrived on time and within the Prime commitment. As in Wednesday, in two days. So this is really about Amazon either not interfacing correctly with their couriers, or rewriting the rule book just in case.