[spaceconvoy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpr703 Ok, I'm PO'd with Amazon.com and I just have to rant. Several months ago I placed an order for a handful of CDs from Amazon.com. I qualified for free shipping, but didn't select the "ship them all at one time" option and I wound up getting three different shipments and a shipping charge for each one. Well, I was mad enough to stay away from them for a while until last week when I decided to give them a second chance. I placed an order for 7 CD's on Jan 29 and since it qualified for free shipping, I thought I'd be smart this time and check the "ship all at once" block. Well as of tonight I still hadn't gotten anything in so I found the "Where's My Stuff" link and decided to check on my order. Guess what, the order placed on Jan 29 was scheduled to ship between March 2 and March 16! I hadn't ordered anything out of print, any imports or anything else that you would expect a delay with, nor did Amazon ever give me any indication that it would take that long. Amazon advertises that free shipping as a method to entice you into placing a larger order. I guess you have to wait 6 weeks if you want it to be genuinely free like you'd expect. That's the last straw for me. I cancelled the order and Amazon.com now has a permanent position on my sh!t list.

Let me get this straight. First you're mad at Amazon because of something you forgot to do. Now you're complaining that their free shipping isn't fast enough for you? Amazon even had the nerve to let you know exactly when your shipment would be arriving. And to top that, they allow you to modify or cancel any part of your order anytime before it's shipped????

I can understand why you're upset ~~ *sound of world's tiniest violin playing*

 

[DJ Mauler]

ya thats the deal i always select 2 day, but when they say free its because they give your the slowest shipping rates they can.

 

[trbl]

My Amazon experiences have been varied over the years. I think it's important to remember just how big they are, how many orders they handle each day (and how many items they list) and expect that sometimes they'll screw up.

Yes, they clearly note that the "free shipping" option will add several days to the processing or transit time, and they're often good to their word about being slow with such orders. But my last two free shipping orders actually went out 12 hours after the orders were placed, and arrived well before they were even scheduled to ship.

And I've ordered items listed as "ships in 1 day, 3 in stock, more on the way" and have not had the order filled even 2 weeks later because the items obviously were not in stock. Looking at the same listing weeks later showed the same "3 in stock." Trying to email Amazon about inventory errors like this is an exercise in futility, though I have tried a couple of times.

The upside is that they carry more of the music I prefer than any local store ever could, at decent prices, and usually do better than other places like Tower, etc. For all that, sometimes I still have to order from amazon.co.uk to get recordings that were never or are no longer available in the US. Sometimes even that fails, and I order from Crotchet instead, and am grateful to have all these ordering options. Given that CD prices in the UK are about 50% more than in the US (even without VAT), and the cost of airmail shipping, the normal US Amazon ordering process isn't so bad.

 

[jpr703]

Quote:

Originally Posted by spaceconvoy Let me get this straight. First you're mad at Amazon because of something you forgot to do. Now you're complaining that their free shipping isn't fast enough for you? Amazon even had the nerve to let you know exactly when your shipment would be arriving. And to top that, they allow you to modify or cancel any part of your order anytime before it's shipped???? I can understand why you're upset ~~ *sound of world's tiniest violin playing*

1. The first time I ordered and didn't check the "Ship at once" block" I assumed that if items were backordered, they ship them seperately at their own cost. Yeah, I didn't read all the legal info closely, but that's not a ridiculous assumption.

2. Yes I am complaining that 6 weeks is too long to wait for a CD. They're just too widely available. Would you wait a week for a pizza, a month for your dry cleaning, or 10 days for a tube of toothpaste? I doubt it.

3. I did cancel it and I don't consider it any special treatment that they allowed me to so.

The sound of that tiny violin must be clouding your judgment.

On a happier note, one of my many local record shops had everything I was looking for. I just took in the print out of my order cancellation and got everything I wanted. The price even worked out to be about the same. Problem solved, lesson learned.

Bottom line, the only value-add that a CD reseller has to me is convenience. Maybe people are in the habit of reading return policies, exchange policies, shipping policies and scouring for price "gotcha's" before they buy something as simple as a CD. I'm not. Call me old fashioned, but I just refuse to play those sort of games. It's just not convenient and I don't think it's right. In the end though, it doesn't really matter if I'm right or wrong. I don't feel like I've been treated well, and I've already started shopping somewhere else.

 

[megawzrd]

I usually just go with amazon when ordering and get free shipping unless its alot cheaper in the marketplace factoring in the shipping cost there (I will usually make that a separate order just to keep things organized for me). I have had no problems...even with returns on both amazon and marketplace dealers...all has gone well. Heck I just placed an order for a few cds two days ago and clicked the option to group in as few shipments as possible. They sent out one of the cds the next day (while they wait on the other two)...free shipping of course. Only time I ever had a problem was backorder...but that was my fault for not checking on my order status sooner and canceling the order before the backorder came in and they shipped.

Amazon is thumbs up in my book.

 

[BodiesOfLight]

I personally love Amazon, I get stuff pretty fast with free shipping. Also, I recently bought a memory stick for my camera that was incompatible with camera so I'm getting a refund and they paid to ship it back, I just had to print off the prepaid package label.

 

[Daryn Alexander]

I love Amazon. I just ordered a few CD's from there a few hours ago and they are already being shipped, ahead of schedule. One instance where I ordered something and it arrived damage (a manufacturing error), a replacement was shipped immediately via express mail before I even returned it (which they also paid for).

Generally, if it says it takes anything more than a week to ship, I won't bite. Sometimes they will do that for hard to find singles when it just isn't going to happen. Oddly enough, with most imports, you can go to their various world sites (.ca, .de, etc) and find the item immediately available (I'm a .ca shopper myself) and get it a lot cheaper and faster than you would otherwise.

Don't go for the free shipping. It takes forever and if time is of the essence I wouldn't advise it.

 

[grawk]

My favorite amazon free shipping trick is to select the free shipping and group items. Then once the order is placed, switch to ship separately and then bac k to group. It'll ship out everything as available if you do that.

 

[tkam]

I've had really good luck with amazon, their return policy is very good and has worked flawlessly for me when I've needed it. Also for anyone that buys quite a bit from amazon it is really worth becoming a "Prime" member. Free 2-day shipping owns

 

[BRBJackson]

I've had nothing but good luck with Amazon, over the course of at least 50 orders. Then again, I'm not generally in a huge hurry for my CD's. That said, they've never failed to beat their (free) ship time estimate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk My favorite amazon free shipping trick is to select the free shipping and group items. Then once the order is placed, switch to ship separately and then bac k to group. It'll ship out everything as available if you do that.

So you're saying that doing that causes the system to ship items out separately as soon as they're available, but without the separate shipping charges?

 

[gratefulshrink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tkam I've had really good luck with amazon, their return policy is very good and has worked flawlessly for me when I've needed it. Also for anyone that buys quite a bit from amazon it is really worth becoming a "Prime" member. Free 2-day shipping owns

I'm also on the Amazon bandwagon. I try only to order stuff that is available in "24 hours", since that pretty much guarantees it's in the mail the next day. even with the free shipping option, stuff gets to me fairly quickly.

How does the prime member thing work?

 

[ChaosCow]

If you buy a lot (probably with free shipping), they offer you an Amazon.com prime trial that lasts 3 months. It is AMAZING, but $89 is just too much for a year's worth of it.

However, I've been using standard free shipping for three years, and Amazon.com hasn't let me down once. They've overestimated their shipping all but two times out of probably over forty orders, in which case their estimates were accurate.

Frankly, I think this rant is silly because they fully informed you as to what you were getting into before you bought the product, and they only told you the truth. You could have backed out at any time, bought more expensive shipping, or anything of the sort, but you're complaining about the service promised to you. It's not even in fine print - their policies are the clearest I've seen on any website.

Amazon.com is, without a doubt, the best commercial vendor I've ever used on the internet. Bar none, and I buy almost EVERYTHING on the internet.