What Amazon Prime Two Day Shipping Really Means
Amazon Prime Two Day Free Shipping is a great deal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll receive your order two days after you place it. Embarrassed? I was the same when my recent warehouse order took almost a week.
I ordered a new video game from Amazon last week to take advantage of this cute Prime discount. I ordered it on Thursday morning, so I figured it would arrive Saturday night – just in time for me to enjoy it Sunday morning. However, Sunday came, my game was nowhere to be found. It was not in the mailbox, on the doorstep, or in the bushes where the courier sometimes hides my packages (I believe this is a tactic to prevent theft). Did I accidentally forget to confirm my purchase? I opened my Amazon account to check, but of course I actually ordered it. Maybe it was out of stock? No, it was. But now the delivery was scheduled for Tuesday, five days after I placed my order. Why didn’t I suddenly get the two-day shipping I’m so used to? I live in a big city and Prime has never let me down before …
Pouting, I reached out to Amazon support to see what happened. When I asked, the representative did not answer my “why” question at all. They just vomited what I already knew – that the birth was scheduled for Tuesday. Thank you. I asked again why it was taking so long, explaining that they were not honoring their two-day Prime shipping agreement. After several reps went in and out of our chat, repeating the same thing over and over again, one of them finally told me something that I didn’t know , or at least something that I never did. understood:
Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping doesn’t start until the item has actually shipped from the fulfillment center.
Okay, that makes sense, especially when it comes to items that have not yet been released or are out of stock. I mean, how could they ship something that is out of stock? But obviously, this also applies to items that are listed as in stock and available for purchase. My game was not available at the nearest fulfillment centers, so it had to be shipped somewhere much further. Technically, he was still somewhere “in stock”, just not near me. This meant they didn’t actually ship my order until Saturday, two days after I placed my order. I didn’t like this logic, so I argued with a rep, saying that they just could never ship something and still fulfill their two-day shipment promise, but it was useless.
I’m actually not very upset about this silly interaction with Amazon. There are several things on my part that could make this situation possible: in a rush, I might have miscalculated the estimated delivery date at the time of purchase; or they may have sent me an email saying that my delivery date had changed and I didn’t notice. Also, I could have paid more attention to how 2-day shipping actually works from the start. Live and learn.
If anything, I am sharing my story as a cautionary tale explaining the nature of Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping. If you already knew this, good! If you didn’t, now you may not feel like a fool like me.