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My guess: - They cost more than the free shipping threshold, giving shipping away free - New games are low profit to begin with - Amazon sells enough of thes

My guess: - They cost more than the free shipping threshold, giving shipping away free - New games are low profit to begin with - Amazon sells enough of these that they are already in every distribution center - Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free This is just bringing some video game sales into alignment with what Amazon wanted Prime to do all along. Amazon makes very good money on a sale that they don't control. If the costs of making that sale (or supporting returns, etc) is too high they benefit significantly by letting marketplace sellers take all the risk.

newjersey 11y ago
> Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free Just to add a note that this isn't always true. Sometimes they withhold shipping even though they have the item in stock at the nearby distribution center.
- justinlardinois 11y ago
  This is definitely true. Back in the pre-Prime days (ie, 5+ years ago) Amazon would send your package as soon as they possibly could, and even with the super saver shipping you'd still often get your order less than the minimum 5 days. Now I'll order something on Amazon (not a Prime member) and they'll sit on the package for a week and then overnight it to me. I'm not a fan. Paying more for faster shipping didn't used to mean that cheaper/free shipping always took longer, it just meant that you were guaranteed to get it quickly.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    This may be because it's cheaper/better for them to ship other orders instead of yours, since they can only handle a finite amount of orders per center at a time :)
    - IshKebab 11y ago
      More likely their distribution network has improved so much that it's no longer cheaper for them to ship stuff slowly, and they make money from non-prime next-day shipping.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      It's a financial hack. Amazon has low margins so cash flow is king. They make money off you either way, when they sit on the order for 5 days, they probably book your revenue a month before they need to pay for the product.
      - MichaelGG 11y ago
        Do they charge your before the order actually ships? I don't think they do.
        justinlardinois 11y ago
        Unless they've changed something recently, they don't. I haven't paid enough attention lately to be sure.
        jldugger 11y ago
        Charging your credit card might not coincide with their definition of revenue recognition.
        dmxt 11y ago
        What if a customer cancel the shipment?
        Spooky23 11y ago
        The point is that they don't hold the inventory. They buy stuff on net-30 terms, and ship stuff to you the day it arrives. WalMart does similar things for many products -- they make vendors carry inventory until it arrives at a DC.
  - jghn 11y ago
    That is one of the two reasons I signed up for prime in the first place, I'd always get super saver and 99.9% of the time it'd arrive in 2 days. All of a sudden it started taking the full time. I don't remember exactly what the other reason was, but it involved a one time money savings which was > the cost of a year of Prime at the time.
    - geofft 11y ago
      So I can imagine that this was originally a bug. Probably at some point they reached the capacity of things they could physically get out of their warehouse and onto a shipping truck per day, regardless of whether that truck is heading to other trucks or to a plane. So you need to prioritize, every day, the things that must go out overnight to meet the deadline. If you're full and you have things that could be shipped tomorrow, they wait tomorrow. Then tomorrow, or a week later, or whatever, those things are now on the list of stuff that must go out overnight. Ideally your capacity isn't filled up by the must-be-overnight stuff. But if you're busy for a few days, suddenly a bunch of regular stuff turns into must-be-overnight stuff. And that delays next week's regular stuff, which then turns into must-be-overnight stuff next week. and there's no way to recover from this automatically. You could recover if you manually added more shipping capacity, or if you told customers that ground shipping would take even longer (so you can spend a few days clearing out backlog), or something. That said given that the current state incentivizes customers to do exactly what you did, I wouldn't want to be the manager who prioritized fixing the bug....
      - im3w1l 11y ago
        Just do an Uber and surge that price!
      - tzs 11y ago
        Wouldn't that explanation only work if their load is high enough that they frequently hit the limit on how much can be shipped per day, but they rarely hit the limit on how much can be shipped per 5 days? If the load is lower than this, then deferral of non-Prime orders would rarely be needed. If the load is higher than this, deferral would rarely help. If their load is in that window where deferral can help with load, the amount of deferral for a given warehouse should vary from order to order all the way from no delay to several days. My recollection from before I got Prime was that almost all my free shipping 5 day orders shipped the same day, and then over a very short time that changed to them almost all being delayed by an amount that depended on how far the warehouse was from me. I lived in the same city as their biggest warehouse, for instance, and orders served from there were almost always delayed 4 days and then overnighted. That indicates that the deferral was not based on load.
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  If you use free delivery, they seem do this more often than not lately. For years free delivery would often be as fast as other methods, sometimes next day, even if ordered late in the day. Now they will usually sit on the order for a suspiciously consistent 48hrs before it goes to picking status. I don't mind, it's very rare I really need something next day.
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    I have an open order right now they've been sitting on for 5 days. It's fine with me. I don't need the instant gratification and don't make enough orders to justify Prime. Just pretend you're living in the era of Sears & Roebuck ca. 1916 and you get your order turned around in the phenomenal time frame of 10 days with doorstep delivery rather than waiting a couple months and having to make the voyage out to the train depot to pick up your stuff.
gtk40 11y ago
Granted I don't buy video games with Prime, but my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.
- morganvachon 11y ago
  > ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro area (though not quite inside the perimeter). Before I joined Prime, even a non-Prime eligible item would tend to arrive in 1-2 days. I did call Amazon about the issue several months ago, and they offered me gift card credit equal to the non-Prime shipping cost of all shipments that didn't meet the guaranteed date, and since then I've only had one late shipment. It definitely pays to contact them about it; I know from working for a company that sells on Amazon that the customer is treated like royalty whenever there's an issue, whether it's with Marketplace or Amazon direct sales.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - post_break 11y ago
    I've had the opposite. Shipments supposed to be delivered on monday delivered on saturday or sunday. And promptly lost because I ship to a business address that is closed on the weekend. Infuriating watching it state delivered on a sunday at 3pm when I know it's going to be lost.
    - foone 11y ago
      I swear I've had amazon ask me if it was alright to deliver to a new address on weekends. Maybe that's a recent feature?
kmonsen 11y ago
The low profit part cannot be true. In the US prime members get a 20% discount on new games!
jldugger 11y ago
> New games are low profit to begin with AFAIK, they aren't. There's apparently enough margin that Best Buy and Amazon both have membership clubs that yield 20 percent off preorders.

newjersey 11y ago

> Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free Just to add a note that this isn't always true. Sometimes they withhold shipping even though they have the item in stock at the nearby distribution center.

justinlardinois 11y ago
This is definitely true. Back in the pre-Prime days (ie, 5+ years ago) Amazon would send your package as soon as they possibly could, and even with the super saver shipping you'd still often get your order less than the minimum 5 days. Now I'll order something on Amazon (not a Prime member) and they'll sit on the package for a week and then overnight it to me. I'm not a fan. Paying more for faster shipping didn't used to mean that cheaper/free shipping always took longer, it just meant that you were guaranteed to get it quickly.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  This may be because it's cheaper/better for them to ship other orders instead of yours, since they can only handle a finite amount of orders per center at a time :)
  - IshKebab 11y ago
    More likely their distribution network has improved so much that it's no longer cheaper for them to ship stuff slowly, and they make money from non-prime next-day shipping.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    It's a financial hack. Amazon has low margins so cash flow is king. They make money off you either way, when they sit on the order for 5 days, they probably book your revenue a month before they need to pay for the product.
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      Do they charge your before the order actually ships? I don't think they do.
      - justinlardinois 11y ago
        Unless they've changed something recently, they don't. I haven't paid enough attention lately to be sure.
      - jldugger 11y ago
        Charging your credit card might not coincide with their definition of revenue recognition.
        dmxt 11y ago
        What if a customer cancel the shipment?
      - Spooky23 11y ago
        The point is that they don't hold the inventory. They buy stuff on net-30 terms, and ship stuff to you the day it arrives. WalMart does similar things for many products -- they make vendors carry inventory until it arrives at a DC.
- jghn 11y ago
  That is one of the two reasons I signed up for prime in the first place, I'd always get super saver and 99.9% of the time it'd arrive in 2 days. All of a sudden it started taking the full time. I don't remember exactly what the other reason was, but it involved a one time money savings which was > the cost of a year of Prime at the time.
  - geofft 11y ago
    So I can imagine that this was originally a bug. Probably at some point they reached the capacity of things they could physically get out of their warehouse and onto a shipping truck per day, regardless of whether that truck is heading to other trucks or to a plane. So you need to prioritize, every day, the things that must go out overnight to meet the deadline. If you're full and you have things that could be shipped tomorrow, they wait tomorrow. Then tomorrow, or a week later, or whatever, those things are now on the list of stuff that must go out overnight. Ideally your capacity isn't filled up by the must-be-overnight stuff. But if you're busy for a few days, suddenly a bunch of regular stuff turns into must-be-overnight stuff. And that delays next week's regular stuff, which then turns into must-be-overnight stuff next week. and there's no way to recover from this automatically. You could recover if you manually added more shipping capacity, or if you told customers that ground shipping would take even longer (so you can spend a few days clearing out backlog), or something. That said given that the current state incentivizes customers to do exactly what you did, I wouldn't want to be the manager who prioritized fixing the bug....
    - im3w1l 11y ago
      Just do an Uber and surge that price!
    - tzs 11y ago
      Wouldn't that explanation only work if their load is high enough that they frequently hit the limit on how much can be shipped per day, but they rarely hit the limit on how much can be shipped per 5 days? If the load is lower than this, then deferral of non-Prime orders would rarely be needed. If the load is higher than this, deferral would rarely help. If their load is in that window where deferral can help with load, the amount of deferral for a given warehouse should vary from order to order all the way from no delay to several days. My recollection from before I got Prime was that almost all my free shipping 5 day orders shipped the same day, and then over a very short time that changed to them almost all being delayed by an amount that depended on how far the warehouse was from me. I lived in the same city as their biggest warehouse, for instance, and orders served from there were almost always delayed 4 days and then overnighted. That indicates that the deferral was not based on load.
anexprogrammer 11y ago
If you use free delivery, they seem do this more often than not lately. For years free delivery would often be as fast as other methods, sometimes next day, even if ordered late in the day. Now they will usually sit on the order for a suspiciously consistent 48hrs before it goes to picking status. I don't mind, it's very rare I really need something next day.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  I have an open order right now they've been sitting on for 5 days. It's fine with me. I don't need the instant gratification and don't make enough orders to justify Prime. Just pretend you're living in the era of Sears & Roebuck ca. 1916 and you get your order turned around in the phenomenal time frame of 10 days with doorstep delivery rather than waiting a couple months and having to make the voyage out to the train depot to pick up your stuff.

gtk40 11y ago

Granted I don't buy video games with Prime, but my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

morganvachon 11y ago
> ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro area (though not quite inside the perimeter). Before I joined Prime, even a non-Prime eligible item would tend to arrive in 1-2 days. I did call Amazon about the issue several months ago, and they offered me gift card credit equal to the non-Prime shipping cost of all shipments that didn't meet the guaranteed date, and since then I've only had one late shipment. It definitely pays to contact them about it; I know from working for a company that sells on Amazon that the customer is treated like royalty whenever there's an issue, whether it's with Marketplace or Amazon direct sales.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- post_break 11y ago
  I've had the opposite. Shipments supposed to be delivered on monday delivered on saturday or sunday. And promptly lost because I ship to a business address that is closed on the weekend. Infuriating watching it state delivered on a sunday at 3pm when I know it's going to be lost.
  - foone 11y ago
    I swear I've had amazon ask me if it was alright to deliver to a new address on weekends. Maybe that's a recent feature?

kmonsen 11y ago

The low profit part cannot be true. In the US prime members get a 20% discount on new games!

jldugger 11y ago

> New games are low profit to begin with AFAIK, they aren't. There's apparently enough margin that Best Buy and Amazon both have membership clubs that yield 20 percent off preorders.