Crazy Dave
Retired Genius now nursing dementia.
Absolutely.
Sneaky Amazon
- Thread starter Garno
- Start date
Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:
The other obnoxious thing here is amazon's display of shipping time. my wife is a prime member, therefore I am a prime member, I guess - at least functionally. I need to put down milky spore in the yard, which turns out means that I need to either put it out in measured spoons full or get a drop spreader - it doesn't spread well with a broadcast spreader.
Great, I need a drop spreader. Check home depot, none at the local one. Check elsewhere - price started at $59, suddenly changed at remote home depot to $70. Not sure if they use amazon as a service to do guesswork pricing, or maybe I just searched before and after they hit a critical stock level.
Back to amazon, logged in as wife from home. Amazon, $61 with free prime shipping, delivered Saturday. OK, that's fine - it's three days, and everything used to be 2 but amazon is playing a game with us - an F-u sort of game where they realize that prime buyers will no longer hold them to two day shipping or even three. I go all the way through the listing and just as I get to pay, the listing changes to "guaranteed prime shipping delivered the following thursday". This is happening constantly in the last several months.
I don't doubt that there is stock only in a further away warehouse, or their software has decided my order is lower priority than amazon grocery or high value electronics items.
BUT, two things pee me off. First, I am a prime member, not a Prime-minus member, and second, I seriously doubt that the info that I'm seeing just before the last buy screen is unintentionally inaccurate over and over, and that three day shipping becomes 8 by chance. I think amazon knows it will be 8 and decides that I will still buy the item if I have to wait 8 if I go through the buying process, but if I knew that at the outset, I may keep shopping online and locally. I would have. But the above case is true.
If the wife didn't want to be a prime member, I wouldn't be a prime member. I'll bet non-prime members aren't waiting more than 8 days to get a spreader that is probably stocked at half of the amazon warehouses. There have been plenty of cases in the past where I was logged in under my own (non prime) account that my wife and I were looking at the same item, and her prime price was higher than what I saw, both from amazon (not resellers) and then when I logged in under her account on my PC, the price with shipping went up.
Great, I need a drop spreader. Check home depot, none at the local one. Check elsewhere - price started at $59, suddenly changed at remote home depot to $70. Not sure if they use amazon as a service to do guesswork pricing, or maybe I just searched before and after they hit a critical stock level.
Back to amazon, logged in as wife from home. Amazon, $61 with free prime shipping, delivered Saturday. OK, that's fine - it's three days, and everything used to be 2 but amazon is playing a game with us - an F-u sort of game where they realize that prime buyers will no longer hold them to two day shipping or even three. I go all the way through the listing and just as I get to pay, the listing changes to "guaranteed prime shipping delivered the following thursday". This is happening constantly in the last several months.
I don't doubt that there is stock only in a further away warehouse, or their software has decided my order is lower priority than amazon grocery or high value electronics items.
BUT, two things pee me off. First, I am a prime member, not a Prime-minus member, and second, I seriously doubt that the info that I'm seeing just before the last buy screen is unintentionally inaccurate over and over, and that three day shipping becomes 8 by chance. I think amazon knows it will be 8 and decides that I will still buy the item if I have to wait 8 if I go through the buying process, but if I knew that at the outset, I may keep shopping online and locally. I would have. But the above case is true.
If the wife didn't want to be a prime member, I wouldn't be a prime member. I'll bet non-prime members aren't waiting more than 8 days to get a spreader that is probably stocked at half of the amazon warehouses. There have been plenty of cases in the past where I was logged in under my own (non prime) account that my wife and I were looking at the same item, and her prime price was higher than what I saw, both from amazon (not resellers) and then when I logged in under her account on my PC, the price with shipping went up.
