Jane Bell is the eBay Anorak, business consultant for marketplace sellers and contributor to Tamebay.
Today Jane looks at Amazon’s recent delivery records and asks if Amazon’s standards are slipping and why they may not be quite as good at delivering as they have been in the past:
Is Amazon Prime delivery really Prime anymore?
In the early hours of this morning I was buying a last minute Christmas gift for my youngest Son (hence not saying what it is). As a Prime member my first stop was Amazon. Even an eBayAnorak shops on Amazon at such a late hour, it’s hard to find next day delivery on eBay at the best of times and there isn’t an option to filter search via next day delivery.
Amazon Prime filtered search showed me three choices. This item was priced around the web at £59.99. The first was out of stock and would be sent when new stock arrived. Second item had a delivery date of one to two months and the third had an over inflated price of £89.99. I ended up buying from Argos with 10% back via a cashback site and item will be delivered today. I can currently buy and get same day delivery on eBay from Argos but then I preferred to get the cashback.
What has happened to Prime? When all the items were FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) all available items came more or less next day but since rolling out to ‘Prime Sellers’ it has widened the range of products available. The problem is, it’s a little too easy to buy something, expect Prime next day delivery and end up with a week or more wait. Does this provide opportunity for eBay to put a Next Day delivery filter in search?
Amazon Prime remains good value and I’ll still use the Prime filter on those goods that I need sharpish. I’ll be looking more closely at delivery expectations form now on though.
Have you had a ‘non Prime’ Prime experience? If you are a Prime seller what is the criteria on despatch and have you found it affecting your seller metrics?
4 Responses
Amazon regularly fails to deliver on the promised next day. Partly this is due to Amazon Logistics staff having too many parcels and not enough time so they end up trying to deliver to business addresses after they have closed, last one we had was a missed delivery at 8:50 pm on a Friday night to our unit. The only good thing is they give you an extra month of Prime free every time we complain. The technology the drivers have seems to be a long way behind what other couriers have and the large number of agency staff don’t have a clue where they are going, you never get the same person delivering so they don’t learn where places are.
There does seem to be a lot of problems with Seller Support taking weeks and sometimes months to reply to cases resulting in an increasing number of errors on product pages, when you do get a response it frequently bares no relation to the original issue raised. Also FBA is not running smoothly with backlogs checking stock in and discrepancies. There also seems to be an increasing number of sellers on the forums complaining about being suspended and not getting replies after submitting their action plans. Amazon needs to get the basics right and improve the support of 3rd party sellers.
Perhaps if depends on where you live. We order from Amazon almost daily and the vast majority of items arrive next day and within business hours. Not even struggling in December
I buy quite a lot from Amazon, several times a week usually. In the 16 or so months I’ve been a prime customer I’ve never had a late delivery. Always been next day without fail.