Amazon & delayed super saver shipping?
 

My last two pre-orders have shipped approximately 5 days after its street date (Buffy s7 and Simpsons s5). My Anchorman gift set hasnt even shipped yet, and a few of my other pre-orders are showing delivery dates of a week after release. All my previous purchases shipped before release date and were usually recieved 3 days later...

All were purchased with Free Super Saver shipping... Is this a new thing?

It has been mentioned here before that it looks like on the free shipping option they perhaps wait until a shipping pallet is completely full before sending it to the shipping provider. This is probably where they save money allowing it to be free. If you pay for shipping then they get it out right away.

THIS IS STARTING TO REALLY, REALLY ANNOY ME! As you said, all my previous pre-orders with Amazon using Free-Super Shipping have ALWAYS shipped before or on the the DVD release date. Now my Millennium DVD set is my second order in a row that's failed to ship by the release date. I e-mailed Customer Service and they gave me the standard BS responce about the delayed ship time that's ALWAYS been posted on Free-Super Saver shipments.

You're not alone. My Millennium set hasn't even entered the shipping soon phase. I can still even cancel the order. The same thing happened with my Buffy 7 set. What really irks me regarding the Buffy set is that I preordered months in advance and my set didn't ship until a week after the release date. Then I find out that people that ordered at the last second using the free shipping option had their sets shipped out right away.:mad:

This happened to me with Simpsons Season 5. I ended up cancelling the order and buying at Best Buy instead.

My guess is that it has more to do with the holidays than it has to do with anything else. Things should be getting back to normal soon, I have Married With Children Season 3 coming from them later this month, hopefully there won't be any delays.

Amazon always ships last-in-first-out. It is better to wait until the friday before the release before you preorder anything.

I had preordered ROTK:EE as soon as it was available for pre-order. I was reading threads in this forum where people who ordered it on the saturday before release date got a shipping confirmation immediately while my order showed an expected shipping date three weeks after release date. I waited and waited for a whole week and still got no sign of my order shipping.

I finally came up with a trick to beat the system. I opened my order and made some edits to the credit card, changing it to a different credit card that I have. This bumped my order to be the last in the queue, and voila, I got a "shipping soon" message within the next half hour.

I do the opposite and order early, and my movies ship 2-3 days before release date. Amazon free-shipping as been reliable for me. I do use my amazon card and maybe that helps.

I was very disappointed to receive my LOTR Giftset preorder on Dec. 27th, 13 days after release, after planning for months to send for the exclusive "Minas Morgul Polystone Environment." I missed out.

Amazon.com sent the giftset on Dec. 14th via USPS Parcel Post, with tracking confirmation. Ironically they upgraded the other part of my order- which I was not in a hurry for- to FedEx 2-day mail.

I noticed the delay in shipping preorders using Super Saver Shipping, too. In the past I would get the items shipped a day before release date, or on release date, and I would receive the item 2 to 4 days later. However, in the past two months, I have had to wait 2 days after release date or up to 10 after release date for the preorders to enter into "Shipping Soon." The only good thing is that it usually takes less than 4 days (usually three days) for things from Amazon to reach me when they are actually shipped.

The Super Saver Shipping doesn't delay processing of in-stock items though, which is good, but I wish free shipping with preorders would revert back to the way they used to be handled.

You get what you pay for.

I have always used Super Saver shipping, and my orders shipped very quickly. When they introduced 'Amazon Prime', I was afraid they would slow down the free shipping to make their 'Amazon Prime' offer seem more appealing.

My last two orders (pre-orders for the Bob Newhart Show and Star Trek Enterprise) were 'delayed' for weeks because of 'unexpected availability problems', according to their customer service reps. Both items were always listed as shipping in 24 hours. I ordered a few books with the DVDs, and the books were always listed as shipping in 24 hours also.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt with the Bob Newhart Show, but I have trouble believing they ran out of Enterprise. They currently tell me that Enterprise won't ship until May 27.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Christi Patton

As I had gift certificates to use, I ordered 8 items Wed. night/Thursday morning. I chose the free shipping method. The items were shipped out Thursday afternoon. IT's one of those 'take a gamble' propositions. I've been fortunate that most of my orders (using free shipping) have shipped quickly. There has been the odd slowpoke, but I'm so backlogged on discs and books that I don't mind the wait.

I much prefer Barnes and Noble's free shipping. I've found them to be much more reliable, and there is no guessing game involved.

I ordered Star Trek: TOS season one at the first of this week from their TV on DVD sale. I decieded to pay the couple of dollars for shipping to get it to my house sooner.
UPS man handed it to me this morning!! If I had went with the super saver no shipping I would have got it next week sometime! Well worth a couple of extra bucks IMHO!!

Take care all!!

My past experiences with SSS have always been that they shipped out in the same time frame as standard shipping, provided the items had a 24 hour avail. Recently, I placed an order on May 15th for three items all with 24hr avails and as of tonight May 19 they are just now being prepared for shipping. My estimated ship date was May 20th and it looks like that will be correct, but I honestly expected them to ship sooner.

I placed an order with SSS for one item with 24 hr availability, it had been in "Shipping Soon" for 5 DAYS before they actually shipped it out.

I placed an order about 2 weeks ago for something estimated to ship within 24 hours and had the same experience. The order went into the shipping soon phase the next day and then took another 4 days to ship. I wasn't in a hurry for the item, so it was no big deal waiting a few extra days. However, I do think Amazon generally ships pre-ordered items with super saver shipping quicker compared to items in stock.