Like others have said, they don't guarantee two days shipping however. Their thing now is if you spend $x per order or pay more, even if you have prime, they'll overnight it (location dependent).
I live a 20 minute drive from several large amazon warehouses and one of their largest air hubs. When two day shipping was guaranteed, we'd often get most items the next day since it goes out almost immediately and we're very close. We noticed the last few years most deliveries take two days at least with many being delayed to 3 or 4.
Finding prime less and less of a value I cancelled at the beginning of this month as I was set to auto renew. We've ordered two things since. Both items we have received in the past in 1-2 days. Now they take 5-7 days for free shopping, which is fine mind you, but it shows me that rather than shipping the item they are intentionally holding back the order from being picked from the warehouse to create the delay.
Rather than prime adding value, it's simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
Nothing else on prime is worthwhile. Thursday night football sucks and when I do want to watch it if my team is playing I'll just pirate it. Same goes for anything on prime like The Boys will just get added to the Plex server.
Rather than prime adding value, it's simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
I mean, I suppose you could say something like that. But the problem is that nearly every other non-Amazon online retailer has ungodly slow shipping and you often have to pay an extra fee for shipping on top of it.
I know Amazon is a horrifyingly large mega corp, but there isn't a decent alternative. They actually do provide a good service for the pricetag. (Unless we're talking their digital services which I've never used and are trash.)
Maybe I'm just lucky because I don't live in a rural area. So my packages actually come relatively quickly. Other retailers make me wait over a week and pay for the privilege to wait forever.
It depends on the company for sure. I've noticed a much better delivery time for most things I order nowadays through other companies. 5-7 years ago it would take at least a week for pretty anything to show up. Now most items are 2-3 days.
Fully agree though, it certainly depends on where you live.
If you order something without an active prime membership, it shows the long delivery time, like a week or whatever.
If you then subscribe to prime before it ships, like the next day or something, it will update your shipping to the prime 2 day window. And will be delivered within that window.
It’s all entirely artificial. I’ve done this several times and it always works that way (small order of needed items, then realize I have the free trial again so sign up and order whatever else I’ve been needing and putting off). Fuck Amazon.
I can say that personally here in Spain, of course it's a completely different place, the overnight 1 day shipping still works. Just saying that the enshittification is not global at least on shipping. Of course all depends where you are located and each product if they are prime or not, which hour you order it, etc... But the day they say is the day your receive it except some very very rare exceptions when there is a delay.
I don’t think two day shipping is an advertised feature anymore. Depending on where you live, I’ve seen ordering directly from manufacturers is the same or quicker than Amazon most of the time.
I’ve had that happen recently too. Last one was clearly lost. It kept cycling in and out of their same warehouse. Happens with IPS and FedEx from time to time too.