Amazon's Two-Day Shipping Standard? Not on Prime Day.
July 16 2019 - 8:23PM
Dow Jones News
By Sebastian Herrera
Tim Chauvin said he eagerly signed up for an Amazon Prime
membership Monday to take part in the shopping extravaganza known
as Prime Day. Like many Amazon.com Inc. customers, Mr. Chauvin, a
39-year-old laundry worker in Milford, Conn., expected to get his
order in two days, a delivery window that Amazon promotes and Prime
members have become accustomed to the company meeting.
But when he clicked to buy an Amazon Echo home system, the
scheduled delivery date was four days later.
"Even though I'm a new customer, they still didn't fulfill their
two-day shipping promise," Mr. Chauvin said. "It was also on their
own product. They should have those things ready to go."
Within hours of Amazon's Prime Day event, which started early
Monday, shoppers were greeted with longer-than-expected delivery
times as purchases flooded the company's site. Amazon described
Monday as the largest sales day for third-party sellers world-wide
on its platform in the company's history, without providing
financial information.
Shipping delays are affecting products ranging from technology
devices to home-care items and video games, according to interviews
with customers and a Wall Street Journal analysis, prompting some
customers to call out the company on social media.
"If you can't fulfill it, don't promise it," said Jason
Livingston, a 44-year-old software engineer and longtime Prime
customer from Colorado Springs, Colo.
Retailers including Amazon have spent billions of dollars in
recent years to push the boundaries in fast shipping. Those
investments, which have ranged from investing directly in delivery
companies to expanding order fulfillment operations, have also
reshaped expectations for when customers expect to get orders
placed online.
In April, Amazon said it would spend $800 million during the
second quarter to make one-day free shipping the standard for
Prime. Amazon said in June it would rent 15 more Boeing Co. 737-800
jets as part of expanding its domestic air-cargo operation.
Amazon has for years offered free two-day shipping as the
standard for Prime, which costs $119 a year and covers more than
100 million products on its retail platform.
One- and two-day shipping options were likely unavailable in
many U.S. major markets due to the volume of sales during Prime
Day, which ends late Tuesday, Amazon spokeswoman Julie Law said in
an interview.
Amazon expected faster delivery times for a wide range of
products to become quickly booked during the shopping spree, Ms.
Law said. Amazon said that two-day shipping refers to the amount of
time it takes for a product to get to a customer after it has
shipped and not from the time it is ordered.
"People are not focused on speed, they are focused on deals,"
Ms. Law said. "We don't want to disappoint customers ever, but our
capacity for shipping has limits."
Prime Day, which began in 2015, has become one of Amazon's
leading ways of signing up new subscribers. Other retailers, such
as Walmart Inc., have sought to promote their own range of product
discounts and pledged to match Amazon's prices. Amazon has said it
has more than 100 million Prime members world-wide, a program that
also offers member benefits like access to video-streaming services
and free delivery from its Whole Foods subsidiary.
Analysts said slower shipping times shouldn't hurt Amazon's
sales. Charles O'Shea, an analyst with Moody's Investors Service,
said delays are common during peak shopping times such as Black
Friday or Cyber Monday and that it is likely Amazon will fix any
glitches seen on Prime Day by the holiday season.
For Mr. Livingston, the software engineer in Colorado Springs,
that might be too late. "I expected at most two days to wait for my
orders" Mr. Livingston said. "I'm fed up."
Write to Sebastian Herrera at Sebastian.Herrera@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2019 20:08 ET (00:08 GMT)
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