Amazon shopping

I know the problem. It seems so random. I ordered some walking trousers yesterday and had an e-mail within the hour to say they had been despatched. Other items often quite small insignificant things take weeks and as you say are being shipped from China. I would like to know and have the choice about things like this before I complete the order.

I ordered some boots a while ago paid then was informed the size I wanted was out of stock - worse bit was that the money was taken out of my account in reserve for payment and I had to wait 7 days to have the money released back into my account - total nightmare.

I think Amazon is wonderful, TBH, but perhaps I am lucky as I have had no problems with them at all. I heard on the radio this morning that they will soon be trialling sending out our parcels by drone. The drone will drop them in our back gardens! I hope I'm not out there sunbathing as it would be a rude awakening to have a parcel drop on one from a height. Sometimes I think the world has gone mad.

I love Amazon too so far no problems and almost everything has been delivered on time , one item wasn't delivered which they immediately replaced only for my neighbour to find it under his front door mat 3wks later. Don't see how the 'drone' thing would work to be honest.

Just thinking of those who live in a flat and have no garden they will have to hang out the window arms out stretched and wait for the drone to deliver their parcel! lol..it will be an oops moment if they drop it lol.

I cant see it working either tanith.

I ordered some boots a while ago paid then was informed the size I wanted was out of stock - worse bit was that the money was taken out of my account in reserve for payment and I had to wait 7 days to have the money released back into my account - total nightmare

What you might call a First World problem ?

I use Amazon quite a bit, more than I should probably. I have Prime membership and never had any problems until last weekend. I recently ordered something I needed urgently, via Prime , and received an email saying it would be delivered next day - that is their guarantee.

It didn't arrive the next day - nor the one after that.

I had to drive into Coventry to source the item at Staples instead.

I rang the customer services three times (where do they learn to speak in that phoney mid- Atlantic accent?) but they didn't seem bothered. Yes, the money was refunded within hours, but that's not the point.

Don't rely on their guarantee of next day delivery

The drone idea seems daft to me. We don't want the skies around us buzzing about with these things. It just seems like boys trying out things just because they can. Techy people with not enough to do!

I can see the drones being lasered or shot out of the sky for the hell of it. Where does the landing mat come from? Is it dropped from the drone or are we conveniently in the back garden ready to throw it down? Some gardens, especially in London are little more than patios- how would that work? For me there are many unanswered questions.

Charleygirl - me too, unanswered questions that is, but it was a serious item in the i newspaper. I said to DH that it would put a lot of van drivers out of work and he replied that they would still have jobs retrieving parcels from where the drones had wrongly dropped them.

What if its raining- parcels will have to be waterproof and theft proof and what if its snowing and landing mat gets covered.
What if is a howling Gale it will be blown away. How do we send it back? I quite fancy my own drone.

Anya I too have had problems with late deliveries from Amazon, with items being delivered by Yodel. Amazon have always been brilliant but Yodel ... Don't know how they're still in business. I spent ages on the phone to them (Yodel) trying to track down a parcel last year and was eventually told their vehicle had broken down. Do they only have one van? Could they not have hired one in order to meet their contract agreement? It's easy to blame Amazon because that's who our contract is with but sometimes it's the carrier who lets them down and it's important we tell Amazon when this happens

No problems at all with amazon, as I never use them.

Not so much " we don't want" Jane10, I think it's a great idea, on wards and upwards I say in all things

No problems with Amazon, apart from being given a delivery date about a week in advance, then said item arriving the following day.
Off topic a little, I recently placed my first ever order with Zulily, an American company, the order took the 4 to 5 weeks that they stated, but I got the email to say it had been dispatched from New Jersey on the Sunday morning, it was here on Wednesday afternoon.

OK then I don't want the skies filled with these ridiculous devices gononsuch!

With the number of parcels that Amazon sends out, the skies around their warehouse will be black as night with whirring drones. I don't think they could have sent my fridge-freezer by drone - unless the drone was as big as a helicopter, and if they had dropped it from even a few feet, someone underneath would have been flattened.

I don't, either, Jane10.

Of course, I've just remembered there is the small matter of Amazon not paying their UK taxes. Whatever happened there? It's all gone very quiet.

Re the drones, I have this vision of hundreds of them flying overhead and dropping their (waterproofed) parcels willy-nilly all over the place, smashing up greenhouses, knocking small children off swings, drowning said small children as they sit in paddling pools, landing on trampolines and bouncing over the fence into the next garden, squashing small dogs, sending large dogs barking mad ad goodness knows what mayhem Elegran's fridge-freezer would have caused.

There would also be a lot of smashed orders to return to them - by snail mail, of course.

That's a point - would the drones come back to collect returns?

Did you watch the waste programme by Hugh Fear, which is what his badge said.
They admitted to having 9 enormous warehouses in the UK, yet pay very little tax, as you said, Nottooold.

dj - hi! I knew you'd come back on that one! I didn't see that programme but yesterday I did hear on the radio that Amazon make much of their money on storing computer data, in other words they are 'the cloud'. I also heard that the Amazon boss - I forget his name - is the third richest person in the world.

well I actually heard back at last from amazon and was told " if the seller from your previous order is not listed they may not have it in stock , by clicking buy it again it will check to see if its available and then select the best offer on our platform." quite bizzare that hong kong was the best option! I will double check in future if I need to reorder anything.