bf wrote:
George wrote:

It's _all_ available for immediate shipment if you're willing to pay the
extortionate prices for "handling" it. ...

Have you ever tried paying the premium shipping and saw that it shipped
faster? I'm not doubting you, I just never tried it.
I could see them delaying the order 3-5 days if you get free shipping.
But 2 months?
Doesn't that just invite cancelations?
....

Up until a year or so ago, I never saw any appreciable delays in
shipping times w/ free ("Free" shipping isn't free, of course, it's
simply included in the overhead pricing structure rather than explicit.
Some of the expense may be underwritten as marketing or early on as a
way to build customer loyalty/preference, of course.) shipping and
normal ground delivery. Virtually every instance the product would
ship within a coupld of days at most and often would go out the same
day and be here on or before the "expected ship date".

I believe the difference primarily is the shift to all the other
suppliers fulfilling orders and that many of them don't have the
facilities to handle significant volume and that others simply are
fronts for folks trying to drop ship or re-ship merchandise rather than
being suppliers in the traditional sense. I suspect that for small
volume items some of these folks don't have a supplier arranged for
(like the planer knives I attempted to order).

I suspect the expedited ordering system for those orders which are
placed for it simply means they go in the queue first and the
non-expedited orders are handled as they come up to the top; the delay
quoted is only there as a CYA policy so you can't complain if they
don't make it the next day kind of thing. It would be far more
expensive to try to place a hold on them than to simply process them as
time allows.