which for an annual subscription fee of $79 a year gives users unlimited free two-day shipping, for a while
2 days? Is it different in the US then? We get next day shipping with Prime in the UK (usually I can order up to about 8pm at night and have it arrive next day by lunch).
On the topic of the article; seems like a very vague piece of speculation. But also seems a reasonable move for Amazon to make ("Kindle Video", anyone?) at some point. Being free to Prime customers seems unlikely to be honest, but if that is their model it sounds killer!
Predictions;
1. The streaming won't be best quality (at least at first)
To be fair, packages have a hell of a lot further to travel to get across USA than here in England, so the longer shipping time would make sense.
As to your predictions, I agree with it being US-only (if it happens), but I would expect good quality. I mean, it's not like they're some random company with no understanding of the web, they do have AWS' infrastructure to use.
They do, but they aren't clones of each other. I'm in southeast Michigan and I often see Maumee OH and Hodgkins IL as the source, but I also sometimes manage to get things shipped from Nevada. Our diapers come from Lewisberry PA, I've got some nuts from Philidelphia, and we got a book a couple months back from Louisville KY. I certainly do not simply get everything from my closest distribution center.
I've no idea about their US distribution, but presumably in a country so much bigger than the UK, if they did have a massively larger distribution network, they would also have to charge more for the service. Maybe they opted for a slightly less impressive service rather than a higher price tag.
You have to try ebuyer (http://ebuyer.com) shipping. It blows my mind when I order from them how fast they can ship, I've ordered at ~10:45PM (11PM cut off) and had it ~7AM the next day, I still can't comprehend how well oiled their shipping process must be to get that done.
They are based not far from Leeds, and a friend of a friend worked there. So while at Uni I used to be able to ring up about 4pm and get it "delivered" at about 6 :)
But, yeh, they were also pretty impressive for me outside of that.
Computer components is a niche that Amazon aren't quite king of yet (sorta).
I opted for 1day once when I needed a new monitor ASAP. When you're already paying $250, $4 for one day shipping seems cheap. Two day shipping occasionally gets here in one day, but sadly I'm late in the UPS delivery route so nothing shows up until 4pm in the afternoon...
I've had Prime (US) for awhile and I couldn't be happier with it. I don't think I've ever opted for 1-day shipping, but I'll often receive items next-day anyways.
I'm studying in Japan, and amazon's _free_ shipping (with no minimum!) here is about as fast as Amazon Prime in the US, in my experience. Of course, it helps that it's a small country, and I'm fairly close to Tokyo.
2 days? Is it different in the US then? We get next day shipping with Prime in the UK (usually I can order up to about 8pm at night and have it arrive next day by lunch).
On the topic of the article; seems like a very vague piece of speculation. But also seems a reasonable move for Amazon to make ("Kindle Video", anyone?) at some point. Being free to Prime customers seems unlikely to be honest, but if that is their model it sounds killer!
Predictions;
1. The streaming won't be best quality (at least at first)
2. Will be US only for aaaaaaaaaaages :(