Why does Amazon like to torture customers when they choose Free Shipping?

[MrHT]

I ordered a nice Onkyo receiver at Amazon on Monday, July 25th. They marked it as “Shipping Soon” on Tuesday and charged my CC for it. It is now Friday (5 days later) and still, nothing shipped. Since they don’t ship on weekends, they probably will not ship until Monday, the earliest. I sent them an email and they told me that the reason it’s slow is because I picked Free Shipping, so I need to allow up to 5 business days for my order to ship. Now, that is ridiculous! I’ve ordered using Free Shipping many times from other website and they all shipped within 24 hours. I don’t understand why Amazon feels the need to take almost one week to ship an item. And worst of all, they charged my CC already because they always do that when they mark your order as “Shipping Soon.” So, they’re having a ball with my $300 while I still don’t have that receiver.

I don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish. Sure, I can pick Expedited Shipping, but that will jack up the price so much that I’m better off just buying it at my local B&M store. Here is NYC, we got plenty of B&M stores that we can buy from and get it shipped the same day, but sometimes I pick Amazon because I save a few extra backs. Since picking Expedited Shipping makes their discounted prices futile, I might as well head to a B&M store nearby. So, I can either pick Amazon Free Shipping or go to a B&M store if I want the item faster. So, torturing me will only drive me away from Amazon. It will not make me upgrade to Expedited Shipping.

So, why exactly is Amazon making their customers suffer when they pick Free Shipping? And worst of all, why are they charging people’s CC BEFORE they ship the merchandise? That’s terrible, IMHO. They never did this before, but apparently, they do it now.