Every time I order something from Amazon.com lately, I groan at the estimate of 5-9 business days for Free Super Saver Shipping and 3-5 days for Standard Shipping (which costs about $4.00 for a single book). Compounding this, on most of my recent orders, the order hasn't even shipped until a few days after I placed it, even though none of the items were backordered or anything.

The other two sites I order from most frequently are probably Newegg.com and Staples. My most recent Newegg order was placed on Wednesday evening and I got it this (Friday) morning. One business day, but one does pay for shipping per item at Newegg. Staples has similar performance, although they are using their own trucks to deliver the items, and not any other shipping service. A rather inadequate sample set, I admit, but when I use UPS or Fedex for any non-e-commerce shipment, there's never anything like 5-9 Business days for an estimate. Why would they bother to set up a special incredibly slow shipping program for Amazon? I realize the quick shipping from Newegg is because they have a warehouse in New Jersey, but why can't Amazon do that?

I can't help but notice that this has come while Amazon is heavily promoting it's Amazon Prime service, by which you can get free two-day shipping on "many" items for a year for an $80 flat fee. Could they have intentionally slowed down their normal shipping (or merely their estimates) to drive customers into the arms of Amazon Prime?

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While I'm getting in my digs, can I complain about the ridiculous amount of features on a typical product page at Amazon? Some of them are useful, or would be if they were used, ironically enough (Amapedia, anyone?). Others are just crap. But with "Better Together," "Accessories," "Customers who bought this item also bought," "Help others find this item," "Customers viewing this page may be interested in these Sponsored Links", "Tag this product," Tags customers associate with this product", "Customers who viewed this item also viewed", and "Rate this item to improve your recommendations," I have to hit "Page Down" 5 times, or do a lot of scrolling, to get to the customer reviews, which for me are the greatest value of Amazon, for this food processor. The elements on the page for this book are a bit different, but it still takes 5 page-downs to get to the reviews. Looking at it another way, it's nothing short of amazing that these pages, relying on so many services to produce their data, can load so quickly. But man, how about a little simplicity?