The vacuum that I ordered is now going thru the loop-de-loop at the post office. Amazon won't allow me to send directly to my po box so I have to give them my physical location. They then use the Smartest and end up giving to the Post office that would deliver my mail if I had a receiver at my physical location(which I don't). So when it arrives at that post office they find that I have a forwarding address to my Po box and the item has to go back to Massachusetts to get the new address thereby adding about 10 days to the delivery process.
@Holly Saunders The merchandise i'm getting from Staples, comes from the next province east of Manitoba, thought the time was very reasonable, you don't think so. .
I don't know how far that is from You Micki, but if it's a long way then yes I think 3 days is reasonable... ..but I have had many items next day delivery that have come from a different country as long as I've ordered them early one morning they'll often arrive in the evening of the following day , which is quite incredible really
Here in the US, many retailers use the cheapest shipping possible for their "free shipping"... usually Mail Innovations or Smart Post. Those are regular parcel handlers (UPS, Fedex) handing off to the post office for final delivery. They are slower than molasses and very frustrating... but free. So depending on where the online purchase is made, I might receive a package in 24 hours or in a week.
I'm happy with the shipping time, don't really need anything to arrive same day or next day, compared to the mail service time which takes anywhere from 7 to 14 days.
When I'm ordering from Ebay I always look at the locations to see which is closest. I just ordered 3 Little Einsteins DVDs. My choices of locations were Colorado and Illinois and both had the same estimated time of arrival noted. Illinois is a state away so that was my pick. It was free shipping but then I get a message stating the packages were not being delivered by USPS. That's a bummer - now I don't expect them to arrive before the ETA
What's even more ridiculous is that it arrived today. It was ordered on 1 December with 2 day delivery per Amazon Prime
How annoying. I would be furious. I was annoyed enough today about an order we made last night. The tracking said it would arrive at 12.15pm, and we tracked the van going around the local roads and making a dogs' dinner out of it, having been 3 times in the road next to ours yet it still took him 4 hours over hit time to get here... so I would be cancelling my prime membership completely if like you my order took 10 days...