A year (maybe more) ago, I remember placing 'free shipping' orders with Amazon, and the stuff would almost always arrive in a week. Oftentimes even quicker than that.

Now it seems like you make the same order and they don't even ship for a week, or more.

I can't believe their process actually slowed, so I can think of only 2 reasons.

1) Good reason - Prime orders go to the front of the queue. Makes sense if the customer is paying for that service, but even then eventually you have to ship the non-primer orders, and your labor force is still going to be based on the total # or orders you have to process in a day.

2) Marketing reason - let's send the non-Prime orders out late so that more people will sign up for Prime.