The Prime convenience

I love Amazon Prime - I use it to buy everything from shaving cream to vitamins. Some have found this behaviour of mine to be strange, but I persist - because I like using my time wisely - and not spending it shopping for toothpaste.

And with free two-day shipping, I can’t go wrong. Why bother going out to the store, for every little item - when I can just click a button, and have it all appear at my doorstep in two days? That’s a "no brainer," if you ask me.

Hidden hassles

Amazon Prime is nice - but there are some issues I’ve been noticing, that provide some hassle, despite all of the convenience.

First off - not all items are "Prime candidates." This means that only the stuff that Amazon has stocked internally gets the "Prime status." Amazon has hundreds of third-party companies, who sell their stuff through Amazon. Anything that’s "third-party" is not a "Prime" item, because Amazon has to account for someone else’s shipping costs.

So, right off the bat - the number of items that I can purchase and receive in two days is limited.

But, Amazon claims that over a million items are Prime:

Sporadic behaviour

The problem is... some days an item is "Prime," and other days it’s not. This "sporadic" behaviour is aggravating, especially when I like a particular product, and I’m used to getting "Prime shipping" on it.

Also, some items go out of stock (suddenly), and then I’m stuck searching for a similar item - also with "Prime status," which is a challenge, for sure.

Better interface needed

Amazon needs a better interface to interact with "Prime items." Instead, I’m always searching for what I need, and then hoping it’s a "Prime candidate." There should be some way to list only Prime items, so I can view those, at a glance.

But, that would be silly for Amazon to do - because they’d be encouraging people to buy only the items with free shipping.

But hey - they came up with the idea, not me.