
Ask HN: How can Amazon degrade delivery while not refunding prime? - ask_for_friend
Called Amazon rep today to complain about the delivery timelines for our orders.  Orders, if they show up at all, are 1-2 weeks longer than the date shown while placing the order. I asked for a partial refund on prime, due to obviously degraded service, and was offered nothing.<p>I fully understand the impact of Covid - but I paid for a membership that offered one thing, and now it’s totally different.  Can that even be legal?
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troydavis
Here's what you paid for:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=20191078),
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118050).
It includes clauses like this:

> Prime shipping benefits depend upon inventory availability, order deadlines,
> and in some cases the shipping address.

There's no commitment to provide Prime on 100.0% of eligible orders, or even
1% of them. It's a best-effort service. It's always been a best-effort
service.

Regarding legality, this would be a civil issue (questions of contract law
between counterparties), not a criminal one (enforcement of a jurisdiction's
written laws). However, in this case Amazon didn't claim "We absolutely
guarantee you'll receive all <X> packages within <Y> days" or anything like
that, so it's not even a civil issue.

Of course, you might reasonably prefer that they provide a credit as a nice
thing to do, since they're not providing the service you hoped to receive and
that you probably have received in the past. They declined to do that. If you
feel that's inadequate, you should cancel and/or stop purchasing from them.

