Lots of people this Christmas shopped with their mice boosting online sales:
Online retailers rang up $23.11 billion in holiday sales so far this year, a 26 percent increase over 2005, according to data released Thursday by comScore Networks.
U.S. Web...

Had good experiences with overstock.com both this Christmas and last.

http://www.sierratradingpost.com is a very good outfit that has high quality mearchandise at hefty discounts. Some items are seconds so you have to read item descriptions carefully.

http://www.josbank.com is a good place for menswear.

Perhaps Amazon has some issues to work, but as a practical matter, some of these problems were eminently predictable yet still beyond their control. Without question the use of on-line ordering has exploded, yet the capacity of the carriers to deal with the phenomenon has not. There are still only so many trucks and drivers, and given their stress levels this time of year, it is quite understandable that you cannot get the same level of service from, say, UPS, that you would get in the middle of March.

If there is a lesson here, it might be to start one week earlier and these problems will go away. Amazon certainly shouldn't make promises it can't keep, but I was amazed that they were able to ship some items so close to Christmas and still get them there.

Why USPS doesn’t just leave the damned package like UPS and FedEx, I don’t know. The notion that someone is going to be home during the day is ridiculous.

You probably should be thankful that they don't.

There was a story on our local news this evening about a couple that has been following UPS trucks around for the past couple of weeks. Whenever the drivers would leave a package on somebody's porch, they would wait until the driver had driven away and then steal the package. They had collected quite a haul before the cops finally caught up with them.

I would rather they leave our packages with a neighbor (do they do that anymore?) than on the porch for anybody to take.

What especially p.o.'s me is, paying exoribitantly high "overnight" shipping fees ... then not getting the package on time, and me not getting my shipping fee back.

It's like, "I didn't pay you $20 extra to *try* to get the package to me on time."

Much to my surprise, and in spite of my lack of spirit, all items were delivered on time -- the last arriving yesterday.

I've been ordering from Amazon for several years and have never had a problem. Guess I should count my lucky stars, huh?

Happy Holidays!

I don't know where I'd be without Amazon (both British and American branches) and I have to say that I haven't experienced any problems on the scale you have. That said, there have been a few niggling points in the past month:

- A family member wanted a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. Amazon instituted the very sensible policy of only permitting as many pre-orders of the system as they knew they could fill based on the numbers allocated to them on the release date. I signed up for an email alert to inform me when the system was available for pre-order. No email came. Luckily, I happened to have the day off the day it was up for pre-order and was lurking on the site anyway, so I was one of the people who was able to pre-order before it sold out (in the first seven minutes). If I hadn't decided to take things into my own hands I'd have been completely stuffed, waiting for an email alert that would never come. I specified first class post when making the order (one grade down from express delivery). I did not expect it to arrive on the day of release. However, not only did it not arrive the Friday it was released, Amazon did not even dispatch it until the following week, several working days later. Given the massive amount of warning involved, I am completely at a loss to understand why it took so long. Again, in practice, not a real problem - but enough to be annoying.

- I've also had a problem with last order dates, albeit of a more minor one to yours. My last order of the season was for a book and a CD. A minor purchase, but one that would round off two people's hauls of gifts. I assumed this would be unproblematic as a) the items were marked as "In Stock" and b) I had not missed the last pre-Christmas dispatch date for first class post and indeed it stated at the item description that I should choose First Class or Express Delivery in order to get the item for Christmas. Smashing. However, upon moving to the final checkout screen, I was told that first class postage would not get to me for Christmas and that I would have to use Express delivery, which costs over four times as much as first class. Because of the relative lateness, the only way I could guarentee to get the items in question was to go ahead with the Express delivery order. Given that every other indication asserted that first class shipping for Christmas was still available, I find it pretty annoying.

- Finally, and this is a general issue rather than a Christmas specific one, I understand why it is that when items reach the "being prepared for dispatch" stage it becomes impossible to change the order (cancel items, change payment options, delivery address etc) but it seems to me that once it goes to that stage, the item should at least be pretty near to the point when it would be posted off. There have been a few times recently when ten or fifteen minutes after placing an order I've either had second thoughts or decided to add something to the order to save postage, only to find that it has moved onto the final preparation stage - and yet has then proceeded to not actually be posted off for up to 48 hours after that point. This used not to be the case, but now seems to be happening with increasing frequency. I suppose there may be a good explanation for it, but I find it irritating that the window of opportunity seems to be increasingly tight (often a matter of minutes) after which the time to final dispatch seems to be increasingly leisurely.

None of this means that I don't still find Amazon to be a terrific resource, but it is enough to take a little bit of the sheen off from time to time.

one of the presents that my brother-in-law sent arrived with a mere shipping label slapped on the box, not wrapping or anything

Same thing happened with an item my wife ordered for me. And since I was the one who found the box and brought it inside...

I wonder if Amazon sales will suffer next year, since they seem to be doing such a poor job this year.

We did almost miss a USPS delivery this morning, as I was in the shower when they came and my wife and family were out marketing. Thankfully, they returned just as the truck was about to drive off.

Why USPS doesn't just leave the damned package like UPS and FedEx, I don't know. The notion that someone is going to be home during the day is ridiculous.