Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Not That Amazed By Amazon Lately

I've generally had pretty good results when ordering stuff from Amazon in the past. I was characteristically nervous about using a purely online service the first time, but as time went on I bought into it more and more (so to speak). The speed with which they got whatever I ordered to me, even with the cheapest delivery option always being selected, was impressive.

Earlier this month, I noticed that Amazon was advertising the new box set (Sojourner) by Magnolia Electric Company as being available July 24th. As far as I knew, the official release date was August 7th, so this was particularly interesting to me. I wondered if possibly they'd gotten a special arrangement that would allow them to make it available to their customers early, and if so, I wanted in on that! So I set up an order, and was informed that the expected delivery date was Jul 27 - Jul 30. Cool!

As we got toward the end of July, I kept checking to see if my MEC bundle of joy had shipped yet, and each day it seemed like they would push the delivery estimate back a day or two. As of today, they've shoved it all the way out to Aug 14 - Aug 17! So much for their initial claim that it would be available July 24th! I'm now at the point where I'm trying to decide if I should cancel the order - along with a clear explanation of how much I don't appreciate being lied to! - and get it directly from Secretly Canadian - MEC's music label - or just leave it as is. It's potentially cheaper from the supplier, although I have to factor in U.S. exchange (which isn't much right now but still isn't $0), shipping and possibly duty. Or is it better to get it from a big name like Amazon, because that makes it more likely they'd carry future MEC merchandise? Decisions, decisions...

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