There are many reasons why most people think of Amazon first when thinking about shopping online. Mine is pretty simple.

It’s not their webpage, which is actually pretty crap if you don’t know exactly what you want. Ever tried browsing it for something that you could only vaguely define? Other stores do that a lot better.

It’s not their huge selection or low prices – the internet is full of stuff that you can’t buy on Amazon and most things are easy to find for a lower price on some other online store.

For me, it’s the shipping.
No matter what I buy – small or big – and no matter which shipping provider they use – DHL or the dreaded Hermes – I get a tracking number and up-to-date information on the shipping status. In fact, there’s an API to get the information for each order directly from Amazon, I don’t even need to get the information from the logistics company.
And as a Prime customer I can pretty much rely on the fact that I will get whatever I ordered on the next day.

Now this is going to be a white whine, but yesterday I ordered something from another online store than Amazon. It was a lot less expensive for the same thing and that store has a very good reputation, too. I know I don’t have to worry about the quality of what I ordered and that I can pretty much bet on okay-enough customer service in case something does go wrong. But – I am completely left in the dark about my order status. They took my money, they sent me a nice email that they got my money and that my order information has been passed on to their logistics team and that’s about it.
I don’t really want to know that the information has been passed on to some other team. I don’t want to know the inner workings of an online retailer. I do want to get a tracking number that I can put into my delivery status widget and want to see that my order has been processed and will reach me on the next day. Today is that next day and I’m pretty sure I won’t get anything today. I can hope for tomorrow and if that won’t work out, it will be Monday, as I used my office address for shipping.
Now, I did order some technical gadget so I already planned to play around with it on the weekend. I’d be grumpy¹ if I can’t do that.

And this uncertainty is pretty much why I prefer Amazon – they do tell you when their stuff gets shipped, they are pretty much always in time,² and I’ll always be sure their stuff is well-wrapped and handled.

1. again, yes, white whine, first-world-problem, yadayada [↩]
2. except when they’re not, but that’s another story and usually has something to do with their insistence of using an inferior carrier like Hermes [↩]