Over here in Germany overnight shipping is pretty much the norm unless you get supremely unlucky and both source and destination addresses are in the boondonks. DHL also offers guaranteed overnight, but, as said, it’s usually not any faster especially since online retailers build their warehouses directly next to DHL hubs. So to sell prime, they started artificially delaying shipping – you can see that in tracking, they’re simply waiting until they hand stuff over to DHL, which then operates as fast as usual.

DHL is not the only shipping company in Germany, amazon has contracts with pretty much all of them, and in my case the nearest pickup location happens to be Hermes. Which Amazon apparently hates as they’re delaying packages for a good two weeks.

The result? I’m pretty much done ordering from Amazon: Other shops ship faster and aren’t more expensive. What amazon still has going for it is a ludicrously large selection so very occasionally (once in a year or so) I order there and, what do you know, they’re trying to get me with a free month of prime and actually ship on time, then.

Truly, late-stage enshittification.