How can Amazon degrade delivery while not refunding prime?

Question

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.I fully understand the impact of Covid - but I paid for a membership that offered one thing, and now it&rsquo;s totally different. Can that even be legal?

troydavis · Accepted Answer

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=.... 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 packages within 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.