Amazon

Full review
Amazon's prices seem to be rising while their free shipping is slowing way down.  I've been shopping with Amazon for years but it's no longer the first place I look for purchases simply because the experience has deteriorated SO much in the past year.  They promise not to charge your card until they ship, but this just isn't the case.  For example, I use my debit card for purchases and this year they've begun charging me for the items up to a week before the items actually ship.  The charges will appear as "pending" on my bank activity page, but since the money is not available to me at that point, I consider that being charged.

The free SS shipping seems to be purposely slowed down - to encourage Prime membership enrollment, perhaps?  Through last year, I could order several items and be assured of receiving them within the same week, usually a few days at the longest, but this year the wait has been steadily increasing from one week from order date till this month when the estimated delivery date is a FULL 12 days later.   I could understand if the items were coming from far away, but the most recent has apparently been sitting in the next state for over a week, and the previous order sat for nearly a week in my OWN state until I called Customer Service to complain.  Oh, having to talk with two CSR's whose English I could not decipher before getting to speak with someone I could understand was a treat, too. 

The Amazon I've been dealing with the past year bears very little resemblance to the well-run company it used to be.