Christmas shopping on Amazon

I thought I was really clever doing my Christmas shopping on Amazon. I've always believed you can never have too many books. So I put in my orders December 6th thinking they'd all be here in plenty of time. So I bought enough books to qualify for Super Saver (free) shipping and that method of shipping supposedly takes 5-9 days. December 19th, the books aren't here, I'm leaving for Vancouver soon. WTF. So I wrote a nastygram to Amazon customer service because my account says the books wont be shipped until mid January. That's not 5-9 days, that is more than a month. The books I ordered from other merchants on Amazon Marketplace arrived a week ago already.

So apparently, what they don't tell you is what the service rep told me by email. Here it is:

To qualify for free Super Saver Shipping you must choose the option
to "Group my items into as few shipments as possible" when placing
the order. We have several fulfillment centers across the United States, meaning
the items in your order may be stocked at different locations. 
Whenever you place an order, we display an estimated shipping date
based on inventory's proximity to your delivery address, as well as
how quickly we can obtain and assemble your shipment.  This estimate
takes into account the fact that available items may be held for
shipment until we have assembled the rest of your order. 

But she said that just this once she'd change my shipping so that the items ship separately as they arrive from their suppliers so that makes the estimated delivery December 21, 2005 - January 6, 2006. Gee thanks. Bastards. They really could've done a better job explaining that instead of just showing Super Saver Shipping Usually Takes 5-9 Days. I'm pissed off now.

In contrast we did some last minute shopping at Target. The place was so busy they were madly trying to bring the abandoned shopping carts from the far end of the parking lot back into the store. But the check out was sooooo ridiculously quick. They even had more cashiers on hand than they needed and several of the checkouts were empty. The cashiers ran around getting people who were standing in short lines to come to their checkout. Total check out time, 2 minutes max. Bravo Target!