Amazon Prime delivery isn't reliable enough for those use cases anyway. Prime packages arrive late all the time. If you might die from a small delivery delay, you need to order things earlier or find a different source.
There are well known ways to build reliable systems out of unreliable ones through the use of slack and redundancy.
If you need something to live, you don't wait until you have a 48 hour supply and then rely on two day delivery, you keep a two week or more supply so that if delivery fails you have plenty of time to realize this and source it from somewhere else before it becomes an emergency.
And if it does become an emergency, there are emergency services for that. Go to a hospital and they will have or fly in just about anything. This is almost certainly far more expensive than not running everything down to the wire to begin with, but at least you don't die.
Wow. How often do I have to repeat that disabled people are not able-bodied and don't have the same choices the abled do. Disabled people rarely earn an income above poverty, they can't necessarily stock items (nor can needs always be anticipated.) They can't hire a service to shop for them. Again, what's my second source that delivers to my door?
As for ER - seriously ill disabled people simply can't go to ER every time there's a problem that might go badly wrong - they don't have the health, and will also get black-balled by the ER if they do this too often, in which case the quality of service they get becomes abysmal. This is probably the most difficult, heart-breaking choice they face. With many health conditions, symptoms are so various that if you don't they don't show up at ER falsely fairly often you're risking your life. But if you do show up at ER frequently, that too risks your life, if you're labelled as a bad patient.
Your comment blames the victim, repeatedly.
Ableism all day long.
Many health conditions include cognitive deficits, even if only from extreme fatigue. Not to mention that head injuries are a kind of disability, and social support for head injuries isn't better than for other disabilities, it's considerably worse.
Again, I'm being swatted for suggesting that it might be a good thing for Amazon to plan around accidents. I'm very willing to believe that this doesn't affect able bodied people nearly as much as it affects many of the one in five Americans with a disability. Good on ya. Now open your hearts.
There are dozens of services that will deliver to your door or via FedEx/UPS/DHL/USPS.
It seems like your main complaint is that "guaranteed two day delivery" is a money back guarantee rather than an actual damages guarantee that would give suppliers a greater incentive to achieve 99.999999% reliability instead of 99%. But there are services that will satisfy those guarantees, and they're more expensive than Amazon precisely because they have to price in the cost of taking the steps necessary to achieve that level of reliability.
"Fast, reliable, cheap; pick two" is not a conspiracy against the disabled.
"guaranteed two day delivery" is not a money back guarantee. It's just a slogan. Maybe half of my Prime packages make it to my door within two days. Amazon only really guarantees that you'll get the package eventually.
It's a money back guarantee because you can cancel/return the item and get your money back. They also happen to provide the same guarantee in the event you decide you don't want the item for other reasons.
When a company tells me 2-day delivery is guaranteed or my money back, I expect to get my money back when the delivery takes longer than 2 days. I don't expect to have to return the item. What's the point of a guarantee if I'd be in the exact same situation without it?
Suppose you buy some balloons for a party that's in three days. They arrive in four days. By the time you receive them, the party's over and you have no use for them. If there was no delivery guarantee, you not only didn't have them when you needed them, now you do have them when you don't need them and are out the money. With the guarantee, you send them back and get a refund.
It also allows you to send back items that arrive late even if you do still want them, allowing you to punish them by returning the item only to go buy it from a competitor.
You said Amazon lets you return them without the delivery guarantee. What does the delivery guarantee add here?
I pay $100 for Prime so I can get items I want to keep long-term faster. What good does being able to return them do me? If the guarantee meant anything I'd get some of the $100 I paid for the 2-day shipping back for items that arrived late and weren't returned.
> You said Amazon lets you return them without the delivery guarantee. What does the delivery guarantee add here?
It adds "missed delivery date" to the list of valid reasons to return the item. In theory you could have a guarantee that allows returns because you didn't like the item but not because it was delivered later than estimated -- hard to enforce and kind of silly, but that doesn't mean the scrupulous person who only makes returns for agreed upon reasons wouldn't be getting a money-back delivery guarantee when you add it.
> I pay $100 for Prime so I can get items I want to keep long-term faster. What good does being able to return them do me?
It allows you to punish them by returning the late item only to go buy it from a competitor.
> If the guarantee meant anything I'd get some of the $100 I paid for the 2-day shipping back for items that arrived late and weren't returned.
The $100 pays for the "2-day delivery in most cases" shipping service.
If it's worth that much as-offered then they don't need to let you keep the item for free on top of that. If it isn't then why are you paying for it?
> It allows you to punish them by returning the late item only to go buy it from a competitor.
They know most people won't do that most of the time because that increases the inconvenience they've already suffered from the late package. The guarantee should benefit me, not increase the damage I've suffered from the late package.
> The $100 pays for the "2-day delivery in most cases" shipping service.
I don't get 2-day delivery in most cases. They fail to deliver within that window more than half the time.
> If it's worth that much as-offered then they don't need to let you keep the item for free on top of that.
I'm not suggesting that I get to keep the item for free. I'm saying that I should get a partial refund on the shipping when I pay extra for guaranteed 2-day shipping and the item takes more than 2 days to arrive.
> Again, I'm being swatted for suggesting that it might be a good thing for Amazon to plan around accidents.
you're being swatted for the disingenuous grandstanding of suggesting they should have a plan, when you already know what the plan of _every_ shipping company is[1], and you know that the portions relevant to you will be covered in the terms and conditions you skip over, despite the supposed importance of this subject to you.
maybe you want them to have a different plan, but that's not what you're saying.
[1]: refund shipping costs, and pay out whatever insurance was purchased on the shipment, subject to some contract-specified delay.
Plane crashes are very rare, but train derailments are not. Unexpected bad weather closing off routes to trucks is not. Natural disasters closing roads and airports is not.
Some small percentage of shipments will be delayed, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If you need something by a hard deadline, and it is going to be shipped other than perhaps locally, then you must order early enough that if it is delayed you have time to seek an alternative source that can still make the deadline.
If you use Prime two day shipping timed for delivery on your deadline, you will eventually be screwed because you won't find out about a shipment glitch until it is too late to switch to a backup other than picking up at a local store that stocks the item.
