Vanessa W.

Amazon has a lot to offer, that's for sure. However, I try not to order much that's either sold/shipped by Amazon or fulfilled by Amazon because they play too much with their shipping.

The last few orders I placed on Amazon that were either sold/fulfilled by Amazon took longer than a week just to get shipped. Most businesses can manage to ship out in-stock items in one business day, two tops. However, I've had Amazon wait 9 business days to ship, while my order's status has said "preparing for shipment" for 4 days. As I'm not Prime member, I feel like they do this on purpose so you'll have to wait upward of a week to get your items because they know that if they ship your items out the next business day, USPS will usually deliver in about 3 days, so why pay for Prime for a one day difference?

I never have this issue when I order items sold by a third party. I've even called Amazon about why it was taking days to "prepare my shipment" but even they couldn't tell me why or even what the real status of my order was. Oddly enough, after first telling me that my order didn't go through due to a server issue to the items just not being in stock, about one hour later, my order shipped out from a city about 60 miles away from me. My order was delivered the next morning in a box that was way too big and not even taped all the way shut.

Order from trusted third-party sellers. You'll have the best experience that way if you're not a Prime member.

I shop here as a last resort. I don't like how this company operates as they seem hard-pressed against becoming modern on any level. This is a personal problem, but their hours and the fact that they are closed on Sunday makes it hard to shop here if you don't work a normal 9-5, Monday-Friday job. 8pm is little early to close, even just an hour later would be better. But the primary reason I don't shop here is because they refuse to just use bar codes. Can you imagine how much money they are able to make by not programming sales prices to automatically ring up at the register? You have to make sure that you are getting the sales prices because if the cashiers don't check the ad, you'll be charged full price.

Political issues aside, poor customer service, an outdated register system that I'm sure they hold on to so they don't have to honor sales prices they post in their ad, checkout lines that are slower and fewer in number than even Walmart. Also, if you can find any item they have at any other non dedicated craft store or online, it will almost always be cheaper. The 40% off coupon is nice, but will only reduce your price to what it should've been in the first place.

Things may be cheaper elsewhere, but if you have an iPhone, iPod, Macbook Pro, and iMac, they make it so easy. Purchases download automatically to all your registered devices and you can also re-download anything you've purchased in the past. They occasionally have hit songs on sale for 69 cents a piece. They also have a good amount of kpop available in the US store, and some Japanese stuff as well. Never had any issues whatsoever.

I've placed 2 orders with Sanrio and both were just as expected. Nice, high-quality items. Most of the stuff is Japanese, so you know you'll be getting something unique that no one else has. I also like how they are always giving away free gifts with your purchase, and you don't have to spend an outrageous amount to qualify for something free.

Only issue I have is with shipping. It's so expensive and they hardly ever offer any kind of free shipping no matter how much you spend. They also ship via Fedex SmartPost, which is stupid and is guaranteed to make your package arrive at least a day or two or three later than it should since it has to go through this trade-off between Fedex and USPS. Tracking is available all through the process, just so you can see your package sit in the same place for 4 days.

Main reason I don't buy more often is because you have to be prepared to spend anywhere between $8-$15 more than you really intend to just for the (slow) shipping. A simple $15 small item purchase still costs $8 to ship.

I only got Hulu for this past year in college because my dorm didn't have cable in the bedroom. It was good for that, but now that I'm back home and will be in a newer dorm this fall, I have no use for this. Only subscribed in addition to Netflix so that I could watch American Idol since I had no cable. The ads ruin it. May pick it back up at some point, but probably not. Also had a lot of issues with the streaming regardless of how good my internet was and in the case that an ad didn't load properly, the whole thing would get messed up and I'd have to close the app/refresh the screen in order to try to watch again.

Netflix is better, and has no ads. Netflix is a good supplement to cable. Hulu is only of any value if you don't have cable.