Amazon is delaying most tech shipments by about a month, even with Amazon Prime

Amazon is unfortunately pushing back the Amazon Prime shipping dates of many items, a consequence of its new priority on “essential” household goods.

If you haven’t already stocked your home office, this means the tech you may need for your new work-from-home setup may be delayed by a month or more, at least via Amazon. There are alternatives, though, including good old brick-and-mortar stores. 

Some Amazon tech products are delayed for weeks

Dig deep enough into the tech bins on Amazon’s site, and you’ll see listings like this dual-HDMI USB-C hubRemove non-product link, a perfect addition for a dual-display work-from-home setup. The hub, listed as in stock and Fulfilled by Amazon, will ship to Prime members in about a month, on Tuesday, April 21. That appears to be the case for many tech products across the site.

Recode, which noted the Prime delays Sunday evening, reported that some products were being delivered in a five-day window, but others were also being pushed out into longer shipping windows. Tech appears to be a category that’s getting the short end of this stick. (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment by PCWorld.)

Amazon has been public about its challenges and its changes in priorities to address critical needs during the spread of coronavirus. An Amazon blog post from March 13 said, “we’ve changed our logistics, transportation, supply chain, purchasing, and third-party seller processes to prioritize stocking and delivering items that are a higher priority for our customers. This has resulted in some of our delivery promises being longer than usual.” A letter from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on March 21 defined more closely the kinds of items being prioritized: “essential items like household staples, sanitizers, baby formula, and medical supplies.” 

Here are the tech products that Amazon is delaying

A wide swath of work-from-home and DIY PC gear appears to be affected.

As we sampled Amazon’s listings, we began with the sort of tech gear you’d assume that would always be available: USB-C hubs, ethernet cables, HDMI cables, even an “Amazon’s Choice”-listed Seagate 2TB external hard driveRemove non-product link. At press time, all of the products we sampled from each category were scheduled to ship on April 21, just under a month out. And it’s not just peripherals: WD’s 1TB WD Blue internal SSDRemove non-product link also has been pushed out a month, even with Prime membership. Spinning internal hard drives like this WD 4TB NAS driveRemove non-product link are also subject to the same April 21 ship date, as are USB keys. Flash cards for digital cameras appear to be similarly affected.

From there, we moved to some core PC components, and the news is grim there also: all the motherboards we clicked, such as this MSI Z390-A PRO motherboardRemove non-product link, also were scheduled to ship in about a month. Microprocessors like the Ryzen 5 3600Remove non-product link…