From Amazon’s Help section:
We will deliver Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on its Saturday, July 16 release date to eligible customers who pre-ordered from Amazon.com before midnight on Monday, July 11 and chose standard, Two-Day, or One-Day shipping when placing their order. (Amazon Prime customers who ordered the book by July 11 will receive it on the day of release at no additional charge.) If you qualified for guaranteed release-date delivery, in the unlikely event that you don’t receive it on Saturday, July 16, we’ll refund the cost of the book.
So yeah, they get me with the shipping. I ordered it well in advance, but I was ordering it with other stuff and I used the Free Super Saver Shipping option as usual. I wouldn’t have, if I’d gotten some kind of warning about it, but I didn’t.
Oh well, guess I’m just screwed then.
I got the email saying that my order shipped today, and if it shipped from Lexington there’s a chance it might arrive tomorrow, so I guess I will just stick with my plan of not buying it unless it doesn’t come on that day…
Hmm, I’m looking at my package tracking, and it seems to indicate that the order actually went out on the 13th, arriving in Campbellsville, KY at 9:30 pm. The next checkpoint is Atlanta, with a departure scan on the 14th…that is really odd. It couldn’t possibly take them two days to get it to me from Atlanta. Maybe they do something special where they hold the order and bring it on Saturday.
I won’t give up hope! :P