The battle of the online bookstores

There are many reasons I will chose Amazon.ca over Chapters/Indigo (aka Chapigo) for my orders. Many. This is just one example of why.I placed an order with one of my Christmas gift certificates yesterday afternoon with Amazon.ca. When I checked my email right before bed last night I had a shipping confirmation from them. This morning when the mailman passed at 10:30 am he left me my order.Less. Than. 24. Hours.This, by the way, was with the free shipping qualification since I spent over $39 or whatever it was. I got two things, one was a DVD that has been on my wishlist forever and I was never able to justify buying it, but the price dropped from $57 to $39 and I wanted to get it before it was no longer available (anyone out there remember the short-lived Disney cartoon Gargoyles? Well it's volume 1 of season 2...) The other was Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter.So, free shipping option, no paying the $20-something for express shipping or anything and I got my order the next day. Although it was projected for Jan 5 since I know that tomorrow and Friday and the weekend are non-mail days due to holidays and well, weekend (no mail delivery on weekends here in Canada).I was TRYING to order my husband's Christmas gifts through amazon although one of the books I was trying to get was constantly out of stock (just how popular IS the Zombie Haiku book anyhow?? Oh, and OF COURSE it's IN STOCK now! Thanks.) and I wanted to combine my orders as much as possible to a) get free shipping, b) easier to keep track of ONE package over many. But I just couldn't get everything at once. But Chapigo had a bunch of them in stock at the same time and with that I qualified for the free shipping option.However THAT option with Chapigo, ended up taking almost a WEEK AND A HALF to get my bloody order. Seriously. I was very concerned that I would not get it in time for Christmas, which would have sucked since we were doing a small Christmas and it would have been very small since I only had ONE thing in the house at that time. But luckily it came on December 23 and I had time to wrap it up to give it to him on the 24th.Geez.This is not the first time that Chapigo has disappointed me. Last December, I pre-ordered the new Kim Harrison book with one of my Christmas gift cards and by the time it was out in stores they still had NOT shipped it. It was an ongoing saga, where I had to phone the customer service line and argue with the rep as to why my pre-order had not been shipped when I could just walk into a store and buy the book myself. I was not impressed and tried very hard to never shop online with them this year.Example #3 - both my husband and I received gift cards for Chapigo this year as well and since I was shopping online with Amazon yesterday I thought I would apply my Chapigo gift certificate to my Chapigo account. Only it doesn't work. Neither does my husband's. So now we have to go into the store (which I actually prefer anyhow) and try to find out at the register WHY they aren't working. Luckily we also have the receipts with them to prove they haven't already been used (which is what the Chapigo site is telling us).ARGH.Anyhow, as far as online stores go, Amazon.ca wins hands down for me. If only you could buy their gift cards in stores or something, because getting a sticky note with "This is good for a $xx Gift Certificate to Amazon.ca" is fun and all, but then you have to deal with the fact that perhaps your spam filter might eat the GC when it actually comes in forcing you to phone your parents 5 days later asking if they ever sent it because you sort of wanted to buy some stuff before you left for your trip in January... The bright side is that Amazon resent the GC email almost as soon as my parents reported a problem and I found it this time.So, that's my rant. Thank you.