[quote name='VindictiveGnome']how exaggerated? would you say before this weekend?
[/QUOTE]
My shipping experience with Dell was actually ridiculously good this time around: I placed the order on Monday, 9/7, in online chat (the CSR manually applied the coupon). At that time, the rep said that the order would ship via standard ground shipping and arrive "on or before 9/15." I was a little disappointed I didn't get the free two day shipping, but I could live with it, and it didn't seem worth pushing my luck after he was nice enough to apply the coupon. Once I got the confirmation email, however, I looked at the order status page, and the delivery date was pushed up to Friday, 9/11 -- not bad!
On Tuesday, 9/8, the order actually shipped. The UPS tracking page showed that it shipped from Harrisburg, PA with an estimated delivery date of 9/10 (I live in NC). Wednesday, 9/9, I checked the tracking page again to make sure everything was still on track, and they had updated the delivery date to 9/9 (that day)! There was a minor snag--Dell forgot to include my apartment number, so I had to call UPS and arrange to pick it up from the local office--but the end result was that I placed the order for the PS3 on Monday and had it in my hands on Wednesday. I guess Dell and UPS really wanted me to get that PS3; the delivery date was pushed forward three times in total.
Not trying to get anyone's hopes up here; I've only ordered a handful of things from Dell and had generally good experiences, but this was far and away the fastest I've ever received anything from them. I do wonder how other CAGs made out with this, though; some of them had placed orders before me and had estimated arrival dates that were after the 9/15 date they originally gave me, which seemed strange.