I ordered speakers and stands on March 24th to arrive on May 1st and they didn't ship until April 30th. Now I have to take another day off of work. I was home all last week when the flooring guys were here!! Highly disappointed.

Sorry to hear this, Andy. I've been on this board more than 10 years, and I don't remember hearing a similar complaint (of course, at my age, I don't remember if I've eaten breakfast yet ) . I Hope, and believe, when you hear your order it will help ameliorate your disappointment at having to take an extra day off.

I completely get what you were trying to do, but it was kind of risky trying to nail down a date that far into the future as things can get hung up in customs coming from Canada.

When I got my first shipment just over 10 years ago, I had them held at the local FedEx office. It was NOT super convenient to do that back then as you had to go to the distribution center only, but at least I didn't have to sit around at home and wait. I just watched my tracking and planned accordingly to pick them up after work. Nowadays, you can select just about any FedEx drop off point to receive and hold packages so that you don't have to be home, but also don't have to wait additional days, or leave one of those signed door tags, etc. Makes it really easy to find a location only a few to several minutes from just about any location in most cities.

I know, it is hindsight and that doesn't help.

Could be worse. I buy a decent amount of stuff online, and I love free shipping, but dang... Amazon's free shipping is about the worst. Items in stock don't ship for a week or longer most of the time, and then take the slowest route. Can't predict at all when things are going to show up. In fact, I received a package from Amazon that I ordered 2 weeks ago via free shipping, and it showed up yesterday.... Yesterday was a Sunday. Sent via USPS. Never knew that USPS delivered on Sunday, at least in small town Iowa where I live (about 180,000 people in our area). I wasn't home. Good thing that I didn't need to sign for anything, but at the same time, the brown box with well known 'Amazon' packing tape just sat on our porch all day, waiting for someone to snag it. Luckily I live in a pretty safe area, but still.

Okay, so FedEx has changed a LOT apparently - did you know you can go online and have them hold your order? Their facility was only 10 minutes from my home so I went and picked up the speakers directly and didn't bother waiting at home. Of course FedEx actually came by at 8:30am so I COULD have showed up a little bit late.

HOWEVER, I can say that it WAS TOTALLY WORTH THE WAIT!!! The QS8's are awesome and the speaker stands are perfect for them. Only problem is I think my M80's are underpowered by my Receiver because they occasionally cut out (finally paired with my VP180 that I purchased a couple years ago) - am listening to movies come to life anew!

Andy, you don't give full details about the occasional "cut out", but this is often a problem not with the receiver itself but with the speaker wiring having a loose strand which intermittently causes a receiver shutdown. Carefully redo all the wiring connections even if they look good.