degraded service from amazon.com: i tried to check out a whole basket full of books from amazon.com. it used to take several weeks to get books delivered surface mail from the us to the uk. amazon estimated four to six but they usually came a bit faster than that. now amazon tell me i can get by books in 15 to 18 days. which sounds good. but they’ve put the shipping prices up! i can no longer use the cheapest shipping method from the us to get my books. it looks like they’ve just removed that option and touted it as an improvement. bloody useless.