While we're tossing anecdotes out, Prime in my medium sized city is getting better and better. Almost everything is here within 2 days, and probably 1/4 of purchases arrive within 18 hours.
I ditched Prime and always use the slowest, free shipping option when purchasing on Amazon. Everything shows up on time and more often than not, it shows up early. A lot of times within 2 days even. When I had a Prime subscription it was always late, pretty weird.
