I don't understand why people continually try to use this to avoid PayPal fees when doing buying transactions.

Don't be too hard on yourself, because this may still end up OK.

If a business can't absorb the few dollars of paypal fees, something else is afoot.

I actually think people misunderstand a big component of the environment Amazon has set up.

Yes, we are spoiled that they can get things to us fast, but I actually believe the core change they made is in setting expectations. They tell you when an item will be delivered and are more often right than wrong. They also give you a free prime month if they got the delivery date wrong.

If the seller referenced in this post had set the expectation that it would take 2-3 weeks to ship it out, do you think we would still have this thread, or do you think the situation would have never happened if proper expectations were set?

Even if expectations change, like a life emergency happens, communication and resetting expectations could have prevented any negative issues. Making excuses with little white lies doesn't help the situation. There isn't a person here that believes the seller spent every waking hour of his day for 2 weeks dealing with the gas issue.

tl;dr - Set proper expectations and keep communicating, people don't get mad as long as they know what is going on. Oh, and don't lie.