We're fewer than three weeks from Christmas and that means those of us looking to get goods shipped to us in time to get them under there tree need to finalise our online shopping plans. At this time of year postal and delivery services are working at capacity which can lead to longer than expected delivery times. Here are the delivery and lead times for some of the main shopping sites.

With the news that Amazon will be storming the online-retail-gates of Australia this week, it seems JB Hi-Fi has got on the front foot and unveiled their new speedy delivery options for online customers. These new options will allow items to be delivered same day or, in some circumstances, within three hours.

Shots fired!

Last month, I bought a tiny air conditioner on ebay for my sweltering top-floor apartment. Despite me being home and anxiously awaiting its arrival, the delivery service decided to leave it on my busy street where it was promptly stolen.

Amazon’s entry into the Australian retail next year is already

Homemade cookies are a great gift, especially if they're for someone who's hard to shop for. But if you need to send them in the mail, there are some things you need to know.

A care package of homemade cookies is always a welcome piece of mail, but shipping baked goods can be a bit tricky. Luckily, Cook's Illustrated has four tips to help make sure your cookies and brownies arrive to their intended recipient looking (and tasting) their best.

The biggest sales days of the year in the US are just around the corner -- Black Friday is this week (November 26), and next Monday is Cyber Monday -- with many retailers offering discounts of up to 80 percent off of retail prices. If you want to take advantage of this from right here, even with retailers that don't ship to Australia, Shipito is the answer you've been looking for.

The holiday period can be one of the most profitable times of the year for online retailer, but research shows that up to 80 per cent of all retailers are not prepared to face the challenges presented by this year's annual Christmas rush. The survey, done by shipping software company Temando, looked at over 200 Australian micro, small, mid-sized and enterprise level retailers, but focussed mainly on small retailers -- who out of all the groups were the least likely to be adequately prepared for Christmas shipping.

Retailers don't always ship anywhere in the world. If there's a product you want to buy that doesn't normally ship to your country, you can get around this with a service called Parcl.

Free or cheap shipping has become pretty commonplace, but some retailers still charge quite a bit. These stores will occasionally offer free shipping, but with a caveat: you have to spend at least $50 or $75 or more to get the deal. Try to get around this by opening a chat session with the retailer. Then, ask for a better deal.

Excessive postage and shipping charges are the bane of every online shopper's life. Here are our favourite ways to avoid paying too much for delivery when you buy online.

US-centric: No doubt you already have a go-to tool for tracking your packages across the country, but weblog Digital Inspiration highlights a quick and simple tip for getting up-to-the date tracking info straight from the source: just email the shipping company. For example, send a blank-subject email with tracking numbers in the body to [email protected] or [email protected], and a few seconds later, you'll have a response with the latest status of your package. We've covered several tools for tracking your packages in the past, but this technique might come in particularly handy when you've got the tracking number in your inbox and you want a quick status update, particularly from a cell phone. Know the Current Location of your FedEx or UPS Shipments Via Email

US-centric: Easily find items sold online with free shipping on sites like Amazon, eBay, and more than 500 other online stores with website Free Shipping On. The website sports easy navigation: two tabs that allow you to perform searches for items available on Amazon and eBay with free shipping, and then a third tab takes you to a page that offers free shipping coupons for over five hundred stores, from Apple to Walmart and organized by category as well. If shipping costs usually cause you to scratch your head and decide to wait for a better deal on retail, you may now want to reconsider. Free Shipping On

Windows only: FedEx QuickShip is a freeware Microsoft Outlook toolbar that integrates your Outlook address book with FedEx shipments. That means creating a new shipment is as easy as clicking Ship and choosing your contact's name from your address book. You can also track packages, check shipping rates, schedule pickups, find FedEx locations, and more with the FedEx toolbar. As Download Squad points out, the tool could use even tighter integration (for example, recognizing tracking numbers in emails), but if you do a lot of shipping at work and Outlook is your go-to email client, the QuickShip toolbar is a must-have. QuickShip is freeware, Windows only. QuickShip

US-centric: Find the cheapest rates for shipping items from point A to point B with web site ShipGooder. Enter the shipping origin and destination zip codes as well as the package weight. Within seconds, ShipGooder will provide you with rates for major shipping carriers, including DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS, Canada Post, and others. The shipping rates are displayed on a nice looking form that displays next day shipping, 2-day shipping, three-day shipping, or ground shipping options, but if necessary, you can change your view to a courier rate table that displays the various rates per carrier. ShipGooder also features a map to show (roughly) the estimated commute of your package. The site is still in beta and has a few kinks, so if you run into a problem calculating shipping for a particular zip code, try to reverse the destination and origin—that should work instead. ShipGooder makes it quite easy to get the cheapest shipping rates without visiting each individual carrier's website. ShipGooder