Basic Trope: A character orders a product through the mail, over the phone, or online, and receives it mere moments later.
- Straight: Alice orders something from Acme Products Online. It arrives at her door within five minutes.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's package arrives within five seconds.
- Alice placed the order not online, or even over the phone, but through the mail. And she still receives it in just minutes!
- The item Alice has placed an order for is custom-made, personalized, being shipped to a different address than Alice's home, and/or is drop-shipped directly from the manufacturer.
- The item is coming from a distribution center located overseas, or (if Alice is located in Hawaiʻi or Alaska, or an overseas US territory) located in the continental US.
- Alice, based in Alaska, orders something from Japan, or in some other faraway country. It still arrives within five seconds.
- Downplayed: Alice orders a product online, and receives it a few hours later.
- Justified:
- Alice paid for express delivery.
- The distribution center is located in Alice's town of Troperville.
- Everyone In-Universe uses a network of vacuum tubes to send mail and packages through.
- Acme Products tends to use ballistic delivery. (with frequent flattening for the unobservant as a 'bonus')
- One of Acme Products' product lines is their Star Wreck Transploder series of teleportation machines. Targeting may be a bit wonky, but it sure gets the product delivered fast!
- Inverted:
- Alice orders something from Acme Products online. It takes six to eight weeks to get to her.
- The employees at Acme Products intend to deliver the product ASAP, but difficulties arise due to an unforeseen inconvenience.
- Subverted:
- Alice pays extra for two-day shipping.
- An Exploding Calendar montage happens, implying that the package is taking days, weeks, or even months to arrive.
- A flash-forward bumper shows that it's "Seven to Ten Business Days Later."
- The mailman arrives, and Alice is waiting expectantly for her package, but he does not have it.
- A package arrives, but it's not for Alice and/or not that particular order.
- The MacGuffin arrives, but it's damaged or defective.
- Alice finds out the item she wants is on backorder.
- What Alice ordered wasn't the product itself but the renewal of the weekly restock order* of said product. It was just luck that the next scheduled delivery was so close.
- Double Subverted:
- But today is her lucky day, because she receives it right away.
- It's revealed that the calendar pages are coming off because they're in the path of the fan Alice has running, and the package arrives as soon as she turns it off.
- It's implied that Alice has already had the item for several days.
- Just as the mailman leaves, Acme Delivery Co. arrives, with the item Alice ordered.
- Alice calls customer service, and they ship her a new one mere moments later.
- She finds the same product elsewhere, in stock right now (and for a better price!), so she orders that, and cancels her order with Acme, and the thing she wants arrives right away.
- Parodied:
- Alice hasn't even completed her order, but everything she wanted arrives at her front door.
- Alice's package magically shows up the instant she clicked "Place order"
- Zig Zagged: Alice does a lot of online and catalog shopping. Some items she orders arrive right away, others take a little longer, and others take lot longer.
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't order anything
- Alice's packages takes a few days to arrive.
- Enforced:
- "We don't have time to wait for Alice to wait for her package!"
- Comic-Book Time
- "This show is brought to you by the ACME Mail Order Company and …".
- Lampshaded: "Wow, I didn't think I'd get it so quickly!"
- Invoked: Alice orders from a company or store located right in her hometown.
- Exploited: Acme Products pays its courier extra money to get the products to its customers faster than advertised, so they'll be more willing to do business with Acme.
- Defied: Whatever courier Acme Products uses takes its sweet time, even if the package's destination is just on the other side of town.
- Alice is impatient and/or doesn't want to pay shipping costs, so she simply does all her shopping at physical stores.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Untwisted: Acme Products has a way of bending spacetime, so that a delivery that would normally take days, weeks, months, or (if it's coming from another planet) years would now only take a few minutes or seconds.
Order placed for: One link back to Instant Home Delivery.
