They're right, Nilo. Let's see - being a 'puter puke myself:

You sign on at work or at home to sign up for AMA. Give 'em your info. There aren't too many places in the world that actually deal with that info in real-time, and the AMA is a non-profit organization. They probably deal with it overnight.

The next day they process it, verify your info (CC# and expiration, etc.) They might or might not be online with a CC# processor and it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't - that costs money.

Then print it out, stuff envelopes and mail it. Call it 1-4 days for snail mail, depending on your location, and you've got a week. That ain't bad.

If they spent a ton of money on state-of-the art systems, you're still looking at same-day electronic processing and the snail mail delivery....2-5 days.