Say what you will about Amazon, but I generally get free shipping if I don’t need something fast (meaning almost all of the time) and they have a liberal return policy which I don’t use that much.
I used a free Prime trial one year around Xmas time. It was nice, but not worth the $99 a year.
Major benefit of online shopping: no one follows me around their sites to see if I’m cybershoplifting (unlike at a certain department store recently, where a menswear dept. employee advised me “I’ve got my eye on you”). I had committed the sin of wearing a backpack and trying on a pair of pants (no store policy on checking bags or backpacks).
Have you ever done Wal Mart ship to store? I’ve done it about a half dozen times over the years. At my local store, at least, it is a long and painful process that involves waiting for someone to be at the desk, waiting in line for your turn, and the people not being able to find your item.
I use it for stuff that is markedly cheaper on Walmart.com and not available in the store, but if it’s in the store or on Amazon, those are better options. I wouldn’t ship to Wal Mart as my regular method.
They do have free shipping to home though. So that’s aight.
I suppose some quantity of people get Prime and then only use $30 worth of shipping although I suspect that’s not too many (which is why Prime has increased in cost over the years). My household personally finds it trivial to hit the $99 mark and there’s a number of ways to game the system on top of it such as multiple small orders all qualifying for credits if you take normal, non-2-day shipping, etc.
What’s wrong with Amazon Prime? Perhaps the idea that you’re paying them for the privilege of buying stuff from them. That’s about as crazy as paying for a Costco membership. (And if you want to get groceries via Amazon Fresh, there’s another charge on top of a Prime membership.)
Although when Amazon bought Whole Foods, I thought perhaps they would have been better off buying Costco. They could merge the Amazon Prime and Costco memberships into one super membership.
That’s the thing, I think so many people that get prime, use it and use it a lot. It’s not some little gym membership fee that you barely notice each week or month.
I just checked my Amazon account. 98 orders last year, 63 so far this year. The majority of them really are small things, shower hooks, batteries, a distributor (that was way cheaper than buying at Autozone).
And yeah, you can game the system, like you said. Keep stuff in your cart until you get free shipping (without prime). Or when they offer credits for something or another, send them all out as individual shipments, did that too.
In any case, it’s worth it for me to be guaranteed I get everything in two [business] days or less and not pay for shipping. It’s worth it to me.
Except you’re not required to have a Prime membership to shop at Amazon.
But they’re already killing the market on all that type of stuff. They’re trying to break into fresh produce now. And from what I understand, if you have Amazon Prime, you’ll get a discount at Whole Foods.
You’re not. You’re paying for faster “free” (or prepaid if you prefer) shipping and other stuff like the Video on Demand selection. If you only buy from them a few times a year and for large purchases then it’s probably not worth it. If you use them for stuff like “I want to get this $15 book, done” and “Oh, we’re low on dish soap and cat food – ok, it’ll be here before we run out” then it’s going to pay for itself.
Seriously – have I entered an alternate reality where a significant portion of the people in this thread seem to be occasional Amazon customers, but appear to have no idea that people who aren’t Prime customers can also shop at Amazon, just like they do a few times a year?
I’ve yet to purchase anything from Amazon I need quickly. In fact, it’s annoying to me how not just Amazon but most on-line sellers really push the quick shipping, but then I assume it’s attracting customers and being used by someone, even if not me.
Most of what I purchase is e-books.
The rest I’m happy to get by “slow boat”.
Amazon Prime isn’t worth the cost to me, so I don’t have it. If circumstances change and it does become cost effective then I will get it.
But yeah, I think a lot of people have the notion you need to be a Prime member to shop Amazon these days. You don’t.
You work in a department or grocery store, if I recall correctly. So getting light bulbs is probably less of an inconvenience for you than it is for someone else to make a stop for them. And I’m not implying that stopping at the store for light bulbs and furnace filters is some massive cross to bear but, if you can cross it off your list at 9:40pm when you think “Oh, we need filters” and save yourself a stop the next day then why not?
Of course we’re aware that we can shop at Amazon, and in fact we do. All the time. We just don’t pay for the privilege of doing so. (At most, I’ll let things accumulate in my cart until I get to the point at which I get free shipping.)
Well, sure - that’s why we have folks from a grocery delivery service in our store every day, someone is paying someone else to do something for them to free up time for something else, I get it.
Heck, I’m still using drop-off laundry, I get the notion of paying for convenience and saving time.
It’s just that, like I’ve said, I’ve never ordered anything on line I need in a rush. Quite probably since, as you point out, I work in a place that sells a lot of different things so picking something up before I go home is very convenient for me. Or at least it’s a factor.
I understand that Prime memberships are useful to many people. Especially if you order regularly and make use of Amazon’s streaming services.
My evil comment was aimed at the way they tricked me into a Trial Prime membership. The automatic $99 charge in thirty days is what I called evil. Think of all the seniors out there that wouldn’t understand and get charged. My mom will be 85 in December. I’m becoming more and more aware of businesses trying to take advantage of her confusion.
I hope Amazon continues free shipping on orders over $50. I think it’s a good deal for them and their customers. I admit that sometimes I buy an extra item to reach $50. I much rather spend $9 for an item that I need, then pay $7.50 shipping.
I don’t think we have a common understanding of the word “privilege.” The privilege I am receiving isn’t the ability to shop there (“pay[ing] for the privilege of doing so”), but I am paying for the privilege of much better shipping service and a quite good streaming service.
They raised it from $25 to $35 in 2013, then to $50 in 2016. Then, facing competition from Wal-Mart, they dropped it to $35 in February, then back down to $25 in May.
I know that Amazon, at one point, required customers to buy $49 (technically not fifty dollars) worth of stuff to get free shipping. But aceplace57 used the present tense, suggesting either that in his corner of the world he still needed to buy fifty bucks worth of stuff, or thought he still did.
