Not to mention the fact that no matter what time of the year they choose to make this change, people are going to find ‘reasons’ why they’re assholes for doing it then.
<shrug> Theres nothing we can do about Amazon’s shipping policy change. People will just accept it and things will roll on. I’ll continue buying kindle books (no shipping cost for them) and other bigger items that qualify for free shipping. I will shop locally for smaller items that would cost too much from Amazon. I enjoy bargain hunting and getting a good price.
Everybody can deal with this in their own way. A lot of people probably don’t care. That’s fine too.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily a liberal or conservative position to say that your own desire to keep more of your money is somehow a morally superior position than Amazon’s desire to keep more of their money. It’s merely self-serving, which is very much the typically narrow American focus (and somewhat ironic considering you seem to get much of your news from the UK rag Daily Fail).
Have you considered the costs of the recent gov’t shutdown to countries besides the US? Do you think those country’s corporations should freeze their prices as well? What about the tariffs the US pays to get the goods those countries make, should those be frozen at pre-shutdown levels too? That way lies madness, ace.
No company has to freeze their prices. It would have been a nice gesture for Amazon to have waited until after Christmas. But thats their choice. Just like I made the choice to bitch and gripe about the rates going up. 
I made a mistake by not biting my tongue.
I’ll get over my bad mood soon enough. As others said, the shipping policy was due to change sooner or later. Life goes on.
Amazon Prime. Seriously. If you order from them more than a few times a year, the free two-day shipping (in combination with the other benefits, like free Kindle book loans) is utterly worth it, unless you always went with free Super Saver shipping, and don’t care when it gets there.
Careful use of shopbots. Don’t ask who is good. Ask which outfits to avoid.
Avoid Buy.com.
http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/resources/elibrary/eclbots.shtml
Amazon Prime: If you have a kindle, you have on demand access to lots of free content. Nova. Frontline. Mythbusters. Movies. It’s like the poor man’s cable.
I pretty much always got free shipping and will continue to do so. Except for one or two late gifts, nothing I buy from Amazon is a rush.
Somebody needs some soup!
Yeah, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a company to review and update their shipping policies every decade or so. Kvetching that they’ve done so kind of makes you sound like the people my friend who works at the library had to deal with when they raised their overdue fines. Granted, it was a 50% increase, but since the original fine was ten cents, the increase was a flipping nickel. She had some slight success shutting the bitchers down by pointing out it was the first increase in over 30 years, but even the people who would grant it was probably due for an increase after that long were still miffed, they just weren’t actively bitching her out about it.
We’ve had Prime for a few years, but even so there’s vanishing little we buy from Amazon that we need right away–we don’t really buy consumables online. Before we got it, we were content to let things sit in our cart until we accumulated enough to qualify for free shipping. This would just mean we let things sit a couple extra weeks.
You mean not-Christmas, the time of year when people are least likely to spend $35 or more at a time on Amazon.com? Do you think people generally buy Christmas presents one at a time and make their large multi-item purchases in the summer?
Waiting until people probably are going to be spending a ton of money at once (Christmas presents) is probably benevolent of them and they’re shooting themselves in the foot since it’ll be easier to pick up Christmas gifts to hit that $35 total than it is when you’re just trying to buy yourself some socks.
With the Target Red Card (debit or credit) you get free shipping and 5% off.
The problem is that after step 3, you would expect a rush into online commerce, as it’s pretty easy to set up a competing website provided your scope is narrow enough.
So far, Amazon hasn’t been especially profitable by the way. Matt Yglassias characterizes them as " …a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers. The shareholders put up the equity, and instead of owning a claim on a steady stream of fat profits, they get a claim on a mighty engine of consumer surplus. Amazon sells things to people at prices that seem impossible because it actually is impossible to make money that way. And the competitive pressure of needing to square off against Amazon cuts profit margins at other companies, thus benefiting people who don’t even buy anything from Amazon." That’s not something that can last. Enjoy the Wall Street subsidies while you can. Amazon Q4 profits fall 45 percent.
Dissenting view on Amazon, one I wish were backed up with reference to financial statements: Amazon and the "profitless business model" fallacy — Remains of the Day