This should be interesting. I’m always annoyed when I check Amazon for stuff I pick up at the grocery store, the prices are way higher then they should be. Contact Solution, Hersey’s syrup, that kinda stuff and it’s 3 or 4 times more.
But why are they charging for shipping?
I’ll only use it if the prices are less than those of my neighborhood grocery store. I don’t need to pay an extra $6 for a box of items I can get just down the street.
Shipping is not free. So the options are to build it into the price of the product (so you see prices 3 to 4 times more) or charge for shipping separately.
Then why am I paying a hundred dollars a year for Amazon prime, that comes with free two day shipping?
Not “shipping is not free for Amazon Prime customers,” but “the act of shipping items from Amazon to its customers incurs a cost for Amazon.”
I’m aware that it costs money to ship items to their customers. However, as an Amazon Prime customer, I not happy that I’ll have to pay for shipping. Part of the point of Amazon Prime, and the biggest perk for me is the free (two day) shipping.
My guess is that I’m not the only person that’s going to be annoyed that I have to pay $100 per year to order groceries from them (I believe this is only available to Amazon Prime members) and then have to pay shipping on top of that. A fee which most people bought into Prime specifically to have waived.
Unless the items are ridiculously cheap, I’ll just pick them up at the grocery store rather then pay $6.00 to have them delivered.
Joey, if there is no separate shipping charge there is no incentive for customers to consolidate their orders. I would expect that $100 would cover the packaging and UPS/Fedex charges for no more than 25 packages ($4/package)–maybe no more than 20 packages ($5/package).
Right now the service looks like it might be useful to people who walk or use mass transit; are shut-ins; or live in high cost rural areas. If there were a massive expansion in the number of products offered it would useful to more people.
Again, a huge perk of the $100 per year I pay for Amazon Prime. I get little tiny orders shipped to me all the time, for free, two days. I probably get 40-50 orders a year, whereas without prime I’d get quite a few less (consolidating them to get free shipping once they’re above a certain amount).
Don’t forget, not only are they charging shipping, you also have to be a Prime member to use the service. At least according to the part of the article at the top of this thread. I haven’t done a whole lot of digging. So, not only do you need to subscribe to the service that most people use to waive shipping cost, you’ll also have to pay shipping on top of it.
I guess I’m curious as to why they’re handling these products differently then any other products. Why is baking soda or sugar different than HDMI cables or hair dryers?
Probably because people are more price sensitive, and there is less opportunity to offer lower prices.
Cables and hair dryers weigh a lot less than a bag of sugar.
USPS Standard Post NYC to California, 45 lb. box. 77.48
They managed it on everything else, and they’re wrapping it into Amazon Prime, so IMO, shipping should be free.
My suggestion is that they limit deliveries to once a week (or maybe every other week). Then people could add ‘non-urgent’ things to their box as the week goes on and ship it when they’re ready. Or maybe Amazon would just auto-ship on a certain day or when it get’s to a certain amount (dollars or pounds). That would make sure people are less likely to order a single $1.19 box of baking soda and hit the Order button.
This way, you add things, sugar, whole wheat flour, aluminum foil, etc as you run out of them and when your ship day comes up, you hit the “Send It!” button and it goes. Maybe they could offer a discount for filling up your box to a certain level. If you have 10# in your box, would you wait a week so that you had 20# in order to get a $1.00 credit? 45# to get a $2.50 credit?
I’m still sort of thinking out loud here, so my ideas might not work, I just think that any way they can get rid of the shipping charge is going to be good. I’m not happy with having to pay shipping and having to be a Prime member. That seems like a slap in the face.
Onkyo receiver, 41# shipped for free.
Cement Mixer 174 pounds, shipped free (common carrier I think)
What’s your point. The whole idea of Amazon prime is that they ship things for free.
From Amazon’s Help Menu, they specifically say, WRT Amazon Prime that you’ll get “FREE Two-Day Shipping on eligible items”, so why are all these items that you need to be a member just to buy not eligible?
A 45lb box? The UPS drivers are going to hate Amazon. 45lbs is a lot for a housewife to lug in from the garage or carport.
Amazon has been selling grocery items for awhile. This new program really expands on their competition with grocery stores.
The differences are
Price
Price per pound (with resulting consequences for shipping charges)
If you have a $10 product then Amazon has $3 to $4 or so margin to absorb shipping costs with. If you have a $20 product then Amazon has $6 to $8 or so margin to absorb shipping costs.
If you have a 1.76 five pound bag of sugar then you have .50 or so margin while the picking, packaging and UPS/Fedex charge is probably going to be $5.00 or more.
That’s the whole point of Amazon Prime, I pay a hundred dollars a year, Amazon waives the shipping charges.
Also, again, and I know I’m repeating myself, not only do you have to pay for the shipping, you have to pay $100 a year just to buy the groceries in the first place.
And light things, IME, still tend to be expensive to ship. There’s a lot of overhead built into UPS/FedEx charges. Just a few days ago I was quoting someone out on something and IIRC, the shipped item was 3lbs (of the top of my head) and my charge was something like $12. It went up by less than a dollar even if the shipping weight went up nearly 10 pounds. IOW, a 1# (shipped) HDMI cable (for $5) and a 5# bag of sugar probably cost very close to the same thing for shipping.
I wanted some new sheets so I shopped Walmart online due to the fact that the real Walmart store is 60 miles away and the sheets were $15.95. So I logged off and went on my merry way.
The next day I get an email from walmart saying they have dropped the price on the sheets I was looking at to $12.95 so I said to myself, self this is a good deal and clicked purchase.
When I get to the check out the S&H is $4.95 and I thought this is horrible, but still cheaper than 6 gallons of gas to go to and back from the nearest store, but whoa and be hold there is a little note that if I purchase $50 of items the S&H will be free.
I head for the grocery section, right and shop myself silly for fifty dollars of items all of which items cost more on the local grocery store shelves than the ones on my web page. Oatmeal for example is $4.50 here and only $2.50 for 12 of those instant pkg in a box and it was brand name too Quaker Oats.
So, no Amazon prime and I was able to get $50 worth of groceries at Walmart online and now for the free shipping … when I get to the end of the process the boxes to check are for free shipping will take as long as May7 th and for only $3.95 I can get it May 2nd … So I checked $3.95 to get it quicker.
Did I get a good deal? I’ll let you know when I get it …
Bad news: Pantry has dropped from offering close to 2500 products when it started to only 1735 now (for example including the 5 pound bag of sugar I cited above). I wonder what is happening: trouble restocking?
The number of products is back up to 2315 as I write. They never brought back the 5 pound bag of sugar.
I expected they would have done a major increase in number of products by now. I think a lot of people would be interested in an online store where you can do an online stockup trip of your Walmart/Target/supermarket type non-perishable purchases. (A large number of these items are in the $.50-$4 range and are not competitively priced online). So I think Amazon Prime Pantry is basically a failure.
So has anyone used it? Reactions?
I totally forgot about it. They must not be promoting it at all, either they’re just testing it out or it’s not working for them, I had to dig around for a link to get into the ‘pantry’.
Personally, I’m still put off by the shipping charge. Just doing some quick math, if I ordered once a week, I’d pay $312 in shipping charges plus the $99 for being a prime member. The questions is, will you save $312 per year on the groceries, if not, it’s simply not worth it. Not for me anyways, I drive past the grocery store on my way home from work.
Waive the shipping charges and make sure the prices are competitive (like they have on all their other items) and I’d certainly try it out.
Looking at it now. Certainly much better than before, when even Safeway had better prices than Amazon, but still not quite as good as discount big box retailers.
Plus, like someone else said, the bigger problem is they do not have generics.