This is just assuming that they'll even let you order $49 worth of items in one box.
I let my Amazon Prime lapse because I was rarely using it.
A few weeks ago I decided to do a bulk order. I ordered 18 items with a total of $110. They split my shipment into three packages of approximately $50, $50, and one item by itself in another box for $10. Since one of the boxes didn't have $35, they tried to charge me shipping.
I simply removed that item but instead of having two $50 boxes, the shopping cart removed an item from a box and put it into a box by itself to ensure that I had to pay shipping. I spent two hours adding and removing items to discover that there is no way to get free shipping for multiple items anymore.
Eventually I contacted customer service and they said they would take care of it and ship it in one box with no shipping cost.
Three weeks later and my order finally shipped, in 5 boxes, with 5 shipping fees charged to my card.
I believe if you buy Amazon items then, even if they split the shipment, they won't charge you. The above sounds like you were buying from different merchants.
This is really not meant in a mocking way and it could be different on Amazon Germany but are you sure you didn't check this box by accident which tells them to send your stuff as soon as possible? Before I had Amazon Prime I always made sure to check free shipping even if it meant that I had to wait longer until all items were available so they could be shipped in a single box.
Interesting. I've never had an experience with Amazon customer service that hasn't been outstanding. I'm assuming you were able to contact them and they gave you a full refund on the shipping costs? I would be shocked if they did anything less.
Shitty experience yeah but I would expect them to fix it too.
I have a business that purchases multiple items in a single order on a daily basis, and have never encountered this. We always get free shipping for orders, even if boxes are split.
I'm curious about your use case, were they non amazon fullfiled items?
Customer service is way all over the place. I had a shaver that I wanted to return. It was a gift bought from a Prime-connected account. After 3-4 emails of getting nowhere, one rep finally told me that shavers can't be returned due to health hazards and they refunded the buyer the full cost of the shaver. Since then I've also had them unexpectedly give me 2-3 full refunds for things I threatened to return. I think they're trying very hard to retain prime members.
This happened when you selected "ship in as few packages as possible" option? That worked for me in the $35 minimum days before I and my father got a Prime subscription.
A related patience game to decrease the costs of your Prime subscription is to allow them to ship is slowly and give you a limited time, but several month, digital $1 credit, or if you to the pantry thing, I've seen discounts for it.
what's going on is an item that's FBA(fulfilled by amazon sitting at an amazon facility) is at a facility that's not near you, so it's physically further and although it says prime they won't expedite in a day since it's maybe east coast placed and you're in California so they don't do same day because of this unless the item standalone is over 35. This is sort of against the spend 35 and get free shipping but seems to be the apparent modus operandi as of somewhat recent.
e.g. 25 dollar item and 15 dollar item might both be two days and would have to pay for one or same day even though total is 40 since one is FBA'd from a further location, so the same day can be misleading happens to be sitting at a facility that the seller shipped to, what happens after shipping into fba and how they disperse inventory if at all for lower latency in shipping I don't know but I am seeing more and more where they split orders to not pay same day even if total is over the same day rate. Hope this sheds a bit of light.
The only issue I have found with Amazon Prime is more items I have bought have moved to the Marketplace and most of those items no longer qualify for prime.
So while it is great for many items if Amazon keeps offloading items to others it becomes less useful to me.
As for the shopping cart games, I have never had that issue as I usually check ship it all together.
One look at their finances and it's clear why they're doing this. According to their SEC filings, last year Amazon brought in $6.5 billion in shipping revenue [1], and spent $11.5 billion on shipping costs. Take those numbers together and they lost $5.0 billion subsidizing shipping. They lose more money on shipping every year than most startups make in a decade. It's a huge cost on their budget, not hard to see why management is trying to cut costs.
[1] Includes some revenue earned from Amazon Prime memberships; excludes shipping revenue of third-party sellers not under the Fulfilled by Amazon program
In a certain way, isn't that like saying BestBuy spend $X billion on storefront real-estate and made $0 in people paying in "walk-out-the-storefront-with-your-item" charges?
Shipping revenues will never cover shipping costs as long as they provide even one free shipment a year (and don't overcharge people paying for shipping). Shipping is one of those costs that you have to pay like having storefronts. The goods have to actually be purchasable by customers somehow. Retail shops sink costs in their stores. It's made up for by the margins on the items they sell.
I'm not saying that Amazon shouldn't try to minimize their losses on shipping just as stores should figure out whether having one retail presence in a city is more cost effective than having two. But I think a more interesting piece for me would be a comparison of Amazon's shipping costs to other retailers' storefront costs. If the $5B in shipping subsidies is way lower than what Walmart or BestBuy are paying in "storefront subsidies", it isn't necessarily something so outrageous. It's a cost of doing business.
$5B sounds like a lot of money (and indeed it is), but what is it compared to the storefront costs of competitors? How much does Amazon save by having highly-productive warehouse workers as opposed to lower-productive retail employees?* Maybe $5B is huge compared to what Walmart spends on its retail presence. Maybe Amazon warehouses aren't much more efficient than BestBuy stores. Or Maybe this is simply a move that Amazon is making because it thinks it has gained enough market power (and enough buy-in to Prime) to start making anti-consumer moves rather than a cost that's unsustainable compared to the costs of retail.
Walmart's revenue was $485.7 billion in 2015. Amazon's revenue was $107B last year. Spending less than 5% of revenue on getting the products to the customers doesn't sound outrageous. Does it seem likely that Walmart spends $24B on store-front costs that Amazon doesn't have to get their revenue?
You're not wrong that companies will try to cut costs. I guess my question is simply: is this really an onerous cost compared to revenue (as judged by what competing retail firms pay)? If it's par for the course (or less), it feels like Amazon flexing its market power against consumers. If it is an onerous cost compared to what Walmart or BestBuy have to spend, then life has crappy trade-offs that need to be made to make things reasonable.
*This isn't a dig at retail employees. It's just pointing out that when customer traffic is low at a retail venue, they're around with less to do. By contrast, warehouse workers can be utilized more efficiently.
That page has some explanations including what they will be doing, "We seek to mitigate costs of shipping over time in part through achieving higher sales volumes, optimizing placement of fulfillment centers, negotiating better terms with our suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. We believe that offering low prices to our customers is fundamental to our future success, and one way we offer lower prices is through shipping offers."
Those explanations do not include what you're saying.
The problem isn't they increased the minimum order for free shipping or even that they charge for shipping - it is the deceptive advertising/wording. Among the big companies, Amazon has a reputation for treating their customers well (even if they screw their suppliers, workers etc). That seems to be slipping.
I love Amazon and I love Prime (the included streaming services and ebooks are great, on top of free shipping). But, lately I've been noticing cracks in the armor of Amazon, where they're leaving openings for competitors.
I have, just in the past year, ordered a huge variety of things from other vendors, because Amazon prices were far from competitive. And, with free two day shipping from merchants partnered with Shop Runner (which I get free when I pay with my American Express), the difference in experience, cost, and time to deliver is competitive. NewEgg got my server hardware purchases, saving me several hundred dollars on a ~$3000 order. An RV parts vendor sold me an RV air conditioner for ~$200 less than Amazon. I'm shopping for a tankless water heater right now, which is about $160 less from other vendors. And, on the lower end, when Amazon first started doing subscription groceries, they were competitively priced; now, not so much. I find I prefer just buying what I need when I need it from local grocery stores.
I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but it's much less than it used to be. And, I don't know if Amazon knows what they're doing or not when choosing to lose these sales. Presumably the increased margins make up for the lower sales (or at least the loss of sales to me, which may not necessarily be the same as decreased sales overall). Surely they're doing the math.
This is the same thing. I bought from Amazon before Prime partly because of the free shipping. The further away the free shipping gets, the harder it would be to choose Amazon over getting it local or from another vendor, I think.
All I can say about Amazon is the quality of the item selection has gone down so much that most times I take my time digging through reviews to ensure the padded 4 star rating isn't done by bots because I've bought some items that were 4 star rated only to find they were utter crap later. And this is only in the last two years for Amazon. I'm not sure what's happening but I can say that I'm looking closer to home for stuff I need. Frankly, I think Bezos and company got too comfy with their dominant position and now they're being lax on the quality. I would happily load up an order 60+ USD easily from Amazon but now I have to double check to see what I'm getting isn't from a crap third party (that's the biggest thing I'd pay to remove is the third party sellers). If they want more customers they need to get back to basics by improving selection, kicking out crap third party sellers, and stop shuffling items between addon status or Prime only. Otherwise, I can see them going under in a hurry.
Ran into this myself very recently. Ordered a 5-star posture brace for my back, and what I got was nothing as described in the picture or description.
For the first time - ever - in using Amazon, I went back to the reviews to verify where the communication breakdown was. Indeed, every review was succeeded by "I was given this product at a small discount to review it with an honest opinion" -- which of course was a 99% discount. The process is technically legal by way of FTC, so long as the reviewers add the disclaimer.
Infuriated, I asked for a refund and was denied by the supplier. Escalated to Amazon and got the refund two weeks later.
I then opened several tickets, one after the other, trying to get Amazon to remove these fake reviews. Each one had the response of "We take your concern seriously. We cannot share any action taken by this ticket" -- and months later, nothing was done about the reviews.
So for the first time in years, I try to buy elsewhere before Amazon.
Their site is unbearably bloated with scripts and whatnot, I don't know why more people don't complain about that. The site is also filled with dishonest merchants peddling their misrepresented wares on it. I've had more issues with merchants on Amazon than on ebay.
They are really trying to force you into signing up for prime, aren't they?
I cancelled my prime subscription at the start of the year. Some thoughts:
- I buy less stuff on impulse. Since the price limit is (or was) $35 for free shipping, I usually have to wait until there are enough things I really want/need before ordering.
- The pricing is often better other places. Normally Amazon's non prime price will be comparable, but then shipping fees will be like 7 or 8 bucks, while other places have cheaper, faster, or even free shipping.
- If you do have prime, not everything with prime has free shipping. For small things they have "add on items", which don't ship to you until you have $25 worth of stuff in your cart. It wasn't always like this, and it was a big negative for me. I had signed up for prime because I didn't want to pay for quick shipping. Now I had to wait until there were other things I needed to hit their arbitrary number.
I ran the numbers over my three year subscription period with them and it turned out I wasn't buying enough stuff to make the math work. Maybe when it was $79, but at the current price it's just not worth it.
It's like they're going out of their way to piss off customers.
"Profit was held back by a big jump in fulfillment costs, which increased 32.8% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and nearly 25% for the full year. Amazon spent $4.55 billion in the fourth quarter to fulfill customers’ orders, up from $3.4 billion in the same quarter a year ago, and the increase cannot be explained away by increases in Amazon sales, as the percentage of revenues spent on shipping also increased, from 11.6% to 12.7%." [1]
"There is more than loyalty at stake for Atlanta-based UPS. This year, its Amazon account exceeds $1 billion. ... The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year." [2]
"Some analysts say the move could help position Amazon to offer shipping services to other companies, eventually competing with the likes of United Parcel Service and DHL Worldwide Express. ... Amazon rolled out thousands of its own trailers and launched an Uber-like delivery service last year to handle the so-called last mile of delivery, taking packages from distribution centers to customers' homes." [3]
> The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year.
Thats still Amazing low cost considering what has to be done to deliver a parcel. Though I'm more surprised Amazon hasn't set up an Argos style business in high density cities.
For those that dont know Argos it's in the UK and its basically a collection shopfront with catalogues infromt of the counter. You browse the catalogue, write down the numbers and staff go out the back and bring you what you asked for. They have a huge range and while strange at first shopping in person from a book catalogue it works amazingly well for a bunch of shopping needs. It would merge perfectly with a Amazon like business.
Amazon without prime is just frustrating at this point (and the price for prime is not worth it for the majority of people).
In the UK minimum shipping is £20:
I recently bought an item for £19.99 and had to buy a random tiny item for £0.10 so that I do not get charged £4 for shipping.
In that case, the customer-friendly move would have been to charge you £0.10 for shipping rather than £4. As things stand, you had to waste time buying something you didn't want, increasing Amazon's costs, and others who did not discover the trick would have been unhappy. I wouldn't mind if the minimum shipping limit goes up, since it's a simpler system — I don't have to waste time figuring out these loopholes.
Seems like Prime shipping is still free on orders of any size, with a $35 requirement for free same-day shipping when applicable.
I'd be curious how many Amazon customers actually don't use Prime and will thus actually be impacted by this—seems like pretty much everyone I know has a subscription.
"free same-day shipping"
Woah, what items do you get that on? I always wanted that so bad, but have never had anything delivered same day. Are you referring to Amazon prime now? Is same day shipping one of their Seattle only offerings?
If you do any amount of shopping on Amazon, Prime is easily worth it. I buy as much as I can through Amazon because I get 5% cash back as a Prime member with an Amazon.com Store Card, the selection and ease of ordering is unparalleled, and the shipping is always free, fast, and convenient. We make extensive use of the video service since all Nickelodeon properties left Netflix.
Amazon is a huge thing for us, getting ever-larger, and Prime is a large part of why that's possible.
I've used Prime before, but I don't think it's worth it when I can (could) just spend $35 on qualified items (which would be qualified for Prime also), and I can get actually free shipping.
Now that Amazon has a de-facto monopoly on distribution and fulfillment with around a billion skus that rivals the likes of WalMart, it's no surprise prices begin endlessly ratcheting up.
I've had my first two annoyances with amazon, after years of having zero.
* Add on items. Can't buy them on their own, can't buy more than five. What's going on with these? Just let me buy them in bulk.
* Recently, I had an item that was prime, but wouldn't ship to a PO box. I've never had this – amazon always chooses USPS/Canada Post for PO Box orders. The item was small. I had even ordered it to a PO Box before, successfully. I was able to complete the order to a pickup point, *at* the post office, just not in my PO Box.
These are trifles. But the reason I buy everything at amazon is that they removed all trifles. I've been noticing more of them recently.
Of course, on the flipside, amazon.ca has massively expanded its offerings. Which is great. However, many of them are not sold by amazon/shipped by prime, and it increases cognitive overload. I have to calculate shipping, deal with third party merchant shipping emails/review requests, sometimes they don't ship to PO Boxes, etc.
Sorry Amazon, I don't care. And my Amazon Prime is still going bye-bye this year. The prices are always higher than other vendors so the free shipping is all but moot and your other services suck. I can't even get the Music service to work.
It seems that Jet.com (Ana Amazon-like competitor, I haven't used them yet, so don't know the experience) has a $35 threshold for 2 to 5 day free-shipping.
Amazon finally decided to stop losing a little on every sale and making it up in volume. This looks like a classic dumping strategy -- sell products below cost (and evading sales/use tax, wink wink) to bankrupt competitors, and then raise prices.
Prime subscriber here, though it's the UK model (next-day delivery on many things, plus Amazon Video as a perk).
My approach on it is somewhat different to many others here. I can order some stuff before 8pm and have it delivered next day. Things ordered earlier in the day (pre-noon) could be any courier, but the post-6pm orders are almost always delivered by DPD to my area (north Cornwall, EX23 postcode).
Talking with my regular courier, so take this as anecdotal rather than cited, there are apparently courier representatives (brokers) at some major depots that bid on the packages as they are being readied: presumably, lowest bidder wins the business.
I also use Prime for earning download credit. I can select a slow delivery option for my order [0] if I'm not in a hurry, and get 1GBP as a kickback. In November and December, this increases to 3GBP.
Over the year, I typically place 200+ orders (some for me, some for clients) and most are slow delivery. This effectively means I make money on the Prime subscription, and I can expand my Kindle library without spending real money. At any given time, I have about >5GBP in digital credit [1] - there are supposed to be expiry dates on it, but I've never fallen foul of it.
I live in Singapore and the free shipping to my country is USD $125.
Sometimes I really wonder how they make money when the items they ship are so heavy.
In my country, the shipping cost would easily be 2 to 3 times what Amazon would charge for their paid standard shipping. E.g. The box that I received recently would have cost USD $30-50 to ship from my country to USA. They either have a fantastic shipping deal or they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true.
Tried to buy some computer components of Amazon the other day, it became such a pita that I aborted the order and bought the SSD in person at the local PC World (for those not in the UK shipping at PC world is the last resort when in a rush) for a couple of quid more.
At this point I actively avoid Amazon, they lost their mojo and ruthless focus on customer experience.
[+] [-] deftnerd|10 years ago|reply
I let my Amazon Prime lapse because I was rarely using it.
A few weeks ago I decided to do a bulk order. I ordered 18 items with a total of $110. They split my shipment into three packages of approximately $50, $50, and one item by itself in another box for $10. Since one of the boxes didn't have $35, they tried to charge me shipping.
I simply removed that item but instead of having two $50 boxes, the shopping cart removed an item from a box and put it into a box by itself to ensure that I had to pay shipping. I spent two hours adding and removing items to discover that there is no way to get free shipping for multiple items anymore.
Eventually I contacted customer service and they said they would take care of it and ship it in one box with no shipping cost.
Three weeks later and my order finally shipped, in 5 boxes, with 5 shipping fees charged to my card.
[+] [-] chx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ufukbay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|10 years ago|reply
Shitty experience yeah but I would expect them to fix it too.
[+] [-] jbkkd|10 years ago|reply
I'm curious about your use case, were they non amazon fullfiled items?
[+] [-] choppaface|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wfunction|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hga|10 years ago|reply
A related patience game to decrease the costs of your Prime subscription is to allow them to ship is slowly and give you a limited time, but several month, digital $1 credit, or if you to the pantry thing, I've seen discounts for it.
[+] [-] archemike_|10 years ago|reply
e.g. 25 dollar item and 15 dollar item might both be two days and would have to pay for one or same day even though total is 40 since one is FBA'd from a further location, so the same day can be misleading happens to be sitting at a facility that the seller shipped to, what happens after shipping into fba and how they disperse inventory if at all for lower latency in shipping I don't know but I am seeing more and more where they split orders to not pay same day even if total is over the same day rate. Hope this sheds a bit of light.
[+] [-] msellout|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
So while it is great for many items if Amazon keeps offloading items to others it becomes less useful to me.
As for the shopping cart games, I have never had that issue as I usually check ship it all together.
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tristanj|10 years ago|reply
[1] Includes some revenue earned from Amazon Prime memberships; excludes shipping revenue of third-party sellers not under the Fulfilled by Amazon program
Data is from page 26 of their 10-K, linked below
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416...
[+] [-] mdasen|10 years ago|reply
Shipping revenues will never cover shipping costs as long as they provide even one free shipment a year (and don't overcharge people paying for shipping). Shipping is one of those costs that you have to pay like having storefronts. The goods have to actually be purchasable by customers somehow. Retail shops sink costs in their stores. It's made up for by the margins on the items they sell.
I'm not saying that Amazon shouldn't try to minimize their losses on shipping just as stores should figure out whether having one retail presence in a city is more cost effective than having two. But I think a more interesting piece for me would be a comparison of Amazon's shipping costs to other retailers' storefront costs. If the $5B in shipping subsidies is way lower than what Walmart or BestBuy are paying in "storefront subsidies", it isn't necessarily something so outrageous. It's a cost of doing business.
$5B sounds like a lot of money (and indeed it is), but what is it compared to the storefront costs of competitors? How much does Amazon save by having highly-productive warehouse workers as opposed to lower-productive retail employees?* Maybe $5B is huge compared to what Walmart spends on its retail presence. Maybe Amazon warehouses aren't much more efficient than BestBuy stores. Or Maybe this is simply a move that Amazon is making because it thinks it has gained enough market power (and enough buy-in to Prime) to start making anti-consumer moves rather than a cost that's unsustainable compared to the costs of retail.
Walmart's revenue was $485.7 billion in 2015. Amazon's revenue was $107B last year. Spending less than 5% of revenue on getting the products to the customers doesn't sound outrageous. Does it seem likely that Walmart spends $24B on store-front costs that Amazon doesn't have to get their revenue?
You're not wrong that companies will try to cut costs. I guess my question is simply: is this really an onerous cost compared to revenue (as judged by what competing retail firms pay)? If it's par for the course (or less), it feels like Amazon flexing its market power against consumers. If it is an onerous cost compared to what Walmart or BestBuy have to spend, then life has crappy trade-offs that need to be made to make things reasonable.
*This isn't a dig at retail employees. It's just pointing out that when customer traffic is low at a retail venue, they're around with less to do. By contrast, warehouse workers can be utilized more efficiently.
[+] [-] swehner|10 years ago|reply
Those explanations do not include what you're saying.
[+] [-] vijayr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SwellJoe|10 years ago|reply
I have, just in the past year, ordered a huge variety of things from other vendors, because Amazon prices were far from competitive. And, with free two day shipping from merchants partnered with Shop Runner (which I get free when I pay with my American Express), the difference in experience, cost, and time to deliver is competitive. NewEgg got my server hardware purchases, saving me several hundred dollars on a ~$3000 order. An RV parts vendor sold me an RV air conditioner for ~$200 less than Amazon. I'm shopping for a tankless water heater right now, which is about $160 less from other vendors. And, on the lower end, when Amazon first started doing subscription groceries, they were competitively priced; now, not so much. I find I prefer just buying what I need when I need it from local grocery stores.
I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but it's much less than it used to be. And, I don't know if Amazon knows what they're doing or not when choosing to lose these sales. Presumably the increased margins make up for the lower sales (or at least the loss of sales to me, which may not necessarily be the same as decreased sales overall). Surely they're doing the math.
This is the same thing. I bought from Amazon before Prime partly because of the free shipping. The further away the free shipping gets, the harder it would be to choose Amazon over getting it local or from another vendor, I think.
[+] [-] norea-armozel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zschuessler|10 years ago|reply
For the first time - ever - in using Amazon, I went back to the reviews to verify where the communication breakdown was. Indeed, every review was succeeded by "I was given this product at a small discount to review it with an honest opinion" -- which of course was a 99% discount. The process is technically legal by way of FTC, so long as the reviewers add the disclaimer.
Infuriated, I asked for a refund and was denied by the supplier. Escalated to Amazon and got the refund two weeks later.
I then opened several tickets, one after the other, trying to get Amazon to remove these fake reviews. Each one had the response of "We take your concern seriously. We cannot share any action taken by this ticket" -- and months later, nothing was done about the reviews.
So for the first time in years, I try to buy elsewhere before Amazon.
[+] [-] rpgmaker|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kdamken|10 years ago|reply
I cancelled my prime subscription at the start of the year. Some thoughts:
- I buy less stuff on impulse. Since the price limit is (or was) $35 for free shipping, I usually have to wait until there are enough things I really want/need before ordering.
- The pricing is often better other places. Normally Amazon's non prime price will be comparable, but then shipping fees will be like 7 or 8 bucks, while other places have cheaper, faster, or even free shipping.
- If you do have prime, not everything with prime has free shipping. For small things they have "add on items", which don't ship to you until you have $25 worth of stuff in your cart. It wasn't always like this, and it was a big negative for me. I had signed up for prime because I didn't want to pay for quick shipping. Now I had to wait until there were other things I needed to hit their arbitrary number.
I ran the numbers over my three year subscription period with them and it turned out I wasn't buying enough stuff to make the math work. Maybe when it was $79, but at the current price it's just not worth it.
It's like they're going out of their way to piss off customers.
[+] [-] dangrossman|10 years ago|reply
"There is more than loyalty at stake for Atlanta-based UPS. This year, its Amazon account exceeds $1 billion. ... The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year." [2]
"Some analysts say the move could help position Amazon to offer shipping services to other companies, eventually competing with the likes of United Parcel Service and DHL Worldwide Express. ... Amazon rolled out thousands of its own trailers and launched an Uber-like delivery service last year to handle the so-called last mile of delivery, taking packages from distribution centers to customers' homes." [3]
1: http://www.marketwatch.com/mw2/palm/marketwatch/story.asp?gu...
2: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/amazon-seeks-to-ease-ties-with...
3: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-drops-hints-it-...
[+] [-] Gustomaximus|10 years ago|reply
Thats still Amazing low cost considering what has to be done to deliver a parcel. Though I'm more surprised Amazon hasn't set up an Argos style business in high density cities.
For those that dont know Argos it's in the UK and its basically a collection shopfront with catalogues infromt of the counter. You browse the catalogue, write down the numbers and staff go out the back and bring you what you asked for. They have a huge range and while strange at first shopping in person from a book catalogue it works amazingly well for a bunch of shopping needs. It would merge perfectly with a Amazon like business.
[+] [-] sirkneeland|10 years ago|reply
Second reaction: "It appears this does NOT apply to Amazon Prime."
I am assuming this is gamed to drive further conversion to Prime membership then.
[+] [-] koyote|10 years ago|reply
In the UK minimum shipping is £20: I recently bought an item for £19.99 and had to buy a random tiny item for £0.10 so that I do not get charged £4 for shipping.
Both items arrived separately...
[+] [-] kartickv|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|10 years ago|reply
http://www.filleritem.com/
(I have no financial or other connection except as a past user.)
[+] [-] joefarish|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] envy2|10 years ago|reply
I'd be curious how many Amazon customers actually don't use Prime and will thus actually be impacted by this—seems like pretty much everyone I know has a subscription.
[+] [-] username223|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajmurmann|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|10 years ago|reply
Amazon is a huge thing for us, getting ever-larger, and Prime is a large part of why that's possible.
[+] [-] spike021|10 years ago|reply
I'd say a fair amount still don't use it.
[+] [-] piyush_soni|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ld00d|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wantreprenr007|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|10 years ago|reply
Of course, on the flipside, amazon.ca has massively expanded its offerings. Which is great. However, many of them are not sold by amazon/shipped by prime, and it increases cognitive overload. I have to calculate shipping, deal with third party merchant shipping emails/review requests, sometimes they don't ship to PO Boxes, etc.
[+] [-] transfire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielconde|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harryjo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepsun|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petecooper|10 years ago|reply
My approach on it is somewhat different to many others here. I can order some stuff before 8pm and have it delivered next day. Things ordered earlier in the day (pre-noon) could be any courier, but the post-6pm orders are almost always delivered by DPD to my area (north Cornwall, EX23 postcode).
Talking with my regular courier, so take this as anecdotal rather than cited, there are apparently courier representatives (brokers) at some major depots that bid on the packages as they are being readied: presumably, lowest bidder wins the business.
I also use Prime for earning download credit. I can select a slow delivery option for my order [0] if I'm not in a hurry, and get 1GBP as a kickback. In November and December, this increases to 3GBP.
Over the year, I typically place 200+ orders (some for me, some for clients) and most are slow delivery. This effectively means I make money on the Prime subscription, and I can expand my Kindle library without spending real money. At any given time, I have about >5GBP in digital credit [1] - there are supposed to be expiry dates on it, but I've never fallen foul of it.
[0] http://imgur.com/MLPTR1H
[1] http://imgur.com/0190B9O
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|10 years ago|reply
I order a couple of books today, for delivery to London. As Prime customer, I was offered several free options:
- same day delivery (6pm-10pm if I recall correctly) - next day delivery - timed delivery (day after tomorrow, within a 4 hour window)
[+] [-] parka|10 years ago|reply
Sometimes I really wonder how they make money when the items they ship are so heavy.
In my country, the shipping cost would easily be 2 to 3 times what Amazon would charge for their paid standard shipping. E.g. The box that I received recently would have cost USD $30-50 to ship from my country to USA. They either have a fantastic shipping deal or they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true.
[+] [-] noir_lord|10 years ago|reply
At this point I actively avoid Amazon, they lost their mojo and ruthless focus on customer experience.
[+] [-] t0mbstone|10 years ago|reply
I just checked and my free Prime shipping is still in effect.
What am I missing? Did Amazon once offer free shipping to people who didn't have Prime?
I'm pretty sure that they can't just change the benefits of Prime in the middle of my membership.
[+] [-] DanBC|10 years ago|reply
Yes. It wasn't next day delivery. You still get it, but there's a minimum spend requirement now.
> I'm pretty sure that they can't just change the benefits of Prime in the middle of my membership.
Don't they have a clause saying they can change the terms whenever they like?