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Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

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Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#131

Post by darklajid »

jlmorton wrote: post #80
username223 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one have never bothered with "Prime." It's not that hard to combine Amazon orders until they cross the "free" shipping threshold.

Amazon Prime also comes with nearly Netflix-equivalent video on demand, nearly Spotify-equivalent streaming music, Prime Now 2-hour delivery, and currently free restaurant delivery a la GrubHub/Eat24 in a few cities, along with a bunch of other minor perks.

Just like abecedarius, I cancelled the free shipping service when it became something I didn't want or need.

Free shipping was great. I don't care about the rest (and cannot play it on my devices anyway. I try to avoid Flash, I don't want non-generic-purpose hardware like a FireTV or something and you cannot access the Prime content from my Kodi/Pi2 in any reasonable fashion).

If you like that offer it might be a great deal. If you pay the full price and only use/get a tiny fraction though...

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#133

Post by bestnameever »

tracker1 wrote: post #96
cookiecaper wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a customer pickup center via air, and the customer drives to close off the figurative "last mile". Alternate idea: Amazon builds a central warehouse in each major metro that contains the most-ordered items for that area, has trucks that run out to UPS Stores and d…

I think that Amazon, may in the end be better off starting their own shipping company. It may sound weird, but I'm half surprised they didn't buy Uber or Lyft, not for the ride service, but for the drivers and the logistics in place. Large trucks from warehouses, to meet drivers in individual vehicles at drop spots, for final deliveries.

It's already going that way

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#134

Post by valdiorn »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #110
deftnerd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the items were eligible for free shipping, according to Amazon. Some of the items were from individual merchants, but all of those were FBA (so they were warehoused at an Amazon facility). It's possible that even though they were eligible for free shipping, they weren't all in the same facility. If that was the case, I would understand why they were put into separate boxes. What doesn't make sense is removing one…

>All the items were eligible for free shipping, according to Amazon. What amazon says on their main page is very disconnected from reality. What it says on checkout is what matters. When I buy stuff from Amazon, they have a little checkbox on the side that says "only items that ship to Iceland". Never the less, when I get to the checkout 90% of the stuff they show won't ship to Iceland.

hah, also from Iceland. Moved to the UK 2.5 years ago.

....man I love free shipping on Amazon... and also having a selection of product to choose from :)

I hope they don't up the UK limit as well, that would suck. I buy something from Amazon literally every week.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#135

Post by cwilkes »

blowski wrote: post #122
jfoster wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they weren't in the same facility, why would that make it understandable? How are you, as a customer, supposed to be concerned with which Amazon facility has what stock? (information you don't even have)

Agreed. Feels like Amazon outsourcing part of its shipping algorithm to customers.

+1 I've had the same experience trying to get $35 of "qualifying goods" into my cart to only see that they weren't really telling the truth and having to pay for shipping with Prime for next day.

Oh and through some weird ability to rename time "next day" now means 2 days and "2 day" means 3 day delivery. Same day usually does mean same day -- which used to have a lot of items available for that but recently has seemed to have gone down. Still impressed that it can be done.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#136

Post by Klathmon »

freyr wrote: post #95
SwellJoe wrote: post #35

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 Sho…

In the past year or two, I've noticed a dramatic rise in the number of counterfeit products. If you buy directly from Amazon, it generally seems ok, but all bets are off when you buy from a third party. I've also noticed the increased gaming of the reviews system. If you read reviews of many of the highest rated products, you often find that most are shills who are given products for free in exchange for "fair and un…

For me it's the amount of spam i'm getting asking for reviews.

One of the big reasons i shop with amazon is so i know that i don't need to deal with making another account, giving someone else my CC info, getting relentless spam email every week telling me to buy more.

But now sellers are using the "contact customer" system to beg for reviews, and it's starting to get annoying enough that i want to avoid amazon.

Just a few months ago i ordered about 20 separate things for a project i'm working on, and over the next 2 weeks proceeded to get 30+ emails asking for reviews of the products, reviews of the sellers, asking if i'm satisfied with their products, etc. All of these coming straight from the sellers themselves right above the warning from amazon that this system is only to resolve problems with the product/shipping...

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#137

Post by joefarish »

koyote wrote: post #130

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. Both items arrived separately...

£0.01 sim-card for next time: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299J...

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#139

Post by sokoloff »

koyote wrote: post #130

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. Both items arrived separately...

This site is aimed squarely at your use case:

http://www.filleritem.com/

(I have no financial or other connection except as a past user.)

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#140

Post by kartickv »

koyote wrote: post #130

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. Both items arrived separately...

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.
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