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Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

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Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#231

Post by dynofuz »

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…

Agreed, most products above the $500 range can be found cheaper elsewhere, with the possibility of saving $100+ when compared tom amzn. that's why im working on https://percht.com.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#232

Post by jlgaddis »

tdeck wrote: post #55
deftnerd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answered in detail above, but to sum it up, all the items were either Amazon supplied or FBA, so they would ship directly from an Amazon warehouse.

The paranoid engineer in me thinks this "box shuffling" is a feature flagged behavior and you ended up in an unlucky bucket.

I can't recall exactly where the option is but I do remember seeing an option that offered a choice between "ship my items as fast as possible, even if it means multiple, separate shipments" versus "put everything into the same shipment, even if it means it might take a little longer".

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#233

Post by jlgaddis »

cookiecaper wrote: post #77
mdasen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

NewEgg only has a couple of warehouses / distribution centers in the USA but one of them is about an hour away from me.

Recently, I needed a new SSD as quickly as possible and placed my order around 23:30 local time. Before noon the next day, I got an e-mail letting me know that it was ready to be picked up. Minus the drive, picking up the package was basically a five minute deal (i.e. out of my vehicle, going in and getting the package, and back into my truck took less than five minutes).

From now on, I'll only order from NewEgg when I need items urgently and am willing to make the two-hour (roundtrip) trek to pick them up, having been burnt by their shipping policy once before.

(Since someone will inevitably ask, I paid out the ass for one-day shipping only to receive my package three days later. Apparently, "one-day" only applies to actual shipping time. The two days my order was being "processed" didn't count.)

Just today, though, I found myself wishing both NewEgg and Amazon (who has their own distribution center very near to NewEgg's) had a walk-in retail storefront nearby. There is a Fry's about 90 minutes away but sometimes I just want to go in and browse and find things I wasn't really looking for or expecting.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#234

Post by jlgaddis »

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…

Thanks for the tip about Shop Runner. I hadn't heard of it before now but a quick look shows a couple of stores listed that I order from often enough that it will make the -- free (thanks AmEx!) -- membership worth signing up for.

I recently (during 4Q15) built myself a new server and ordered nearly everything from Amazon (with the exception of ordering half of the SSDs and HDDs from NewEgg, and picking up a spare one of each from a nearby Fry's).

I chose to order from Amazon both because of the free two-day (Prime) shipping and also because I had a new Discover card. In 4Q, Discover gives you 5% back on purchases on Amazon. In addition, at the end of the first year, they double all your cash back. Thus, in effect, I got an extra 10% discount off of all my Amazon purchases during 4Q (which added up to a few thousand dollars), although I won't "see" it until basically the end of 2016.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#235

Post by fermuch »

valdiorn wrote: post #134
Sir_Substance wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Quick question: 2.5 years means "two years and five months", or "two years and six months"?

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#236

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #228
Sir_Substance wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh jesus buddy, there's always one of you. If you care that much go find a mod to ban me (or are you a mod? I don't care), and I'll go find some other corner of the internet. You're welcome to slowly turn this place into a dustbowl by bitching at people for having conversations if that's what you enjoy doing in a community, don't let me stop you, but let me remind you of this: You weren't involved in the conversation…

Yes, I'm a moderator here, and I agree, moderation comments are tedious and annoying (to write, as well as to read). Please follow the rules from now on. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#237

Post by rpgmaker »

biggerfisch wrote: post #174
rpgmaker wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Their site is unbearably bloated with scripts and whatnot I don't think most people (outside of HN for sure and still a lot within HN) actually run NoScript or something that makes them aware of the number of scripts on a page. And frankly, 99.9% of the time, I don't care about that.

I wasn't talking about the number of scripts (even though it does have a lot) but about how unresponsive the site is at times because of said scripts.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#238

Post by manigandham »

fermuch wrote: post #235
valdiorn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quick question: 2.5 years means "two years and five months", or "two years and six months"?

Commonly converting to decimals like that means 2.5 is read as 2 and a half = 2 years 6 months.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#239

Post by DanBC »

t0mbstone wrote: post #203

This article seems to be talking about books, in particular. 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.

> Did Amazon once offer free shipping to people who didn't have Prime?

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?

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#240

Post by DanBC »

freehunter wrote: post #185
x0x0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different reaction. I view prime plus the occasional markup as a convenience fee. I'm paying to not spend an hour to 90 minutes of my life driving to the (poorly stocked) Target near me, hunting for the item I want that they may or may not have in stock, checking out, and driving back home. And I'm ok with that.

And to add to that, I'm not hunting around the Internet for the best deal, because I don't want to hand my card number out to everyone online. I'm willing to pay a little more to know who has my credit card number and who doesn't. The time it takes me to cancel a card, get a new one, and change all my auto-payments to reflect the new card is worth a few dollars more. I didn't get a Raspberry Pi at launch because I ha…

> because I had never heard of RS Components or Element 14, and I sure as hell wasn't given my card number to someone I didn't know

Farnell is significantly larger than Newegg or sparkfun or adafruit (even if you combine them). RPi distributes via Farnell or RS because many schools and colleges - the target audience for original RPi - will have accounts at RS or Farnell already.

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