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Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

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Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#41

Post by oldmanjay »

aluhut wrote: post #17
jerf wrote: post #4

I don't get it. As an incentive to sign up for Prime it makes no sense; Prime needs to offer me things I can't get elsewhere (or at least not for the same price), not return to me things that I can easily get elsewhere. I just spot-checked Amazon US's price for GTA 5, 39.88 [1], and it's the exact same price at Wal-Mart [2], so it's not an exclusive deal or something. (Nor did I spend several minutes hunting for a co…

I guess they try to hit people like me. I have only one online shopping account connected to my real name. It's on Amazon. Back then I got it to buy books in english. It worked pretty well for some time with other products too. However. Seeing this, I would rather pirate the game then allow them to force me into Prime. Thanks to the messed up DHL delivery guys here I already started to discover shops in my area again…

This has the be the weakest justification I have ever seen for piracy and believe me, I've seen a few.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#42

Post by morganvachon »

gtk40 wrote: post #37
tehwebguy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: - They cost more than the free shipping threshold, giving shipping away free - New games are low profit to begin with - Amazon sells enough of these that they are already in every distribution center - Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free This is just bringing some video game sales into alignment with what Amazon wanted Prime to…

Granted I don't buy video games with Prime, but my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

> ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items.

I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro area (though not quite inside the perimeter). Before I joined Prime, even a non-Prime eligible item would tend to arrive in 1-2 days.

I did call Amazon about the issue several months ago, and they offered me gift card credit equal to the non-Prime shipping cost of all shipments that didn't meet the guaranteed date, and since then I've only had one late shipment. It definitely pays to contact them about it; I know from working for a company that sells on Amazon that the customer is treated like royalty whenever there's an issue, whether it's with Marketplace or Amazon direct sales.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#43

Post by justinlardinois »

As someone who buys video games on Amazon relatively often and isn't a Prime member, this is nothing new. Every now and then a game will drop in price a bit but be Prime Exclusive, and then a week or two later it will go back to its original price and be available to everyone again. It's mildly annoying, but I think this article makes it sound like a much bigger deal than it is.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#44

Post by Filligree »

snegu wrote: post #35
Filligree wrote: post #31

I can't sign up for Prime. They don't offer it in the country I'm in. So this amounts to saying that they don't want my money. Very well; there are other options.

Highly unlikely that they're going to implement this in countries that don't have Prime.

There is no Amazon site for Ireland.

I can buy things from any of their sites. However...

- Amazon.co.uk refuses to ship a number of items outside of Great Britain.

- Amazon.com has expensive shipping (obviously), and now this thing.

- Amazon.de doesn't usually help. Besides, I can't read German.

Looking at the Grand Theft Auto example, it's available from Amazon.com but not Amazon.co.uk; the latter, as mentioned, refuses to ship it to me. Amazon.com... might not; I can't tell, now can I? It refuses to let me add to cart without having a Prime membership.

So it looks to me like they've done exactly that.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#45

Post by justinlardinois »

newjersey wrote: post #36
tehwebguy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: - They cost more than the free shipping threshold, giving shipping away free - New games are low profit to begin with - Amazon sells enough of these that they are already in every distribution center - Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free This is just bringing some video game sales into alignment with what Amazon wanted Prime to…

> Every unit Amazon ships probably arrives in a "Prime" amount of time anyway, giving away expedited shipping for free Just to add a note that this isn't always true. Sometimes they withhold shipping even though they have the item in stock at the nearby distribution center.

This is definitely true. Back in the pre-Prime days (ie, 5+ years ago) Amazon would send your package as soon as they possibly could, and even with the super saver shipping you'd still often get your order less than the minimum 5 days.

Now I'll order something on Amazon (not a Prime member) and they'll sit on the package for a week and then overnight it to me.

I'm not a fan. Paying more for faster shipping didn't used to mean that cheaper/free shipping always took longer, it just meant that you were guaranteed to get it quickly.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#46

Post by [deleted] »

morganvachon wrote: post #42
gtk40 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted I don't buy video games with Prime, but my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I live in one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

> ...my orders with free shipping due to price threshold tend to be significantly slower than Prime, often taking weeks for items of all Prime eligible items. I've had the opposite experience (and posted about it here before). Since I joined Prime last year, I've had issues with the guaranteed 2 day shipping taking 3-4 days or sometimes a week. I don't live in the backwoods either; I'm well within the Atlanta metro a…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#47

Post by AnkhMorporkian »

gdulli wrote: post #13

Ever since there started being discounts for Prime-only members I knew it was the beginning of the end of my using Amazon. My last online order was with Walgreens. I never tried them before but I googled for the product I had in my Amazon cart, it was cheaper at Walgreens, I added a few things to get up to $35 for free shipping, those things were also cheaper than on Amazon. I got the delivery faster than my last few…

You might look into PriceBlink. It's a pretty slick extension that automatically finds better deals for the items you're browsing.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/priceblink/aoiidod...

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#48

Post by inoop »

jerf wrote: post #4

I don't get it. As an incentive to sign up for Prime it makes no sense; Prime needs to offer me things I can't get elsewhere (or at least not for the same price), not return to me things that I can easily get elsewhere. I just spot-checked Amazon US's price for GTA 5, 39.88 [1], and it's the exact same price at Wal-Mart [2], so it's not an exclusive deal or something. (Nor did I spend several minutes hunting for a co…

Calm down. Probably some engineer made a mistake that caused a bunch of items to be incorrectly labeled as prime-only. A bunch of vidya nerds couldn't buy they favorite shooter anymore, made a post about it, and Amazon rolled back.

As others have pointed out in this thread, this makes no sense as a deliberate move.

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#49

Post by paulmd »

mindslight wrote: post #40
potatolicious wrote: post #8

This seems oddly customer-hostile, which is something I've grown to expect from tech companies but not Amazon in specific. One can't help but wonder if the damage this does to the brand outweighs the strategic gains through Prime subscriptions. After all, selection and availability is a huge part of Amazon's secret sauce to success, more so than customer service, shipping speed, or any other concern. If customers los…

Amazon is the only place I have seen blatant user-targeted dark patterns. "Order within the next hour to ship today". Four hours later: "order within the next 2 hours to ship today". Never mind the lowest-bid delivery acting like this is the first package they've ever handled (a phone call, really?), or email spam from checking a price. I believe a short time after a company acquires a reputation, customers develop a…

I think their shipping windows are often just messed up. I've had the opposite situation too, where it says that an item must be ordered within the next 2 hours and then when I get to checkout the window is already passed for the day.

I'm wondering whether the ship timer on the item page isn't quite accurate, and the one on the checkout goes through and does a warehouse-by-warehouse check to see where the nearest warehouse that has stock and also isn't closed is. As east-coast warehouses close you might get additional availability windows from west-coast warehouses, and their algorithm might not be doing an exhaustive search of when the last possible warehouse that has stock will close.

I'm not saying that it isn't a dark pattern, but there are still some "incompetence" explanations before we need to jump to "malice".

Re: Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games

#50

Post by scintill76 »

throwanem wrote: post #39
zzleeper wrote: post #28

Is there a reason for non-console players to even buy in DVD form anymore, instead of Steam or similar markets? I mean, I get that if you live in Canada or Australia your bandwidth sucks and you have caps, but for most cases download speeds are way faster than DVD shipping speeds.

I've heard a few people express concerns around whether they actually own Steam games, and whether those games might suddenly be pulled or otherwise made unavailable without the courtesy of a purchase price refund. I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but on the other hand, to the best of my knowledge that's never actually happened, so...

Maybe not Steam or games, but Amazon has remotely pulled back digital books they sold to their customers (with refund though): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
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