Competitive note: Walmart does free shipping at $50 orders as well. Seems like this just shows that Amazon didn't think that they needed the additional $15 advantage.
Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
191–200 of 241 posts
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#192This 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…
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.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The non-amazon shipped stuff on Amazon honestly had been a pain ever since they introduced it. If you have prime it mostly is just a huge nuisance.
A lot of it is such JUNK, too. Amazon has no qualms whatsoever about selling stuff that, frankly, belongs in the garbage. I've cooled off on Amazon a lot since earlier years because shopping on there is an experience fraught with angst thanks to trying to find the best trade-off between price and utility. Oftentimes the cheapest items for any given category (e.g. snorkel masks and touchscreen gloves, two recent thing…
There are a lot of (POS) counterfeit goods as well. It is very difficult to be certain you're purchasing the genuine article. At least this has been my experience purchasing electronics from merchants on Amazon in recent years.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
$100/year is nice but $0 is nicer. It's usually not hard to combine items to reach the free shipping threshold, and there are plenty of alternatives if that doesn't work.
For me at least, the $100/year is quickly made up in those instances when I need overnight shipping. Prime gets you free 2 day and really cheap ($5 or so) overnight. Having some random part break and be here the next day is a godsend.
If you need it then I can see where it would be totally worth it. Personally, I'm not sure I've ever had something to order online where I needed it overnight.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#195I 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 th…
> They either have a fantastic shipping deal or they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true.
Both are true.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#196Earlier 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…
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)
They could also just tell you "the items you want to buy cost $X for shipping" where X just happens to drop to 0 under certain circumstances. This is what everyone except Amazon does. Charging for shipping is entirely understandable. I too love free shipping, but it's actually us that have been spoiled by Amazon.
And with Amazon's low prices and 5% cashback I'm pretty sure even if they started charging for shipping that it would be still cheaper than anywhere else ...
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
£0.01 sim-card for next time: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299J...
Ah, nice one! Can't believe I paid the extra 9p for a pill box instead :)
Supposedly http://www.fillerchecker.co.uk/ will help you find products to help hit that £20 total but a lot of their numbers seem to be off.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#198It 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.
I just ordered a few things from Jet.com and it was split into 3 shipments. A shipment of 1 item came within 2 days. A shipment of 3 items is on its way somewhere (although the tracking number gives no real details). The final shipment of 1 item is still 'processing' 4 business days later. It was supposed to be 2-5 day shipping, but I don't see the third item getting to me by tomorrow. We'll see, I guess.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#199Sometimes I have a better experience looking up something on Amazon, finding the site of the merchant and ordering from them directly. Especially when things are not fulfilled by Amazon.
I let my prime membership lapse last year as I realized I was picking Amazon by default for a lot of things that were cheaper elsewhere.
Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49
#200I 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…
I've yet to encounter a situation where saving a few bucks on an item was worth the combined cost of paying shipping at another site plus risking having to deal with their customer service. Just in the last two months my Amazon experiences have included: - Bought a ~$60 item to give as a gift, that didn't arrive on time and the tracking info hadn't updated since it left the Amazon facility. Contacted them the day it…
I agree that Amazon is amazing at customer service. But, then again, so is NewEgg (in my experience). I've rarely had to deal with returns, but they definitely ship and deliver when they say they will; probably more reliably than Amazon, in my experience (though I order more from Amazon, so I may be skewing it in favor of NewEgg due to less negative experiences, even if the percentages are the same).
That said, two of your examples of great customer service are examples of poor quality in the shipping stage of your order. Amazon didn't deliver on time in one case, and Amazon didn't package the item properly in the third case. Amazon doesn't get an A+ from me for shipping me damaged goods or for losing something and then shipping a new one. (Though it happens to every vendor, and I'm sure Amazon is among the best at not screwing up the shipping process; the best customer service experience for me means I don't have to think about it...it just arrives, on time, complete, and functional.)
But, smaller companies are often much more difficult to work with, in general. I had to order some replacement parts for my motorhome from a small RV parts dealer because Amazon didn't carry them, and handling a cancellation (before shipping) and ordering a new item instead, required multiple phone calls and emails. It also took them several days to get it shipped out (I mean, it was literally several days before they put it in a box and handed it to UPS to be delivered to me).
It's hard to compete with Amazon on a small scale, is what I'm trying to say, but on big ticket items, I'm often willing to shop around. If a trustworthy vendor I've dealt with before has the item in stock for $100+ less, I'm buying from them and not buying from Amazon. It's just happening more and more often lately.