Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 241 posts

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#201

Post by graeme »

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.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#202

Post by cdr »

copperx wrote: post #63
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely. Amazon seems to have made it clear that if you don't have Prime, they'd :RATHER: you shopped somewhere else. Arbitrary sets of items like certain Blu-ray discs or even like... razor blade replacements and diapers will randomly get set as "Prime exclusive items" for no reason with no warning. Suddenly, buying a $10 Blu-ray requires you buy a $100 Prime subscription to go with it. And customers have found that…

That's true, but without the 15% profit margin cap that wholesale clubs have. Lately I've found that certain Prime items (home decor and kitchen stuff) are 20-25% more expensive than what I can get them for locally.

Amazon prices change constantly. Even minute-to-minute sometimes.

At least on most of the stuff I've checked on CamelCamelCamel, Amazon has the lowest price on something maybe one day out of ten. Which is another way they push you towards Prime; if you have Prime, setting a price alert and buying it the day the price is the cheapest on Amazon is simple (assuming you can wait). If you're trying to combine items to get non-Prime free shipping, though, one item might be cheapest but the rest almost certainly won't.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#203

Post by t0mbstone »

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.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#204

Post by cdr »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #163
DiabloD3 wrote: post #129

Since everyone is sharing their Amazon stories, I shall add mine: Story 1: Buying the brand of catfood I do is cheaper through Amazon. I'd buy seven 24 can cases (one of each flavor) every 6 months or so, qualifying for the 15% subscribe and save bonus, plus charge it to my Amazon store card, getting another 5% on top of that. Local stores charge $25 a case, Amazon averages out to a little more than $22 or so a case…

I feel as if these horror stories are why Amazon wants to get heavily into the shipping/delivery/freight industries these days. They can't rely on the shipping services currently available to handle their wares reliably and professionally.

Every single time I've had something come damaged from Amazon (which is far too often), it's been from inadequate/incompetent packing on Amazon's part. When you put a 20 lb item loose in a box with a bunch of other fragile items, the carrier is not remotely at fault when everything arrives crushed.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#205

Post by ld00d »

envy2 wrote: post #5

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.

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.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#206

Post by zschuessler »

norea-armozel wrote: post #161

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…

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.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#207

Post by massysett »

esaym wrote: post #28

I figured this would happen soon enough. I just hope they leave Prime alone. I try hard not to "abuse" it any. I normally try to select the free no rush shipping and save the free 2 day shipping to the things I actually do need quickly when/if that need pops up. Having free shipping on any order has certainly changed my online shopping habits over the years. Other than food, I pretty much don't even go to the store f…

I'm the opposite and will use the Prime Same Day if it is free, even if I know I will not need the item for a week. I pay for Prime and I want the 2 day delivery I paid for. If it's not profitable that's Amazon's problem, not mine.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#208

Post by Tempest1981 »

koyote wrote: post #146
kartickv wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah that is exactly my point. Additionally Amazon has added more and more hurdles to the buying process such as add-on items and items shipped from a merchant who has his own shipping charges which do not count towards the 'free shipping minimum'. All of these things make the whole buying process for the customer ever more frustrating.

But while searching for that £0.10 item, some users will find another £10 item. That may be their strategy.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#209

Post by cfcef »

asheldon wrote: post #94
chubot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I also cancelled my prime subscription, for the exact same reasons as you. Their prices aren't as good as they used to be -- I shop around now. All this stupid "add-on" shipping stuff is silly and was making my life a bigger hassle. I like Amazon because it was quick and efficient to buy, but that seemed to cause unnecessary friction. And the real reason is that they made it very difficult to cancel Prime! 5 mon…

"there was no way to cancel at the 1 year mark" From personal experience, if you cancel "now", it simply doesn't renew at the one year mark. You still get the prime benefits you already paid for until then.

Ditto. I signed up for the free Prime offer, after a while decided it wasn't going to be worthwhile for me (a lot of the total delay between ordering and receiving seems to be on Amazon's warehouses' end of things, and not USPS/UPS physically moving it to my house), canceled, and kept using it for the rest of the month without problem.

Re: Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

#210

Post by gherkin0 »

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.

It sounds to me like the algorithm is deliberately trying to outsource some of the "free" shipping cost to customers.

It's sort of like that bank transaction-ordering scandal from a few years ago, where banks ordered transactions unintuitively to maximize overdraft penalties.

Post reply on HN