Amazon raises free shipping minimum to $35

[hagios]

C'Mon Man! In this bad economy & near the Holidays, that's just down right lame IMO.

This is bad news for me. I've bought a lot from Amazon & them raising the free shipping minimum to $35 will cause me to buy less & less from them.

It hurts to w/the B & M for me, b/c they usually do not have all the bd & dvd titles I want. That's what I used Amazon mostly for.

I would like to see them lower their $$ of bds & dvds, which are getting higher & higher, unless there is the occasional sale! Then this would justify that higher shipping, I could get 7 bds @ $5 a piece, then I'd be !

C'MON MAN WEEK 5 2013 - YouTube

[djgeneral]

Prime is worth it alone just for the Holiday season about to start. I still love Amazon because of no tax but that could also be changing for MI as well. I have like nearly $200 in giftcards I've been saving for the holiday so I might need to hurry and use that. since the main reason I use amazon is to get rid of tax.

[Kryptonic]

Originally Posted by wormraper

depends. Amazon has been blocking sales of new items for quite a while and only allowing major sellers to sell their items, amazon has been playing the bully for a while now.

Yeah, I know. It's a pain. But with the newer items, it becomes available to sell after a few months. It's very odd sometimes the things they block from normal sellers too. Like old TV seasons and stuff. Weird. This is partly the reason I think there's so many great deals to be found on Ebay lately.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

Yeah, I know. It's a pain. But with the newer items, it becomes available to sell after a few months. It's very odd sometimes the things they block from normal sellers too. Like old TV seasons and stuff. Weird. This is partly the reason I think there's so many great deals to be found on Ebay lately.

yeah, but months later the items have lost 1/2 their value and isn't worth selling on there when you can get double that on half.com or CL...

and yeah, that's probably why great deals have been coming up on Ebay lately. Amazon's been driving business away from their third party sellers

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by djgeneral

Prime is worth it alone just for the Holiday season about to start. I still love Amazon because of no tax but that could also be changing for MI as well. I have like nearly $200 in giftcards I've been saving for the holiday so I might need to hurry and use that. since the main reason I use amazon is to get rid of tax.

We'll all be paying taxes for online purchases sooner or later.

[Joxx]

The $35 minimum will make it even more difficult for me to find enough stuff to buy, and forget most preorders now. Usually I could preorder one upcoming release and the pre-coupon, pre-adjustment price would qualify for FS. Now that'll probably never be the case. Most of the time when I see a single item on sale I pass on Amazon and try to PM it at Target (or BB). Of course with dwindling store inventories it's getting harder and harder to find stuff in stock to PM.

I still don't buy enough to justify Prime, and I haven't had time to do a detailed comparison of Netflix vs. Prime videos to see if it's worthwhile. All I know is Netflix's selection is disappointing, so I'd expect Amazon's to be worse.

I also heard that some items called "add-ons" require a $35 minimum even with Prime? Could someone quickly explain why they call those items "add-ons"?

[Monterey Jack]

[obssessive]

Ridiculous...
Amazon

[tylerdurden10]

Well there goes alot of my impulse buys during Black Friday

I was fortunate enough to have free prime shipping the last 4 years during the holidays, but now with this increase I guess I'll have to just get stuff price matched at B&M stores.

[deltasun]

Prime is definitely the next thing to go up. If I weren't getting it for free, I don't know that I would have it. Anyway, with postage going up as well as all the frivolous returns, etc., it's not a surprise.

[MaCruz]

I'm a Prime member for another year so won't feel it just yet.

[HyperRealist]

Glad I pay $16 a year for Prime.

[Mr.Briggs]

I had used several free Prime offers but finally bought a full year's worth in late August & am very happy now that I did.

[agoofykindasuperman]

In Canada, it is still $25 for free shipping, but who knows if they will follow suit....

[JaseT]

Originally Posted by MEHEARTJC

Prime is especially awesome if you are a fan of History Channel shows. I have streamed like 200 episodes of Pawn Stars so far.

That's a lot of Chumlee.

[Louisville Slugger]

Amazon should make it cheaper for existing Prime members to renew.

First timers should have to pay $79 a year, but a renewal should be cheaper.

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

I'm expecting Prime to jump to at least $89, maybe even $99.

That is the next shoe to drop. Amazon is pushing hard for profitability in the 4th quarter and Prime is likely going to $99.

[basketb]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

I'm expecting Prime to jump to at least $89, maybe even $99.

$89 maybe, $99 not likely

[Show spoiler](as it is not a prime number)

There recently was an interesting interview on NPR about amazon (transcript here: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcr...ryId=232204962 ). To quote the relevant paragraphs about Prime:

[Show spoiler]

GROSS: Amazon has this program, Amazon Prime. It's kind of like you pay a fee of $79 and then all your shipping is free for the rest of the year. And reading your book, it made it seem like that $79 was kind of arbitrary and they really had no idea when they came up with that, whether that was going to be profitable or whether it would lose money.

STONE: It was absolutely arbitrary. Amazon over the previous years - before they introduced Prime - had perfected the art of kind of fast tracking shipments in its fulfillment centers. So you could pay extra to get something in two days or three days. And they basically decided to take this capability and turn it into a loyalty service. You know, actually Bezos had met with Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco. It was an enormously important coffee that they had and Sinegal, who is a great, you know, generous guy, explained the whole Costco model, which is a remarkable one. People pay to shop at Costco, and I think, you know, that had a sort of big impact on Jeff Bezos. And that's what Prime is, you know, people are paying to get, you know, reliable two-day delivery. But, you know, there's nothing free about it, it is $79 a year.

When they were originating Prime, they had really no idea, you know, how often people would order and how much it would cost to expedite all these shipments. Seventy-nine dollars was basically selected because it's a prime number and because it didn't seem like it was giving too much away or that it was too expensive.

GROSS: Does Amazon think it's making money with that program?

STONE: Well, Prime right now is absolutely central to everything Amazon does. I mean it's no longer just a two-day shipping program. You sign up for Prime and you get access to their, you know, to their video offerings. If you own a Kindle, you get to rent one e-book for free at a time. In fact, Amazon has really gone and built a whole separate business around Prime. It would be enormously difficult for anyone, for any analyst, to figure out if Prime is profitable or not, because it really creates an intangible - which is a customer's loyalty to Amazon.

Often, if you're a prime member, you use Amazon for most of your shopping. You know, you're more likely to buy a Kindle or a Kindle Fire tablet and you're, sort of, all Amazon, all the time.

[MoulinBlu]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

Yeah, I know. It's a pain. But with the newer items, it becomes available to sell after a few months. It's very odd sometimes the things they block from normal sellers too. Like old TV seasons and stuff. Weird. This is partly the reason I think there's so many great deals to be found on Ebay lately.

A few months? Try 6 to 10. By the time you can resell your used discs on amazon demand has dropped dramatically, and for what little demand there is left, the market has been flooded with ex-rentals, which most vendors don't clarify, so even legit used-item sellers, selling discs that are complete, full retail versions that have only been watched once, have to compete with rental prices so low, it's not worth selling, at least not after amazons high commission. If you don't resell it on ebay long before amazon removes their selling restriction, you're better off holding onto it for a few years in the hopes that it'll go OOP or at least the supply of ex-rentals have been exhausted so that the price has normalized.

[basketb]

why is everybody so hung up solely about the shipping costs? Isn't the item cost + shipping cost (+ tax) the deciding factor? And you buy wherever that is the cheapest?