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Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

281 points by silveira 11y ago

tristanj 11y ago
One look at their finances and it's clear why they're doing this. According to their SEC filings, last year Amazon brought in $6.5 billion in shipping revenue [1], and spent $11.5 billion on shipping costs. Take those numbers together and they lost $5.0 billion subsidizing shipping. They lose more money on shipping every year than most startups make in a decade. It's a huge cost on their budget, not hard to see why management is trying to cut costs. [1] Includes some revenue earned from Amazon Prime memberships; excludes shipping revenue of third-party sellers not under the Fulfilled by Amazon program Data is from page 26 of their 10-K, linked below https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416000172/amzn-20151231x10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416...
- deleted 11y ago
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- mdasen 11y ago
  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 to actually be purchasable by customers somehow. Retail shops sink costs in their stores. It's made up for by the margins on the items they sell. I'm not saying that Amazon shouldn't try to minimize their losses on shipping just as stores should figure out whether having one retail presence in a city is more cost effective than having two. But I think a more interesting piece for me would be a comparison of Amazon's shipping costs to other retailers' storefront costs. If the $5B in shipping subsidies is way lower than what Walmart or BestBuy are paying in "storefront subsidies", it isn't necessarily something so outrageous. It's a cost of doing business. $5B sounds like a lot of money (and indeed it is), but what is it compared to the storefront costs of competitors? How much does Amazon save by having highly-productive warehouse workers as opposed to lower-productive retail employees?* Maybe $5B is huge compared to what Walmart spends on its retail presence. Maybe Amazon warehouses aren't much more efficient than BestBuy stores. Or Maybe this is simply a move that Amazon is making because it thinks it has gained enough market power (and enough buy-in to Prime) to start making anti-consumer moves rather than a cost that's unsustainable compared to the costs of retail. Walmart's revenue was $485.7 billion in 2015. Amazon's revenue was $107B last year. Spending less than 5% of revenue on getting the products to the customers doesn't sound outrageous. Does it seem likely that Walmart spends $24B on store-front costs that Amazon doesn't have to get their revenue? You're not wrong that companies will try to cut costs. I guess my question is simply: is this really an onerous cost compared to revenue (as judged by what competing retail firms pay)? If it's par for the course (or less), it feels like Amazon flexing its market power against consumers. If it is an onerous cost compared to what Walmart or BestBuy have to spend, then life has crappy trade-offs that need to be made to make things reasonable. *This isn't a dig at retail employees. It's just pointing out that when customer traffic is low at a retail venue, they're around with less to do. By contrast, warehouse workers can be utilized more efficiently.
  - achow 11y ago
    You make very good points. For comparison, the lease amount of Target's Canadian (failed) expansion was for $1.3B USD for 220 stores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada [Edit] Target USA stores as of May 2015: 1795 http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/05/22/what-is-the-future-for-target-stores/#642f3c9b8686 http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/05/22/what-is-th... Amazon's $5B shipping loss now almost looks quaint, if one factors in absence of retail stores and presence of handful number of Warehouses.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    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 drop off every hour, and the customer completes the last mile and goes to pick up his package at the designated UPS Store within 2-4 hours from the time he placed the order. I'm sure they've already considered all this kind of navel-gazing, but if customers were able to pick up within 3-4 hours of placing an order under this type of system, it'd be awesome, and I think a big win for Amazon. One of the worst things about ordering on Amazon, even as a Prime member who lives in a place where free same-day is often available, is having to wait around with no control over when the product will arrive. This would beat free same-day, which for us rarely arrives before 8:30pm no matter how early you get the order in after midnight. Really Wal-Mart and Amazon are not so different. The difference is that Wal-Mart keeps quantities of the product within driving distance of 90% of the population, so they can have the product a half-hour after deciding they need/want it. The ability to close this gap has got to be one of the most important milestones for online retail. Ad-hoc delivery networks like UberEats are kind of already doing this. Sure would be a crazy turn of events if someone started to knock down Amazon's retail business by leveraging the latent bandwidth in the city's existing retail and crowd-sourced driver networks.
    - Cymen 11y ago
- vijayr 11y ago
  The problem isn't they increased the minimum order for free shipping or even that they charge for shipping - it is the deceptive advertising/wording. Among the big companies, Amazon has a reputation for treating their customers well (even if they screw their suppliers, workers etc). That seems to be slipping.
- swehner 11y ago
  That page has some explanations including what they will be doing, "We seek to mitigate costs of shipping over time in part through achieving higher sales volumes, optimizing placement of fulfillment centers, negotiating better terms with our suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. We believe that offering low prices to our customers is fundamental to our future success, and one way we offer lower prices is through shipping offers." Those explanations do not include what you're saying.
nmjohn 11y ago
FYI: Prime one/same-day shipping is still $35 - this only seems to apply to non-prime shipping.
dangrossman 11y ago
"Profit was held back by a big jump in fulfillment costs, which increased 32.8% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and nearly 25% for the full year. Amazon spent $4.55 billion in the fourth quarter to fulfill customers’ orders, up from $3.4 billion in the same quarter a year ago, and the increase cannot be explained away by increases in Amazon sales, as the percentage of revenues spent on shipping also increased, from 11.6% to 12.7%." [1] "There is more than loyalty at stake for Atlanta-based UPS. This year, its Amazon account exceeds $1 billion. ... The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year." [2] "Some analysts say the move could help position Amazon to offer shipping services to other companies, eventually competing with the likes of United Parcel Service and DHL Worldwide Express. ... Amazon rolled out thousands of its own trailers and launched an Uber-like delivery service last year to handle the so-called last mile of delivery, taking packages from distribution centers to customers' homes." [3] 1: http://www.marketwatch.com/mw2/palm/marketwatch/story.asp?guid=%7BB574014E-C615-11E5-B1F8-BB568A8AE505%7D http://www.marketwatch.com/mw2/palm/marketwatch/story.asp?gu... 2: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/amazon-seeks-to-ease-ties-with-ups-20151222-00789 http://www.nasdaq.com/article/amazon-seeks-to-ease-ties-with... 3: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-drops-hints-it-could-be-building-global-shipping-business-n514921 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-drops-hints-it-...
- Gustomaximus 11y ago
  > The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year. Thats still Amazing low cost considering what has to be done to deliver a parcel. Though I'm more surprised Amazon hasn't set up an Argos style business in high density cities. For those that dont know Argos it's in the UK and its basically a collection shopfront with catalogues infromt of the counter. You browse the catalogue, write down the numbers and staff go out the back and bring you what you asked for. They have a huge range and while strange at first shopping in person from a book catalogue it works amazingly well for a bunch of shopping needs. It would merge perfectly with a Amazon like business.
  - foota 11y ago
    Perhaps this is the kind of thing they're going for with for instance, their brick and mortar book stores?
envy2 11y ago
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.
- username223 11y ago
  I for one have never bothered with "Prime." It's not that hard to combine Amazon orders until they cross the "free" shipping threshold.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - jlmorton 11y ago
    Amazon Prime also comes with nearly Netflix-equivalent video on demand, nearly Spotify-equivalent streaming music, Prime Now 2-hour delivery, and currently free restaurant delivery a la GrubHub/Eat24 in a few cities, along with a bunch of other minor perks.
    - castell 11y ago
      I hope you and Amazon respect the decision of other customers who would rather not to even think about such stuff. Yet Amazon shows a full screen Prime advertisement & agreement with an small opt-out button on every checkout!
    - abecedarius 11y ago
      The increased bundling also came with an increased price, and that's why I canceled. I would have kept paying the original price for the original deal.
    - darklajid 11y ago
      Just like abecedarius, I cancelled the free shipping service when it became something I didn't want or need. Free shipping was great. I don't care about the rest (and cannot play it on my devices anyway. I try to avoid Flash, I don't want non-generic-purpose hardware like a FireTV or something and you cannot access the Prime content from my Kodi/Pi2 in any reasonable fashion). If you like that offer it might be a great deal. If you pay the full price and only use/get a tiny fraction though...
sirkneeland 11y ago
First reaction: "NOOOOOOOO" Second reaction: "It appears this does NOT apply to Amazon Prime." I am assuming this is gamed to drive further conversion to Prime membership then.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  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 usually, Target or Best Buy's websites offer the same products at the same price with free shipping... without Prime. Here's a thread with 248 people complaining, and Amazon definitely not caring: http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?_encoding=UTF8&authToken=&cdForum=Fx1UE1R6VSVMXK7&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx2BC0NP5Y2RKMW http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?_enco... Amazon is very quickly turning into the online version of Costco, and I think they've decided they're okay with that.
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    Frankly, I think it's a fair deal. I gladly pay the Prime fee and in return can be very sure that products will arrive tomorrow. I value that certainty and immediate availability. And that's not even considering the video and music services which I don't use that much.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      I never said it wasn't a fair deal. It is, if you want it. But if arrival timing isn't critical, and you don't order enough time sensitive items for it to be worth it, and you don't watch Prime Video, it may not be a good purchase for you. Prime is a very good service, but it isn't for everyone. Amazon is seemingly telling everyone who it isn't for to take a hike.
  - copperx 11y ago
kdamken 11y ago
They are really trying to force you into signing up for prime, aren't they? I cancelled my prime subscription at the start of the year. Some thoughts: - I buy less stuff on impulse. Since the price limit is (or was) $35 for free shipping, I usually have to wait until there are enough things I really want/need before ordering. - The pricing is often better other places. Normally Amazon's non prime price will be comparable, but then shipping fees will be like 7 or 8 bucks, while other places have cheaper, faster, or even free shipping. - If you do have prime, not everything with prime has free shipping. For small things they have "add on items", which don't ship to you until you have $25 worth of stuff in your cart. It wasn't always like this, and it was a big negative for me. I had signed up for prime because I didn't want to pay for quick shipping. Now I had to wait until there were other things I needed to hit their arbitrary number. I ran the numbers over my three year subscription period with them and it turned out I wasn't buying enough stuff to make the math work. Maybe when it was $79, but at the current price it's just not worth it. It's like they're going out of their way to piss off customers.
- 13of40 11y ago
  > I buy less stuff on impulse. I've always got a couple of running "projects" and it's really nice to have Prime if I find out I need to buy a 20 Mhz oscillator, or a magneto cover gasket, or a pink buggy whip mid-stream.
  - kdamken 11y ago
    I know what you mean - that's why I was so disappointed when they started marking small things "Add on items". Suddenly I needed to make it a $25 order just to get the free shipping.
- deleted 11y ago
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- frik 11y ago
  The Prime-nag-screen on every checkout is so annoying as well. The "no thanks" cancel link is very small and changed its location the last few months. Increasing the delivery time just to introduce Prime (I lived in an early test region of Prime back then). Loyal customers that buy from the online shop since 1999, don't count anymore. If I as customer decide that I don't want your subscription service, better respect it!
CamperBob2 11y ago
Hmm. Being a Prime subscriber, I had no idea you could even get free shipping without Prime.
- fma 11y ago
  Yeah back in the day it was $25 for free shipping, then they bumped to $35, now $49. The free shipping is not the same speed as prime. Prime gives you 2 days. Free shipping is just that..free regular ground shipping which could take a few days to get to you.
- BogusIKnow 11y ago
  Nice marketing work by Amazon, eh? Had the same thought.
deftnerd 11y ago
This 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. I simply removed that item but instead of having two $50 boxes, the shopping cart removed an item from a box and put it into a box by itself to ensure that I had to pay shipping. I spent two hours adding and removing items to discover that there is no way to get free shipping for multiple items anymore. Eventually I contacted customer service and they said they would take care of it and ship it in one box with no shipping cost. Three weeks later and my order finally shipped, in 5 boxes, with 5 shipping fees charged to my card.
- wfunction 11y ago
  This is pretty epic. Did you call them back and demand a refund?
- chx 11y ago
  I believe if you buy Amazon items then, even if they split the shipment, they won't charge you. The above sounds like you were buying from different merchants.
  - ajmurmann 11y ago
    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.
    - stanmancan 11y ago
      I always make sure I check off the "Prime Eligible" checkbox when searching Amazon. It sucks to find an item, go to buy it, and finding out it's going to take 4 weeks and $25 to ship from the UK or something.
eva1984 11y ago
Not surprising, they lose money for shipping. With the competition going down, they might feel it is a good time for price bump.
danielconde 11y ago
It 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.
- sremani 11y ago
  jet.com is OK. For most of the stuff, they are reliable but books, they rely on Barnes and Noble and at times there is delay in delivery. Also your discount increases the more items you add to the cart, so jet actually encourages you to make one big shopping cart with their system.
  - wantreprenr007 11y ago
    Sadly, Amazon can just undercut and outspend them. "Competition is for losers" - Thiel
- aniket_ray 11y ago
  I've been comparing and buying on either Jet or Amazon recentlly. As a result, I've been buying on Jet more frequently. Jet has a smaller selection but they usually have a good enough range on the price-value curve that it's not a big problem. Like for like, they are indeed cheaper than Amazon and free 2 day delivery is always a plus. Of course their model is lower prices with a bit more delayed deliveries.
- wambotron 11y ago
  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.
deleted 11y ago
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tempestn 11y ago
I'm curious whether they would revert the change if they saw a large dip in sales as a result, and if so, how large it would have to be (relative to the savings on shipping costs).
esaym 11y ago
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 for anything. Even clothes, I just buy the brands I know fit me well off of ebay used (and been doing that for like that last 8 years now)
- ianai 11y ago
  I don't consider using Prime to be abuse...but I also place a preference on buying locally when I can.
  - copperx 11y ago
    I don't think it's abuse either, but back when Prime was $79 and small items shipped free, I cringed at the thought of buying, say, a pack of razors from Amazon. It felt wrong.
    - hga 11y ago
      Exactly, it offends my sensibilities to order such things 2nd day unless I'm likely to really need them that quickly. And with their incentives for slower shipping (but still pretty fast as a rule) like $1 in free digital goods for a limited time (a few months) they recognize that. They also use it to promote their Pantry system (regular bulky subscriptions that some in big monthly boxes). And it makes me feel non-abusive when I order something for 2nd day that's close to the line. In general I find it a sane system, would be even more so if I didn't live behind a slow broadband connection and had made my household 100% Linux.
      - matwood 11y ago
        Like you when I need something small, I usually just add it to my next Amazon shipment. Pantry and Subscribe and Save have almost made it where I do not have to go to the grocery store. Add in something like Blue Apron for fresh dinners and I may never have to go to the grocery again. I miss when I lived in Denver and had a milk man. Every week he would deliver milk (obviously), eggs, bacon, bread, juice, etc...
SwellJoe 11y ago
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 Shop Runner (which I get free when I pay with my American Express), the difference in experience, cost, and time to deliver is competitive. NewEgg got my server hardware purchases, saving me several hundred dollars on a ~$3000 order. An RV parts vendor sold me an RV air conditioner for ~$200 less than Amazon. I'm shopping for a tankless water heater right now, which is about $160 less from other vendors. And, on the lower end, when Amazon first started doing subscription groceries, they were competitively priced; now, not so much. I find I prefer just buying what I need when I need it from local grocery stores. I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but it's much less than it used to be. And, I don't know if Amazon knows what they're doing or not when choosing to lose these sales. Presumably the increased margins make up for the lower sales (or at least the loss of sales to me, which may not necessarily be the same as decreased sales overall). Surely they're doing the math. This is the same thing. I bought from Amazon before Prime partly because of the free shipping. The further away the free shipping gets, the harder it would be to choose Amazon over getting it local or from another vendor, I think.
- r00fus 11y ago
  Combine this with Google Shopping Express (next day on my doorstep) and you have a lot of reasons to not use Amazon anymore. Amazon Prime is still pretty awesome but I've had 3 returns in 4 months for incorrect or broken items (on Fulfilled by Amazon), and the pricing is not competitive with local retail (which Google Shopping matches for the items it does carry). For example, recently I tried to buy a toy etcher/engraver so I could carve initials on my kids toys. Only place I could find it was locally or through e-bay... Amazon did not have that.
- freyr 11y ago
  In the past year or two, I've noticed a dramatic rise in the number of counterfeit products. If you buy directly from Amazon, it generally seems ok, but all bets are off when you buy from a third party. I've also noticed the increased gaming of the reviews system. If you read reviews of many of the highest rated products, you often find that most are shills who are given products for free in exchange for "fair and unbiased reviews." Funny how many of their unbiased reviews award five stars. It's getting pretty bad.
nchelluri 11y ago
What was it before?
- rickyc091 11y ago
  $35 for free shipping.
- ksherlock 11y ago
  $25. Then $35. I forget what came before $25 -- back then, discount codes were so common it didn't really matter.
CodeWriter23 11y ago
They are trying to create lock-in via their customer loyalty program known as Amazon Prime.
cavisne 11y ago
Would love to be a fly on the wall when Amazon decided on this, it's pretty much opposite the leadership principles which are essentially a religion for the people who make decisions like this.
deepsun 11y ago
More incentive to apply for Prime membership. Prime locks in customers a little, which is good for business. Not for free market, though.
wantreprenr007 11y ago
Now that Amazon has a de-facto monopoly on distribution and fulfillment with around a billion skus that rivals the likes of WalMart, it's no surprise prices begin endlessly ratcheting up.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Monopoly is a very/overly strong word for what Amazon has (even when qualified as "de-facto").
zelcon5 11y ago
Despite the temptation to bikeshed Amazon, I'd have to say this is quite justified. Amazon seemed TOO cheap for a lot of things. It was amazing they made any money at all. Now that they have a monopoly, they can stop with the freebies.
pbreit 11y ago
I didn't realize anyone buys from Amazon who's not Prime. Only sort of kidding. At $100/year kind of a no-brainer.
- mikeash 11y ago
  $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.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    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.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      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.
- mkrfox 11y ago
  I don't buy enough in a year to justify it.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    You also get Music, Video, Photos, Now and a bunch of other stuff. No-brainer at $100/year.
    - mkrfox 11y ago
      It's a no-brainer if their offering appeals to you. For me, it does not. I get the stuff they offer for free/cheap from other services, and they tend to have a better selection for my interests.
yAnonymous 11y ago
Interesting. There have been rumors that Amazon are planning to set up their own delivery service in Germany, so they could possibly go from losing money to making money with the delivery. http://t3n.de/news/amazon-baut-eigenen-lieferservice-649799/ http://t3n.de/news/amazon-baut-eigenen-lieferservice-649799/
harryjo 11y ago
Amazon finally decided to stop losing a little on every sale and making it up in volume. This looks like a classic dumping strategy -- sell products below cost (and evading sales/use tax, wink wink) to bankrupt competitors, and then raise prices.
- ben174 11y ago
  And then watch competitors come back. I look forward to the return of some competition.
- ben174 11y ago
  And then watch competitors come back. I look forward to the return of some competition.
noir_lord 11y ago
Tried to buy some computer components of Amazon the other day, it became such a pita that I aborted the order and bought the SSD in person at the local PC World (for those not in the UK shipping at PC world is the last resort when in a rush) for a couple of quid more. At this point I actively avoid Amazon, they lost their mojo and ruthless focus on customer experience.
petecooper 11y ago
Prime subscriber here, though it's the UK model (next-day delivery on many things, plus Amazon Video as a perk). My approach on it is somewhat different to many others here. I can order some stuff before 8pm and have it delivered next day. Things ordered earlier in the day (pre-noon) could be any courier, but the post-6pm orders are almost always delivered by DPD to my area (north Cornwall, EX23 postcode). Talking with my regular courier, so take this as anecdotal rather than cited, there are apparently courier representatives (brokers) at some major depots that bid on the packages as they are being readied: presumably, lowest bidder wins the business. I also use Prime for earning download credit. I can select a slow delivery option for my order [0] if I'm not in a hurry, and get 1GBP as a kickback. In November and December, this increases to 3GBP. Over the year, I typically place 200+ orders (some for me, some for clients) and most are slow delivery. This effectively means I make money on the Prime subscription, and I can expand my Kindle library without spending real money. At any given time, I have about >5GBP in digital credit [1] - there are supposed to be expiry dates on it, but I've never fallen foul of it. [0] http://imgur.com/MLPTR1H http://imgur.com/MLPTR1H [1] http://imgur.com/0190B9O http://imgur.com/0190B9O
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  "though it's the UK model (next-day delivery on many things" I order a couple of books today, for delivery to London. As Prime customer, I was offered several free options: - same day delivery (6pm-10pm if I recall correctly) - next day delivery - timed delivery (day after tomorrow, within a 4 hour window)
  - petecooper 11y ago
    Most of the UK is next-day minimum, as I understand it. Us rural folks don't have the same-day perk.
DiabloD3 11y ago
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 (each flavor is slightly different) and then I I pay about $18 after those discounts. Almost every case I get from them is crushed due to improper packing. One time they shoved all 7 cases into the same shipment. I have no clue how the outer box itself didn't self destruct. Yes, they would replace them at no cost, and the replacements would also be crushed. Between the original and the replacement, I would have around 24 cans per case worth keeping. The most recent shipment is what killed it for me, only about 12 cans salvageable out of 3 cases. They refunded me in full after arguing with them a bit, and I'm just going to pay extra to buy it locally. This bullshit isn't worth saving a few dollars given how much time I have to waste fixing their problem. Story 2: I decided to not be a fatass anymore. Along that epic journey, I decided to start lifting weights, and bought a barbell kit (two bars, two sets of four plates, a plastic box to store them in, etc), and I started needing more weight to continue. I purchased four 10 pound plates, they had them on sale for less than a dollar per pound. The box clearly self destructed, and was taped up by the fearless team at UPS somewhere between the warehouse and my house. Only three plates were in the box. Amazon shipped me the replacement, but clearly there is no training being done at Amazon on how to properly pack boxes or choose a proper box size based on the weight of items in it. Story 3: I bought a $400 food processor, and a few other items for my kitchen, including a new frying pan. The shipping label was attached to the frying pan's retail box, and that was shipped. Everything else in the shipment didn't arrive, but the frying pan did. Amazon, again, fixed the problem, but what the hell. How does that even happen. Story 4: Back to the subscribe and save again. Items I keep subscribing to either change price (to make them more expensive than just buying them locally), or stop being offered for subscribe and save altogether. Same with Amazon Prime Pantry: I'll add stuff to a Pantry box, try to fill it (since I have to still pay S&H on that, even though I have Prime), and items I try to add either do not exist in Pantry, are out of stock, and are never all in stock at the same time (so waiting on some times causes other items to go back out of stock). And I can't subscribe to Pantry items, nor can I tell Amazon to ship me my box when everything is in stock. I've gotten one Pantry box ever. That is the only one I could ever get filled with things I want. It ended up being a box full of toilet paper. My hall closet, for the past 8 months, has had more toilet paper in it than it ever has in it's existence. Story 5: Amazon Prime Day. Amazon decided they didn't want to participate in Black Friday anymore (and thus, give out garbage Black Friday deals), and are holding theirs on a completely different day. However, all they give deals on are on stuff nobody wants, and Amazon wants it out of their warehouse, and it is painfully clear this is what is going on. -- So yeah, between all of that, and the fact every few years they increase the cost of Prime to pay for things I don't want: Kindle lending library (I don't own a Kindle, and their Android software kind of sucks), Prime TV (I use Netflix, and Prime TV doesn't work on non-Kindle Fire Android devices or Chromecasts (only Fire TVs)), Prime Music (massively inferior experience to Google Music), Prime Photos (again, why when I already have Google Photos), and countless other things. I just wanted the free two day shipping when it was $79/year, and when Amazon had legitimately good prices. Given what I "save" on Amazon, I doubt I'm actually making back $99/year. Having to deal with all this bullshit isn't worth it. I feel like Jeff Bezos has no clue how to just stop. He needs to learn how to just sit back and enjoy that Amazon won. We have reached peak Amazon, and it is only going to go down hill from here.
koyote 11y ago
Amazon without prime is just frustrating at this point (and the price for prime is not worth it for the majority of people). In the UK minimum shipping is £20: I recently bought an item for £19.99 and had to buy a random tiny item for £0.10 so that I do not get charged £4 for shipping. Both items arrived separately...
- joefarish 11y ago
  £0.01 sim-card for next time: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299JIQ2/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299J...
  - koyote 11y ago
    Ah, nice one! Can't believe I paid the extra 9p for a pill box instead :)
    - joefarish 11y ago
      Supposedly http://www.fillerchecker.co.uk/ 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.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  This site is aimed squarely at your use case: http://www.filleritem.com/ http://www.filleritem.com/ (I have no financial or other connection except as a past user.)
- kartickv 11y ago
  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.
ck2 11y ago
It's interesting that oil/gas prices are less than half of a year ago, yet shipping prices have increased.
dkrich 11y ago
Can we assume then that a hike in the cost of Prime isn't far behind?
- drcode 11y ago
  It's possible they raised the shipping minimum in order to get more people to sign up to Prime, so perhaps not.
norea-armozel 11y ago
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 stuff I need. Frankly, I think Bezos and company got too comfy with their dominant position and now they're being lax on the quality. I would happily load up an order 60+ USD easily from Amazon but now I have to double check to see what I'm getting isn't from a crap third party (that's the biggest thing I'd pay to remove is the third party sellers). If they want more customers they need to get back to basics by improving selection, kicking out crap third party sellers, and stop shuffling items between addon status or Prime only. Otherwise, I can see them going under in a hurry.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  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.
  - biggerfisch 11y ago
    > 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.
    - rpgmaker 11y ago
      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.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
swehner 11y ago
Reminder: just say no to amazon!
transfire 11y ago
Sorry Amazon, I don't care. And my Amazon Prime is still going bye-bye this year. The prices are always higher than other vendors so the free shipping is all but moot and your other services suck. I can't even get the Music service to work.
kefka 11y ago
Well, that's fine. I'll just buy more from AliExpress. Shipping is free, albeit long.
parka 11y ago
I 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 they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > They either have a fantastic shipping deal or they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true. Both are true.
smileysteve 11y ago
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.
athenot 11y ago
Sometimes 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.
graeme 11y ago
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.
t0mbstone 11y ago
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.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > 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?
  - mystikal 11y ago
    I can't remember there not being a minimum spend. I can remember back to 2005 I think.

281 points by silveira 11y ago

One look at their finances and it's clear why they're doing this. According to their SEC filings, last year Amazon brought in $6.5 billion in shipping revenue [1], and spent $11.5 billion on shipping costs. Take those numbers together and they lost $5.0 billion subsidizing shipping. They lose more money on shipping every year than most startups make in a decade. It's a huge cost on their budget, not hard to see why management is trying to cut costs. [1] Includes some revenue earned from Amazon Prime memberships; excludes shipping revenue of third-party sellers not under the Fulfilled by Amazon program Data is from page 26 of their 10-K, linked below https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416000172/amzn-20151231x10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872416...

deleted 11y ago
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mdasen 11y ago
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 to actually be purchasable by customers somehow. Retail shops sink costs in their stores. It's made up for by the margins on the items they sell. I'm not saying that Amazon shouldn't try to minimize their losses on shipping just as stores should figure out whether having one retail presence in a city is more cost effective than having two. But I think a more interesting piece for me would be a comparison of Amazon's shipping costs to other retailers' storefront costs. If the $5B in shipping subsidies is way lower than what Walmart or BestBuy are paying in "storefront subsidies", it isn't necessarily something so outrageous. It's a cost of doing business. $5B sounds like a lot of money (and indeed it is), but what is it compared to the storefront costs of competitors? How much does Amazon save by having highly-productive warehouse workers as opposed to lower-productive retail employees?* Maybe $5B is huge compared to what Walmart spends on its retail presence. Maybe Amazon warehouses aren't much more efficient than BestBuy stores. Or Maybe this is simply a move that Amazon is making because it thinks it has gained enough market power (and enough buy-in to Prime) to start making anti-consumer moves rather than a cost that's unsustainable compared to the costs of retail. Walmart's revenue was $485.7 billion in 2015. Amazon's revenue was $107B last year. Spending less than 5% of revenue on getting the products to the customers doesn't sound outrageous. Does it seem likely that Walmart spends $24B on store-front costs that Amazon doesn't have to get their revenue? You're not wrong that companies will try to cut costs. I guess my question is simply: is this really an onerous cost compared to revenue (as judged by what competing retail firms pay)? If it's par for the course (or less), it feels like Amazon flexing its market power against consumers. If it is an onerous cost compared to what Walmart or BestBuy have to spend, then life has crappy trade-offs that need to be made to make things reasonable. *This isn't a dig at retail employees. It's just pointing out that when customer traffic is low at a retail venue, they're around with less to do. By contrast, warehouse workers can be utilized more efficiently.
- achow 11y ago
  You make very good points. For comparison, the lease amount of Target's Canadian (failed) expansion was for $1.3B USD for 220 stores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Canada [Edit] Target USA stores as of May 2015: 1795 http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/05/22/what-is-the-future-for-target-stores/#642f3c9b8686 http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/05/22/what-is-th... Amazon's $5B shipping loss now almost looks quaint, if one factors in absence of retail stores and presence of handful number of Warehouses.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  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 drop off every hour, and the customer completes the last mile and goes to pick up his package at the designated UPS Store within 2-4 hours from the time he placed the order. I'm sure they've already considered all this kind of navel-gazing, but if customers were able to pick up within 3-4 hours of placing an order under this type of system, it'd be awesome, and I think a big win for Amazon. One of the worst things about ordering on Amazon, even as a Prime member who lives in a place where free same-day is often available, is having to wait around with no control over when the product will arrive. This would beat free same-day, which for us rarely arrives before 8:30pm no matter how early you get the order in after midnight. Really Wal-Mart and Amazon are not so different. The difference is that Wal-Mart keeps quantities of the product within driving distance of 90% of the population, so they can have the product a half-hour after deciding they need/want it. The ability to close this gap has got to be one of the most important milestones for online retail. Ad-hoc delivery networks like UberEats are kind of already doing this. Sure would be a crazy turn of events if someone started to knock down Amazon's retail business by leveraging the latent bandwidth in the city's existing retail and crowd-sourced driver networks.
  - Cymen 11y ago
vijayr 11y ago
The problem isn't they increased the minimum order for free shipping or even that they charge for shipping - it is the deceptive advertising/wording. Among the big companies, Amazon has a reputation for treating their customers well (even if they screw their suppliers, workers etc). That seems to be slipping.
swehner 11y ago
That page has some explanations including what they will be doing, "We seek to mitigate costs of shipping over time in part through achieving higher sales volumes, optimizing placement of fulfillment centers, negotiating better terms with our suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. We believe that offering low prices to our customers is fundamental to our future success, and one way we offer lower prices is through shipping offers." Those explanations do not include what you're saying.

nmjohn 11y ago

FYI: Prime one/same-day shipping is still $35 - this only seems to apply to non-prime shipping.

dangrossman 11y ago

"Profit was held back by a big jump in fulfillment costs, which increased 32.8% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and nearly 25% for the full year. Amazon spent $4.55 billion in the fourth quarter to fulfill customers’ orders, up from $3.4 billion in the same quarter a year ago, and the increase cannot be explained away by increases in Amazon sales, as the percentage of revenues spent on shipping also increased, from 11.6% to 12.7%." [1] "There is more than loyalty at stake for Atlanta-based UPS. This year, its Amazon account exceeds $1 billion. ... The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year." [2] "Some analysts say the move could help position Amazon to offer shipping services to other companies, eventually competing with the likes of United Parcel Service and DHL Worldwide Express. ... Amazon rolled out thousands of its own trailers and launched an Uber-like delivery service last year to handle the so-called last mile of delivery, taking packages from distribution centers to customers' homes." [3] 1: http://www.marketwatch.com/mw2/palm/marketwatch/story.asp?guid=%7BB574014E-C615-11E5-B1F8-BB568A8AE505%7D http://www.marketwatch.com/mw2/palm/marketwatch/story.asp?gu... 2: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/amazon-seeks-to-ease-ties-with-ups-20151222-00789 http://www.nasdaq.com/article/amazon-seeks-to-ease-ties-with... 3: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-drops-hints-it-could-be-building-global-shipping-business-n514921 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-drops-hints-it-...

Gustomaximus 11y ago
> The average cost to handle a parcel was about $8 last year. Thats still Amazing low cost considering what has to be done to deliver a parcel. Though I'm more surprised Amazon hasn't set up an Argos style business in high density cities. For those that dont know Argos it's in the UK and its basically a collection shopfront with catalogues infromt of the counter. You browse the catalogue, write down the numbers and staff go out the back and bring you what you asked for. They have a huge range and while strange at first shopping in person from a book catalogue it works amazingly well for a bunch of shopping needs. It would merge perfectly with a Amazon like business.
- foota 11y ago
  Perhaps this is the kind of thing they're going for with for instance, their brick and mortar book stores?

envy2 11y ago

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.

username223 11y ago
I for one have never bothered with "Prime." It's not that hard to combine Amazon orders until they cross the "free" shipping threshold.
- deleted 11y ago
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- jlmorton 11y ago
  Amazon Prime also comes with nearly Netflix-equivalent video on demand, nearly Spotify-equivalent streaming music, Prime Now 2-hour delivery, and currently free restaurant delivery a la GrubHub/Eat24 in a few cities, along with a bunch of other minor perks.
  - castell 11y ago
    I hope you and Amazon respect the decision of other customers who would rather not to even think about such stuff. Yet Amazon shows a full screen Prime advertisement & agreement with an small opt-out button on every checkout!
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    The increased bundling also came with an increased price, and that's why I canceled. I would have kept paying the original price for the original deal.
  - darklajid 11y ago
    Just like abecedarius, I cancelled the free shipping service when it became something I didn't want or need. Free shipping was great. I don't care about the rest (and cannot play it on my devices anyway. I try to avoid Flash, I don't want non-generic-purpose hardware like a FireTV or something and you cannot access the Prime content from my Kodi/Pi2 in any reasonable fashion). If you like that offer it might be a great deal. If you pay the full price and only use/get a tiny fraction though...

sirkneeland 11y ago

First reaction: "NOOOOOOOO" Second reaction: "It appears this does NOT apply to Amazon Prime." I am assuming this is gamed to drive further conversion to Prime membership then.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
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 usually, Target or Best Buy's websites offer the same products at the same price with free shipping... without Prime. Here's a thread with 248 people complaining, and Amazon definitely not caring: http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?_encoding=UTF8&authToken=&cdForum=Fx1UE1R6VSVMXK7&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx2BC0NP5Y2RKMW http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?_enco... Amazon is very quickly turning into the online version of Costco, and I think they've decided they're okay with that.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  Frankly, I think it's a fair deal. I gladly pay the Prime fee and in return can be very sure that products will arrive tomorrow. I value that certainty and immediate availability. And that's not even considering the video and music services which I don't use that much.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    I never said it wasn't a fair deal. It is, if you want it. But if arrival timing isn't critical, and you don't order enough time sensitive items for it to be worth it, and you don't watch Prime Video, it may not be a good purchase for you. Prime is a very good service, but it isn't for everyone. Amazon is seemingly telling everyone who it isn't for to take a hike.
- copperx 11y ago

kdamken 11y ago

They are really trying to force you into signing up for prime, aren't they? I cancelled my prime subscription at the start of the year. Some thoughts: - I buy less stuff on impulse. Since the price limit is (or was) $35 for free shipping, I usually have to wait until there are enough things I really want/need before ordering. - The pricing is often better other places. Normally Amazon's non prime price will be comparable, but then shipping fees will be like 7 or 8 bucks, while other places have cheaper, faster, or even free shipping. - If you do have prime, not everything with prime has free shipping. For small things they have "add on items", which don't ship to you until you have $25 worth of stuff in your cart. It wasn't always like this, and it was a big negative for me. I had signed up for prime because I didn't want to pay for quick shipping. Now I had to wait until there were other things I needed to hit their arbitrary number. I ran the numbers over my three year subscription period with them and it turned out I wasn't buying enough stuff to make the math work. Maybe when it was $79, but at the current price it's just not worth it. It's like they're going out of their way to piss off customers.

13of40 11y ago
> I buy less stuff on impulse. I've always got a couple of running "projects" and it's really nice to have Prime if I find out I need to buy a 20 Mhz oscillator, or a magneto cover gasket, or a pink buggy whip mid-stream.
- kdamken 11y ago
  I know what you mean - that's why I was so disappointed when they started marking small things "Add on items". Suddenly I needed to make it a $25 order just to get the free shipping.
deleted 11y ago
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frik 11y ago
The Prime-nag-screen on every checkout is so annoying as well. The "no thanks" cancel link is very small and changed its location the last few months. Increasing the delivery time just to introduce Prime (I lived in an early test region of Prime back then). Loyal customers that buy from the online shop since 1999, don't count anymore. If I as customer decide that I don't want your subscription service, better respect it!

CamperBob2 11y ago

Hmm. Being a Prime subscriber, I had no idea you could even get free shipping without Prime.

fma 11y ago
Yeah back in the day it was $25 for free shipping, then they bumped to $35, now $49. The free shipping is not the same speed as prime. Prime gives you 2 days. Free shipping is just that..free regular ground shipping which could take a few days to get to you.
BogusIKnow 11y ago
Nice marketing work by Amazon, eh? Had the same thought.

deftnerd 11y ago

This 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. I simply removed that item but instead of having two $50 boxes, the shopping cart removed an item from a box and put it into a box by itself to ensure that I had to pay shipping. I spent two hours adding and removing items to discover that there is no way to get free shipping for multiple items anymore. Eventually I contacted customer service and they said they would take care of it and ship it in one box with no shipping cost. Three weeks later and my order finally shipped, in 5 boxes, with 5 shipping fees charged to my card.

wfunction 11y ago
This is pretty epic. Did you call them back and demand a refund?
chx 11y ago
I believe if you buy Amazon items then, even if they split the shipment, they won't charge you. The above sounds like you were buying from different merchants.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  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.
  - stanmancan 11y ago
    I always make sure I check off the "Prime Eligible" checkbox when searching Amazon. It sucks to find an item, go to buy it, and finding out it's going to take 4 weeks and $25 to ship from the UK or something.

eva1984 11y ago

Not surprising, they lose money for shipping. With the competition going down, they might feel it is a good time for price bump.

danielconde 11y ago

It 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.

sremani 11y ago
jet.com is OK. For most of the stuff, they are reliable but books, they rely on Barnes and Noble and at times there is delay in delivery. Also your discount increases the more items you add to the cart, so jet actually encourages you to make one big shopping cart with their system.
- wantreprenr007 11y ago
  Sadly, Amazon can just undercut and outspend them. "Competition is for losers" - Thiel
aniket_ray 11y ago
I've been comparing and buying on either Jet or Amazon recentlly. As a result, I've been buying on Jet more frequently. Jet has a smaller selection but they usually have a good enough range on the price-value curve that it's not a big problem. Like for like, they are indeed cheaper than Amazon and free 2 day delivery is always a plus. Of course their model is lower prices with a bit more delayed deliveries.
wambotron 11y ago
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.

deleted 11y ago

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tempestn 11y ago

I'm curious whether they would revert the change if they saw a large dip in sales as a result, and if so, how large it would have to be (relative to the savings on shipping costs).

esaym 11y ago

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 for anything. Even clothes, I just buy the brands I know fit me well off of ebay used (and been doing that for like that last 8 years now)

ianai 11y ago
I don't consider using Prime to be abuse...but I also place a preference on buying locally when I can.
- copperx 11y ago
  I don't think it's abuse either, but back when Prime was $79 and small items shipped free, I cringed at the thought of buying, say, a pack of razors from Amazon. It felt wrong.
  - hga 11y ago
    Exactly, it offends my sensibilities to order such things 2nd day unless I'm likely to really need them that quickly. And with their incentives for slower shipping (but still pretty fast as a rule) like $1 in free digital goods for a limited time (a few months) they recognize that. They also use it to promote their Pantry system (regular bulky subscriptions that some in big monthly boxes). And it makes me feel non-abusive when I order something for 2nd day that's close to the line. In general I find it a sane system, would be even more so if I didn't live behind a slow broadband connection and had made my household 100% Linux.
    - matwood 11y ago
      Like you when I need something small, I usually just add it to my next Amazon shipment. Pantry and Subscribe and Save have almost made it where I do not have to go to the grocery store. Add in something like Blue Apron for fresh dinners and I may never have to go to the grocery again. I miss when I lived in Denver and had a milk man. Every week he would deliver milk (obviously), eggs, bacon, bread, juice, etc...

SwellJoe 11y ago

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 Shop Runner (which I get free when I pay with my American Express), the difference in experience, cost, and time to deliver is competitive. NewEgg got my server hardware purchases, saving me several hundred dollars on a ~$3000 order. An RV parts vendor sold me an RV air conditioner for ~$200 less than Amazon. I'm shopping for a tankless water heater right now, which is about $160 less from other vendors. And, on the lower end, when Amazon first started doing subscription groceries, they were competitively priced; now, not so much. I find I prefer just buying what I need when I need it from local grocery stores. I still buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, but it's much less than it used to be. And, I don't know if Amazon knows what they're doing or not when choosing to lose these sales. Presumably the increased margins make up for the lower sales (or at least the loss of sales to me, which may not necessarily be the same as decreased sales overall). Surely they're doing the math. This is the same thing. I bought from Amazon before Prime partly because of the free shipping. The further away the free shipping gets, the harder it would be to choose Amazon over getting it local or from another vendor, I think.

r00fus 11y ago
Combine this with Google Shopping Express (next day on my doorstep) and you have a lot of reasons to not use Amazon anymore. Amazon Prime is still pretty awesome but I've had 3 returns in 4 months for incorrect or broken items (on Fulfilled by Amazon), and the pricing is not competitive with local retail (which Google Shopping matches for the items it does carry). For example, recently I tried to buy a toy etcher/engraver so I could carve initials on my kids toys. Only place I could find it was locally or through e-bay... Amazon did not have that.
freyr 11y ago
In the past year or two, I've noticed a dramatic rise in the number of counterfeit products. If you buy directly from Amazon, it generally seems ok, but all bets are off when you buy from a third party. I've also noticed the increased gaming of the reviews system. If you read reviews of many of the highest rated products, you often find that most are shills who are given products for free in exchange for "fair and unbiased reviews." Funny how many of their unbiased reviews award five stars. It's getting pretty bad.

nchelluri 11y ago

What was it before?

rickyc091 11y ago
$35 for free shipping.
ksherlock 11y ago
$25. Then $35. I forget what came before $25 -- back then, discount codes were so common it didn't really matter.

CodeWriter23 11y ago

They are trying to create lock-in via their customer loyalty program known as Amazon Prime.

cavisne 11y ago

Would love to be a fly on the wall when Amazon decided on this, it's pretty much opposite the leadership principles which are essentially a religion for the people who make decisions like this.

deepsun 11y ago

More incentive to apply for Prime membership. Prime locks in customers a little, which is good for business. Not for free market, though.

wantreprenr007 11y ago

Now that Amazon has a de-facto monopoly on distribution and fulfillment with around a billion skus that rivals the likes of WalMart, it's no surprise prices begin endlessly ratcheting up.

sokoloff 11y ago
Monopoly is a very/overly strong word for what Amazon has (even when qualified as "de-facto").

zelcon5 11y ago

Despite the temptation to bikeshed Amazon, I'd have to say this is quite justified. Amazon seemed TOO cheap for a lot of things. It was amazing they made any money at all. Now that they have a monopoly, they can stop with the freebies.

pbreit 11y ago

I didn't realize anyone buys from Amazon who's not Prime. Only sort of kidding. At $100/year kind of a no-brainer.

mikeash 11y ago
$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.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  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.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    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.
mkrfox 11y ago
I don't buy enough in a year to justify it.
- pbreit 11y ago
  You also get Music, Video, Photos, Now and a bunch of other stuff. No-brainer at $100/year.
  - mkrfox 11y ago
    It's a no-brainer if their offering appeals to you. For me, it does not. I get the stuff they offer for free/cheap from other services, and they tend to have a better selection for my interests.

yAnonymous 11y ago

Interesting. There have been rumors that Amazon are planning to set up their own delivery service in Germany, so they could possibly go from losing money to making money with the delivery. http://t3n.de/news/amazon-baut-eigenen-lieferservice-649799/ http://t3n.de/news/amazon-baut-eigenen-lieferservice-649799/

harryjo 11y ago

Amazon finally decided to stop losing a little on every sale and making it up in volume. This looks like a classic dumping strategy -- sell products below cost (and evading sales/use tax, wink wink) to bankrupt competitors, and then raise prices.

ben174 11y ago
And then watch competitors come back. I look forward to the return of some competition.
ben174 11y ago
And then watch competitors come back. I look forward to the return of some competition.

noir_lord 11y ago

Tried to buy some computer components of Amazon the other day, it became such a pita that I aborted the order and bought the SSD in person at the local PC World (for those not in the UK shipping at PC world is the last resort when in a rush) for a couple of quid more. At this point I actively avoid Amazon, they lost their mojo and ruthless focus on customer experience.

petecooper 11y ago

Prime subscriber here, though it's the UK model (next-day delivery on many things, plus Amazon Video as a perk). My approach on it is somewhat different to many others here. I can order some stuff before 8pm and have it delivered next day. Things ordered earlier in the day (pre-noon) could be any courier, but the post-6pm orders are almost always delivered by DPD to my area (north Cornwall, EX23 postcode). Talking with my regular courier, so take this as anecdotal rather than cited, there are apparently courier representatives (brokers) at some major depots that bid on the packages as they are being readied: presumably, lowest bidder wins the business. I also use Prime for earning download credit. I can select a slow delivery option for my order [0] if I'm not in a hurry, and get 1GBP as a kickback. In November and December, this increases to 3GBP. Over the year, I typically place 200+ orders (some for me, some for clients) and most are slow delivery. This effectively means I make money on the Prime subscription, and I can expand my Kindle library without spending real money. At any given time, I have about >5GBP in digital credit [1] - there are supposed to be expiry dates on it, but I've never fallen foul of it. [0] http://imgur.com/MLPTR1H http://imgur.com/MLPTR1H [1] http://imgur.com/0190B9O http://imgur.com/0190B9O

rahimnathwani 11y ago
"though it's the UK model (next-day delivery on many things" I order a couple of books today, for delivery to London. As Prime customer, I was offered several free options: - same day delivery (6pm-10pm if I recall correctly) - next day delivery - timed delivery (day after tomorrow, within a 4 hour window)
- petecooper 11y ago
  Most of the UK is next-day minimum, as I understand it. Us rural folks don't have the same-day perk.

DiabloD3 11y ago

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 (each flavor is slightly different) and then I I pay about $18 after those discounts. Almost every case I get from them is crushed due to improper packing. One time they shoved all 7 cases into the same shipment. I have no clue how the outer box itself didn't self destruct. Yes, they would replace them at no cost, and the replacements would also be crushed. Between the original and the replacement, I would have around 24 cans per case worth keeping. The most recent shipment is what killed it for me, only about 12 cans salvageable out of 3 cases. They refunded me in full after arguing with them a bit, and I'm just going to pay extra to buy it locally. This bullshit isn't worth saving a few dollars given how much time I have to waste fixing their problem. Story 2: I decided to not be a fatass anymore. Along that epic journey, I decided to start lifting weights, and bought a barbell kit (two bars, two sets of four plates, a plastic box to store them in, etc), and I started needing more weight to continue. I purchased four 10 pound plates, they had them on sale for less than a dollar per pound. The box clearly self destructed, and was taped up by the fearless team at UPS somewhere between the warehouse and my house. Only three plates were in the box. Amazon shipped me the replacement, but clearly there is no training being done at Amazon on how to properly pack boxes or choose a proper box size based on the weight of items in it. Story 3: I bought a $400 food processor, and a few other items for my kitchen, including a new frying pan. The shipping label was attached to the frying pan's retail box, and that was shipped. Everything else in the shipment didn't arrive, but the frying pan did. Amazon, again, fixed the problem, but what the hell. How does that even happen. Story 4: Back to the subscribe and save again. Items I keep subscribing to either change price (to make them more expensive than just buying them locally), or stop being offered for subscribe and save altogether. Same with Amazon Prime Pantry: I'll add stuff to a Pantry box, try to fill it (since I have to still pay S&H on that, even though I have Prime), and items I try to add either do not exist in Pantry, are out of stock, and are never all in stock at the same time (so waiting on some times causes other items to go back out of stock). And I can't subscribe to Pantry items, nor can I tell Amazon to ship me my box when everything is in stock. I've gotten one Pantry box ever. That is the only one I could ever get filled with things I want. It ended up being a box full of toilet paper. My hall closet, for the past 8 months, has had more toilet paper in it than it ever has in it's existence. Story 5: Amazon Prime Day. Amazon decided they didn't want to participate in Black Friday anymore (and thus, give out garbage Black Friday deals), and are holding theirs on a completely different day. However, all they give deals on are on stuff nobody wants, and Amazon wants it out of their warehouse, and it is painfully clear this is what is going on. -- So yeah, between all of that, and the fact every few years they increase the cost of Prime to pay for things I don't want: Kindle lending library (I don't own a Kindle, and their Android software kind of sucks), Prime TV (I use Netflix, and Prime TV doesn't work on non-Kindle Fire Android devices or Chromecasts (only Fire TVs)), Prime Music (massively inferior experience to Google Music), Prime Photos (again, why when I already have Google Photos), and countless other things. I just wanted the free two day shipping when it was $79/year, and when Amazon had legitimately good prices. Given what I "save" on Amazon, I doubt I'm actually making back $99/year. Having to deal with all this bullshit isn't worth it. I feel like Jeff Bezos has no clue how to just stop. He needs to learn how to just sit back and enjoy that Amazon won. We have reached peak Amazon, and it is only going to go down hill from here.

koyote 11y ago

Amazon without prime is just frustrating at this point (and the price for prime is not worth it for the majority of people). In the UK minimum shipping is £20: I recently bought an item for £19.99 and had to buy a random tiny item for £0.10 so that I do not get charged £4 for shipping. Both items arrived separately...

joefarish 11y ago
£0.01 sim-card for next time: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299JIQ2/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vodafone-Pay-You-Sim-Card/dp/B00299J...
- koyote 11y ago
  Ah, nice one! Can't believe I paid the extra 9p for a pill box instead :)
  - joefarish 11y ago
    Supposedly http://www.fillerchecker.co.uk/ 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.
sokoloff 11y ago
This site is aimed squarely at your use case: http://www.filleritem.com/ http://www.filleritem.com/ (I have no financial or other connection except as a past user.)
kartickv 11y ago
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.

ck2 11y ago

It's interesting that oil/gas prices are less than half of a year ago, yet shipping prices have increased.

dkrich 11y ago

Can we assume then that a hike in the cost of Prime isn't far behind?

drcode 11y ago
It's possible they raised the shipping minimum in order to get more people to sign up to Prime, so perhaps not.

norea-armozel 11y ago

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 stuff I need. Frankly, I think Bezos and company got too comfy with their dominant position and now they're being lax on the quality. I would happily load up an order 60+ USD easily from Amazon but now I have to double check to see what I'm getting isn't from a crap third party (that's the biggest thing I'd pay to remove is the third party sellers). If they want more customers they need to get back to basics by improving selection, kicking out crap third party sellers, and stop shuffling items between addon status or Prime only. Otherwise, I can see them going under in a hurry.

rpgmaker 11y ago
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.
- biggerfisch 11y ago
  > 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.
  - rpgmaker 11y ago
    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.
- norea-armozel 11y ago

swehner 11y ago

Reminder: just say no to amazon!

transfire 11y ago

Sorry Amazon, I don't care. And my Amazon Prime is still going bye-bye this year. The prices are always higher than other vendors so the free shipping is all but moot and your other services suck. I can't even get the Music service to work.

kefka 11y ago

Well, that's fine. I'll just buy more from AliExpress. Shipping is free, albeit long.

parka 11y ago

I 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 they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true.

jonknee 11y ago
> They either have a fantastic shipping deal or they really have deep wallets, the latter is probably true. Both are true.

smileysteve 11y ago

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.

athenot 11y ago

Sometimes 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.

graeme 11y ago

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.

t0mbstone 11y ago

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.

DanBC 11y ago
> 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?
- mystikal 11y ago
  I can't remember there not being a minimum spend. I can remember back to 2005 I think.