Amazon reduces free shipping fees (1 Viewer)

[Tony Bensley]

Well I'm not impressed by the new policy of free shipping of book orders of $25 or more. I ordered two in-stock books that came to $30 on 22 February, and they didn't get around to shipping them until 8 March. That's a 14 day delay from order to shipping.

That is too long, even for free shipping. I would register a complaint about this, Amazon might respond.

Free shipping or no, I agree that a 14 day delay from order to shipment is rather excessive. It definitely wouldn't hurt to bring this matter to Amazon's attention.

CHEERS!

 

[Clinton McClure]

That's as bad as UPS surepost or whatever the slow and inefficient FedEx solution is. Packages shipped to me this was routinely take 7-10 days to get to me after they ship. I'll gladly pay a bit more for UPS ground so I can get my items in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Stan]

That's as bad as UPS surepost or whatever the slow and inefficient FedEx solution is. Packages shipped to me this was routinely take 7-10 days to get to me after they ship. I'll gladly pay a bit more for UPS ground so I can get my items in a reasonable amount of time.

Nothing to me is that important. I always pick the slowest, cheapest, even free way to ship things.

Whatever the latest/greatest movie or gizmo is, I can wait a week, life goes on. I rarely even buy movies anymore, I'll wait the six months until they show up on HBO, etc.

And what goody-goody pays sales tax unless it's already included. I'm a decent person, but I'm not going out of my way to write a check, waste a stamp and envelope to send in 89¢ in tax.

 

[ChristopherG]

Free is back!

 

[David Norman]

Going by the other Amazon Packaging threads and especially the Monsters 30 Film and Batman Animated thread -- maybe they should retitle "we smash your items for free and slow instead of making you pay for it"

 

[JQuintana]

I wish they would now lower the Prime cost. It's outrageously priced for what your get.

 

[Wayne_j]

I wish they would now lower the Prime cost. It's outrageously priced for what your get.

That depends on how much you get shipped from them and how much you use the Prime streaming.

 

[dpippel]

I wish they would now lower the Prime cost. It's outrageously priced for what your get.

Huh? Do you really think that $9.92 per month for what you get with Prime is "outrageously priced"? I sure don't.

 

[JQuintana]

I had Prime when it was $99 and we mainly got it for the streaming. Once signed I realized how horrible their streaming offerings were. We bought a handful of items over that year but near enough to cover the cost we paid to join. Jumping the rate another $20 won't help the cause from my side of things. We buy local and price match Amazon.

 

[BobO'Link]

I had Prime when it was $99 and we mainly got it for the streaming. Once signed I realized how horrible their streaming offerings were. We bought a handful of items over that year but near enough to cover the cost we paid to join. Jumping the rate another $20 won't help the cause from my side of things. We buy local and price match Amazon.

I'd love to do that but none of the stores here carry what I purchase from Amazon (mostly board games, movies, and music). Even with Christmas presents, the stuff I get from Amazon isn't typically available locally.

 

[JQuintana]

Luckily we can find what we need locally. Also, we have entered the phase of kids now wanting gift cards to shop on their own later. But most other presents are found locally.

 

[dpippel]

I had Prime when it was $99 and we mainly got it for the streaming. Once signed I realized how horrible their streaming offerings were. We bought a handful of items over that year but near enough to cover the cost we paid to join. Jumping the rate another $20 won't help the cause from my side of things. We buy local and price match Amazon.

It really does depend on how you use Amazon, and Prime is designed in part to get members to spend more and leverage the free shipping. We do a lot of our shopping with Amazon and I think their streaming offerings are fine. Although I liked it better at $99 a year, at less than ten bucks a month it's still an extremely good value for us.

 

[JQuintana]

I had been told and also read online that their Prime streaming was an amazing value with tons of great shows and movies. Yeah, no. Unless you enjoy renting and paying extra for newer movies and TV shows. All else is pretty much stale old offerings you can find for free on Crackle or similar sites. After the year was up we realized we watched maybe 2 old movies all year and that was it. I much prefer Netflix and Hulu and the other movie sources we have access to for new movies.

 

[English Invader]

It's a shame that you don't have a decent brick and mortar chain like HMV in the US. HMV's online service is also very good and it's usually my first port of call because they have a minimum of £10 for free shipping and they ship within a day or two. I only use Amazon for stuff I can't get anywhere else.

Like most of the film and music retailers, HMV took a hit from the internet revolution but it's still around because it adapted and gave people what they wanted.

https://www.hmv.com/

 

[dpippel]

I had been told and also read online that their Prime streaming was an amazing value with tons of great shows and movies. Yeah, no. Unless you enjoy renting and paying extra for newer movies and TV shows. All else is pretty much stale old offerings you can find for free on Crackle or similar sites. After the year was up we realized we watched maybe 2 old movies all year and that was it. I much prefer Netflix and Hulu and the other movie sources we have access to for new movies.

I think they have a pretty good library of recent films that are included free with Prime. Just skimming through the current offerings for just a few minutes:

Star Trek Beyond
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Wonder
You Were Never Really Here
Arrival
The Lost City of Z
Transformers: The Last Knight
Let Me In
Baywatch

 

[JQuintana]

I think they have a pretty good library of recent films that are included free with Prime. Just skimming through the current offerings for just a few minutes:

Star Trek Beyond
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Wonder
You Were Never Really Here
Arrival
The Lost City of Z
Transformers: The Last Knight
Let Me In
Baywatch

Using the word "good" to describe that list is a bit of a stretch.

Only 2 movies on there worthy of being called good for me would be Wonder and Arrival (but barely). The rest I have zero desire to sit through. Well hang on, I take that back, I tried to sit through Valerian via another stream service and it was beyond horrible.

 

[dpippel]

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but you did complain about there being few recent movies available on Prime for free, and that's not really the case. And I wasn't using the word "good" to describe the content, just the availability of newer films. They certainly don't have as deep a catalog as Netflix, but I view the Included With Prime stuff as a perk rather than a necessity.

There are also some very good Amazon-produced shows such as The Man in the High Castle and The Romanoff's that you can't get anywhere else, and most of HBO's miniseries catalog such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, etc., etc., all Included with Prime. But, I get that it's not your bag.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Also, with Prime membership if you choose their "no rush" shipping option quite often you get a dollar credit towards purchase of digital content. I accumulate those credits and end up with free movie rentals for recent titles. I have watched several of the latest Disney Marvel and Star Wars films at no cost.

 

[BobO'Link]

I get enough of those "no rush" digital credits to fully offset the cost of Prime. I use 'em to purchase software and digital copies of movies that are normally only available on MOD plus the occasional rental to see if I like a title enough to purchase a pressed copy. If they'd offer music as FLAC files I'd purchase music but I'm not "paying" for mp3 files.

 

[David Norman]

And there's the rub

I don't want their streaming (I barely use the better choices), digital storage, music streams, digital credits are useless to me, don't need Kindle, Can't get food deliveries, no Amazon lockers nearby,
What else does Prime offer besides shipping?

The won't price match directly anymore and offer zero post purchase price protection which is one of my biggest gripes with them (Best Buy, Walmart, Target all give me 45-90 days, BN 15-30 days). I would say Sales Tax though that is neither their fault and I agree with that.

I say this as a "Amazon member since 1998" and literally a Charter Prime starting when it was a Free Trial, then $50, then $79, $99, and whatever it's about to be.
What I need is a Free Shipping program without all the other stuff I can't use/don't want. I truly wish they'd go to Tiered Prime -- one for classic Shipping Only for $50-75, and Prime Premier for $120.

I don't begrudge anyone that actually uses all the NonShipping stuff they offer b/c it's a lot of parts, but all I want is an alternative or credit for not using it. Even Cable TV bundles have a choice of options to most closely match what you're going to use -- it's not one size fits all, take it or leave it.