Prime Deal?
About two years ago, Amazon.com started offering "Amazon Prime", where you pay $80 a year and get overnight shipping on all qualifying orders. That means it applies mostly to books, CDs and DVDs, though smaller items Amazon carries in its own stock, rather than through 3rd party partnerships, also sometimes qualify.
So I signed up for the program a year ago. I have to decide in the next week or two whether or not to re-up. I felt like Prime has been a good deal, but I wanted numbers to back it up. Amazon helpfully keeps track of all your purchases, so I went back and calculated how much I'd spent and what I'd purchased.
The bulk of what I bought was books, followed by CDs and a couple DVDs. The only non-media item I bought was a pocket digital camera. It was actually too much bother to figure out how much shipping was because Amazon offers free standard shipping on orders over $25. In the cases where I bought only one or two items at a time, I'd assume a single CD is going to be cheaper to ship than a 500-page hardback book.
But what I did find was still interesting. I placed about 30 orders with Amazon over the past year, some 25 of which were sent to myself. Interestingly, I think the key savings came from two things that have nothing to do with shipping: retail price and tax.
In most cases, Amazon discounts their books, CDs and DVDs 10-30 percent from the cover prices. There's a great local bookstore down the street from my office. I like to browse there and even buy something once in a while, but if they sell a book for $25, chances are Amazon will sell it for $17 or so.
The tax is the most stable and obvious piece of the savings pie. Sales tax in California is about 9 percent. Since Amazon has no operations in California, all orders shipped from its own warehouse (I'm assuming I'm in the service are of their Fernley, Nevada facility, which I have actually visited) are tax-free. I ordered about $700 worth of stuff over the last year. That's $63 in tax savings right there.
I am sure the remaining $17 is more than made up for by the discounted prices and what I would have paid on shipping otherwise.
Of course, this is also an issue of incentives. I placed so many orders with them precisely because the more I ordered, the better return I got on my $80 investment. If I didn't join Prime, I surely would have combined more orders so that I met the $25 minimum to get standard shipping.
In the end, I'm sure I saved some money using Prime, but I don't think it was a huge amount. Will I re-up? Probably. I love Amazon and I love getting stuff in the mail.
So I signed up for the program a year ago. I have to decide in the next week or two whether or not to re-up. I felt like Prime has been a good deal, but I wanted numbers to back it up. Amazon helpfully keeps track of all your purchases, so I went back and calculated how much I'd spent and what I'd purchased.
The bulk of what I bought was books, followed by CDs and a couple DVDs. The only non-media item I bought was a pocket digital camera. It was actually too much bother to figure out how much shipping was because Amazon offers free standard shipping on orders over $25. In the cases where I bought only one or two items at a time, I'd assume a single CD is going to be cheaper to ship than a 500-page hardback book.
But what I did find was still interesting. I placed about 30 orders with Amazon over the past year, some 25 of which were sent to myself. Interestingly, I think the key savings came from two things that have nothing to do with shipping: retail price and tax.
In most cases, Amazon discounts their books, CDs and DVDs 10-30 percent from the cover prices. There's a great local bookstore down the street from my office. I like to browse there and even buy something once in a while, but if they sell a book for $25, chances are Amazon will sell it for $17 or so.
The tax is the most stable and obvious piece of the savings pie. Sales tax in California is about 9 percent. Since Amazon has no operations in California, all orders shipped from its own warehouse (I'm assuming I'm in the service are of their Fernley, Nevada facility, which I have actually visited) are tax-free. I ordered about $700 worth of stuff over the last year. That's $63 in tax savings right there.
I am sure the remaining $17 is more than made up for by the discounted prices and what I would have paid on shipping otherwise.
Of course, this is also an issue of incentives. I placed so many orders with them precisely because the more I ordered, the better return I got on my $80 investment. If I didn't join Prime, I surely would have combined more orders so that I met the $25 minimum to get standard shipping.
In the end, I'm sure I saved some money using Prime, but I don't think it was a huge amount. Will I re-up? Probably. I love Amazon and I love getting stuff in the mail.
Labels: amazon
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