Amazon free delivery has changed again

Zanderman

(Originally posted in Grabbit but now moved to Shop but don't drop)

Amazon have announced that their free Super Saver Delivery now applies (from 7th Jan) only to orders over £10 including books.

Previously (I think) books (and Music, Film & TV, Blu-ray, Software or PC & Video Games) got free delivery whatever the price, but now you have to spend £10 on those too.

This compounds the previous change a few months ago that created the £10 limit for some categories (free delivery did apply to everything at one time).

Details here (but dressed up as a positive, not a negative!):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_cn?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201210860

ic

Should anybody want Amazon Prime, you can get a three month free trial as part of their Amazon Family: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/family/signup/welcome. Ordinarily its just a one month free trial.

Also anybody with Prime membership (but not Family) can share their membership with friends and family: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_cn?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201277270

Ezmondino

Zanderman wrote: »

Details here (but dressed up as a positive, not a negative!):

Amazingly dressed up as a positive. Whoever came up with that must be very proud.

iammumtoone

Well its good news in a way for me, means I will save money as I will no longer be buying much from them! I hardly ever buy anything that is over £10 so now I just wont bother, its not as if you can save up until you have £10 worth of items needed as the prices change that often by the time you have reached that goal the first item will have probably gone up in price.

Kite2010

Lack of major competition means Amazon thinks they can probably get away with it.

Zanderman

iammumtoone wrote: »

Well its good news in a way for me, means I will save money as I will no longer be buying much from them! I hardly ever buy anything that is over £10 so now I just wont bother, its not as if you can save up until you have £10 worth of items needed as the prices change that often by the time you have reached that goal the first item will have probably gone up in price.

Yes, it will have the same effect on me!

Have often bought books on promotion/offer at £5 or less because shipping was free and so the price was especially attractive - and now it won't be - so I won't be buying them.

In that respect it is a bit of an own goal by Amazon.

Meadows

Well I guess that means less sales for them as people will shop around far more and where a media may be cheaper on Amazon pre postage it may well be a better buy elsewhere with free (or less postage)!

Angellore

I discovered this the other day when I went to buy two upcoming release paperbacks with a total cost of £7. I decided I would just wait until they come out and pick them up in the supermarket. I then discovered quite by accident that Asda direct deliver all their books for free and that you can pre-order. Obviously this is only really useful for new release and chart paperbacks for the most part, but it's certainly better than Amazon if you only want a couple. Having a quick browse, Asda was generally the same price as Amazon, although one book (which I ended up pre-ordering) was half the price.

I also think that websites like readitswapit will do better because they lost out with free Amazon postage, now it will be more economical to swap.

1jim

ic wrote: »

Also anybody with Prime membership (but not Family) can share their membership with friends and family: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_cn?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201277270

The family term can be quite broad. I do this with 4 other people and have no physical connection with any of them, we split the prime cost and all benefit from one day delivery using prime :T Hduk might be the site to look on and search to see a thread about this

Nada666

Surely it is a positive? Books and DVDs may now be priced competitively. Not charging postage for a single DVD or a single book made the price ridiculous. It was pretty strange being able to buy a Blu-ray cheaper in HMV than on Amazon.

It's a pity the minimum spend for no separate postage is not set at £20 rather than £10.

I am at a loss to understand why people think this is a bad thing.