Amazon locking out non Prime customers

CKhalvashi

ringo_24601 wrote: »

And a £4.99 delivery charge

It's £3.50 cheaper for an Amazon Prime user to buy this

But, that only works if you buy enough £3.50 savings to save the £70 over the course of the year.

Ideally you're looking at a purchase along those lines every 2 weeks to make it up.

[Deleted User]

CKhalvashi wrote: »

But, that only works if you buy enough £3.50 savings to save the £70 over the course of the year.

Ideally you're looking at a purchase along those lines every 2 weeks to make it up.

If you only get Prime to get the delivery benefits, yes, that's how you'd work it out. I use their TV/Video service, Music service, cloud storage service also. I think it's quite reasonable when you consider all the extras (if you use them)

Also - their video service lets you download stuff to your device rather than needing to be online. This is great for when I'm travelling by train.

d0nna

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Why do you think that they are being sneaky?
People who have paid for Amazon prime occasionally get offered special deals that non members don't get and as these people are in effect, part of a club, why shouldn't this be the case?

It's no different to Tesco Clubcard holders getting sent discount vouchers or any of the other special offers for members of other various loyality schemes.

Why I said that I think they are being sneaky is because I cannot purchase quite a few items off amazon that I wanted to at all unless I join prime. Some of these items are popular Christmas toys. I'm quite happy for Prime members to get extra benefits for being a Prime member such as reductions on items but I think they should not exclude their other customers by not letting them purchase these items at a slightly higher non member price.

With the reference to tesco clubcard, again I'm quite happy for people to get sent discount vouchers because they're part of the club, but you can still buy the items that are discounted if you're not part of the club as well, but at a higher price. The national trust membership offers free entry at all their venues, I have no problem with that, I'm not a member, but I can still visit them and pay an entrance fee.

Tastecard offers discounts at certain restaurants but I can still visit these restaurants without being a member.

That's just my opinion though, I know a lot of people won't agree.

KxMx

CKhalvashi wrote: »

But, that only works if you buy enough £3.50 savings to save the £70 over the course of the year.

Ideally you're looking at a purchase along those lines every 2 weeks to make it up.

Amazon Prime means you can absolutely choose when ordering what day to get the delivery, through Next Day (even if that means 2) or Nominated Day.

To some who are not sitting at home every day ready to receive parcels this is invaluable, and well worth paying the £79 per year.

There are other ways a membership can be beneficial outside of monetary terms.

shaun_from_Africa

d0nna wrote: »

Why I said that I think they are being sneaky is because I cannot purchase quite a few items off amazon that I wanted to at all unless I join prime. Some of these items are popular Christmas toys.

And as they are popular and possibly in great demand, Amazon may well only have a limited number of these so are offering them to their prime members first.
Maybe nearer Christmas time they will sell them to anyone who wants them, providing that they still have stock available.

The same may well be true of the hamster litter that started this topic.
Amazon may only have a small quantity of this so are offering it to their members first.

Why not join Prime on their 30 day free trial and once you've ordered what you want, simply cancel the membership.

d0nna

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

And as they are popular and possibly in great demand, Amazon may well only have a limited number of these so are offering them to their prime members first.
Maybe nearer Christmas time they will sell them to anyone who wants them, providing that they still have stock available.

The same may well be true of the hamster litter that started this topic.
Amazon may only have a small quantity of this so are offering it to their members first.

Why not join Prime on their 30 day free trial and once you've ordered what you want, simply cancel the membership.

The items are popular at the moment but I have been to quite a few high street shops in the last few days to buy the items that I would've normally have purchased with Amazon, for around the same price, but cannot due to it being only available to prime members, and have purchased the items with no problem at all. Amazon has lost most of my custom this year because of this.

I know that I can try their 30 day free trial, never say never, but I'm not interested in it at the moment. Especially when I can get what I want, at a reasonable price elsewhere, without signing up for a membership that I have to eventually pay for.

savemoney

But Tesco dont provide photo storage, music and video which is what you get with prime. Until yesterday it was £59 and I took advantage while it was on offer. Also you get free delivery no minimum spend which in itself can be a huge bonus no looking for making it up to £20.

foxtrotoscar wrote: »

There is a very big difference....Tesco don't charge you £79/year to get their vouchers!

PhylPho

savemoney wrote: »

But Tesco dont provide photo storage, music and video which is what you get with prime. Until yesterday it was £59 and I took advantage while it was on offer. Also you get free delivery no minimum spend which in itself can be a huge bonus no looking for making it up to £20.

This thread is not about is-Prime-better-than-Tesco-Clubcard. I don't believe the OP intended it to be.

Tesco Clubcard is a "club" only in the sense that Tesco says it is. In reality, it's a cashback scheme by another name, a 1% rebate on the money spent by a Tesco shopper if that Tesco shopper wishes to bother having that rebate.

The 1p in the £1 cashback is, of course, not made in cash at all but in vouchers which are then credited to the entirely free "Clubcard" account that any Tesco shopper can choose to open. Or not. No element of pricing discrimination / product availability restriction exists. Everything in store at Tesco can be bought by anyone and everyone will each pay the same price.

By contrast, Amazon has now embarked on what may yet prove to be a disastrous attempt to turn its shopping platform into a kind of Buyer's Club, this by way of subsidising its ambition to be a global provider of multi-media content where profitability is exponentially higher than that to be derived from the stocking, packing, despatch and distribution of physical goods.

Amazon's longterm plan to re-purpose itself has its roots in the original Amazon Prime, a scheme which began life as a way for the company to get £millions cash-in-hand from Amazon customers via an annual fee, in return for which next day delivery / free delivery was provided. Prime replaced the original free or low-minimum- spend delivery model which Amazon used to develop its customer base; nowadays, Internet shoppers must spend a minimum £20 at Amazon if they want free delivery (on qualifying items, as determined by Amazon itself.)

But Amazon long since ceased to regard itself as merely a place to go Internet shopping. Envisaging the profits to be made from selling the virtual rather than the actual -- Internet streaming versus Internet selling -- it bought out LoveFilm video-by-post rental as a first step to assessing the strength of the British market and made similar acquisitions in the USA.

Having done that, its re-purposing gathered momentum: from online shopping platform to online multi-media streaming service of video and audio content and, finally, to content creator. Thus it has now invested $millions in originating a new version of a BBC TV programme in which middle aged men with declining testosterone levels cling to late adolescence in assorted motor cars.

The strategy is high-risk though not without good reason: Amazon has the technological infrastructure to profit from its own content in the same way that it has developed the hugely costly physical infrastructure to profit from the retail of physical goods by its online shopping platform.

Aware that not everyone would wish to sign up to Amazon the multi-media virtual content provider, it revised Amazon Prime such that its benefits suddenly included Internet streaming. In other words, it sought to incentivize a high-maintenance customer base of consumers of physical goods towards becoming a low-maintenance customer base of consumers of virtual goods.

The move certainly surprised many Amazon shoppers, who at the time could not see how one day delivery and free P&P had anything to do with streaming films and MP3 tracks over the Internet. Now, of course, they realise why.

All of this should in theory be well and good. But it isn't. Amazon is incurring massive $billion costs which longterm may reap $billion rewards but in the meantime needs to grow its customer base so as to exploit those customers' purses. The motoring programme will, it seems to believe, harness yet more to Prime; the recent flash sale of Prime at £59 instead of £79 was also part of that.

Nothing wrong, business-wise, with any of that. Where, however, things are going wrong is with the shopping platform and how Amazon is trying to finesse that audience into a Prime audience.

The situation now unfolding is the equivalent of a Tesco shopper -- Clubcard holder or not -- going into the store and seeing that a tin of Heinz beans is available off the shelf . . . only if £79 is paid for other services. Be a member of Tesco Prime and shop for whatever you want at the store; don't be a member of Tesco Prime and tough, you either won't be allowed to shop for what you want or you'll pay the higher of two pricing stickers for the item which Tesco actually deigns to make available to you.

Predictably, this kind of behaviour is not only making Amazon increasingly uncompetitive as a shopping platform, it isn't enamouring the company to analysts, either. There's a feeling that Amazon was particularly inept in fixing upon that BBC TV motoring programme as its first major investment in original content provision, because there will be many who think that if they've got to pay £79 in order to buy at a competitive price an ordinary everyday item so as to cross-subsidise the money being spent on Jeremy Clarkson & Co, then they'll shop somewhere else.

My own experience of Amazon in the past year suggests that it is becoming the best friend eBay ever had. This is because not only are Amazon prices in a growing number of cases more than eBay prices for the exact same item, the actual retailers of those items are the same on eBay as they are on Amazon.

As for that £20 minimum spend or no free P&P, such stricture doesn't apply in eBay's case and indeed, many of those same Amazon / eBay retailers, which are obliged to follow Amazon's P&P policy, don't charge any P&P at all when selling via eBay.

In recent weeks I have been told, in effect, by Amazon that if I wish to buy a Canon ink re-fill at the headline price offered, then I must shell out £79 first to be a Prime customer. I have even been told, in another case, that the item I was looking at was *only* available to a Prime customer. Oh really? I just Googled and found it online elsewhere. And cheaper.

I have also of late purchased a number of books in as-new condition post-free from eBay book sellers who also sell them on Amazon but at a higher cost and with extra post and packing charges on top. On Amazon, I'm expected to build the transaction value to over £20 for a £4.99p book to get free P&P. On eBay. . . I'm not. Same seller. Same book.

The reality, then, is that which the OP referred to. Amazon is introducing restrictive product availability practices as well as discriminatory pricing practices so as to manoeuvre more and more customers into signing up to Amazon Prime -- in effect, making Amazon Prime a buyer's club so as to generate upfront income via recurring annual charges that will subsidise other operational areas.

For many, Amazon Prime offers what they want and don't mind paying for. For others, Amazon Prime is not what they want so is not what they wish to pay for. Amazon's attempts to coerce its online shoppers into joining Prime are as obvious as they are odious: there's plenty of choice out there on the Internet; consumers who value the freedom to buy what they want at the price they prefer are not easily swayed.

KxMx

The motoring program has nothing to do with the Prime discount subscriptions.

They offer this discount prior to Black Friday and have done for at least 3 years.

The-Truth

PhylPho wrote: »

The strategy is high-risk though not without good reason:

It's not high risk at all and that's only your opinion. They are extremely good at what they do and eBay has more to worry about Amazon, not the other way around!