Amazon has lowered their threshold to get free shipping from $49 to $35.
The e-commerce giant used to offer free shipping for orders $35 and up, then switched it to $49, and now reverted back to the $35 threshold.
This is clearly in response to Walmart’s push to compete on the e-commerce front and offer free two-day shipping on orders $35+. Walmart still has the shipping edge over Amazon since they’ll ship it out in two days while Amazon only promises 5-8 business day shipping.
All this doesn’t affect Prime members who get free two-day shipping with no minimum at all.
Hat tip to Dansdeals
I wonder if Amazon’s sales figures dropped when they’ve increased the minimum required spending to $49.
I think amazon was hoping the increase to $49 would a lot more people into upgrading to Prime, but instead people just held back on their spending until their shopping card reached to $49.
Also, now that walmart started doing free shipping and free store pick-ups (which is useful for people that work all day and cant be at home to sign for packages) then amazon’s sales must have been affected enough for amazon to revert back.
Walmart has always destroyed amazon on grocery prices. Amazon was getting too fat because of ignorance.
There’s also quite a lot of items marked as “Exclusively for Prime Members” now, which means even with the $35 threshold you might not be able to order what you want.
“The e-commerce giant used to offer free shipping for orders $35 and up, then switched it to $49, and now reverted back to the $35 threshold.”
Actually it should be…
“The e-commerce giant used to offer free shipping for orders of $25 and up, then upped the minimum to $35 in 2013, then switched it to $49 in 2016, and now reverted back to the $35 threshold.”
Nice addition
It’s good to see that Walmart is still enough of a threat to Amazon to force some competition. I’ve become concerned about Amazon’s dominance of e-commerce and how a lack of strong competition online could ultimately hurt consumers.
One important thing to remember for non-primers, just because you get your cart up to the level for free shipping does not mean they will then ship to you in Prime speed. They will not. Matt P might be the exception for items in THAT warehouse but order something coming from another warehouse across the country and it will go slow UPS ground. The delays can be weeks. I have a non-prime account and a prime account. The non-prime account is to buy and sell from and to Amazon. You can’t use Prime to buy items on Amazon for resale on Amazon per their policy. I do hundreds of transactions a month on my non-prime account. Slow as molasses to get things but Amazon is in their right. After all, they give you free shipping at $35 (now), doesn’t mean your getting it quick.
Another thing I see frequently now, many physical items are now only available at low prices to Prime members and will state so on the product page.
I dropped prime and it saved me a lot of money – too easy to buy stuff when it will arrive in 1 to 2 days and sometimes 4 hours because there’s a warehouse an hour away.
I’ve been waiting to get enough stuff to hit the $50, but I’m at $35, so this is a nice surprise.
Prime encourages overspending which is what Amazon wants
Hopefully they lower their prices next.
Nice one Brent 🙂
AZ began charging sale tax for me on Feb 1st, so it is unlikely
that I’ll renew Prime again. Some of their items are nearly same
price as in a store these days.
I used to order from Amazon all the time. Not anymore. Amazon has become so much more expensive than local stores. Walmart is almost always cheaper and now has free shipping at $25.
On top of that, Costco for example allows non-members to order products online, often with free shipping and prices that are significantly less than Amazon’s.
Just the other day, Amazon’s price was 48% more expensive compared to Costco’s regular price. Costco had the item on sale, which made Amazon 93% more expensive. On top of that, Costco shipped free, whereas Amazon required $49 (or now $35) minimum.
I have no idea why people are paying Amazon Prime just for the privilege of paying prices that are at best that of stores.
the got people hooked on the convenience and raised prices… Walmart does the same…
Nice! I refuse to get Prime. I would queue things up until I had enough for free shipping, now I can order more often.