$49 Minimum
The minimum order total required to get free shipping on Amazon was raised to $49 from the previous $35 threshold. Books still ship free with a $25 minimum order. And gift cards get free one-day shipping with no minimum.
Amazon Free Shipping
Around 3-years ago, Amazon raised the minimum from $25 to $35, and now it went from $35 to $49. Prime members continue to get free shipping with no minimum at all.
Another advantage to Prime is the shipping speed; Prime members get 2-day shipping, compared to the 5-8 business days shipping offered to non-Prime members.
Marketplace Items
Another change I noticed today while poking around is that around one year ago, Amazon made it easier to meet the minimum order threshold by including Marketplace items toward the amount. However, they’re no longer allowing that, and we now need $49 in items shipped from Amazon itself to get the free shipping benefit.
Once again, this change has no bearing on Prime members.
Final Thoughts
As Techcrunch notes, the higher minimum is clearly a push to Prime. Remember, though that they’ve made moves within the past couple years to make Prime more expensive, both by raising the cost from $79 to $99, and by making it harder to share Prime. Seems like they’re pushing up costs on both ends.
One more nail in their coffin then.. My Prime expired last week, and won’t be renewed.
$99 is just crazy.
it’s not so bad when one factors in the free music and movies/shows. still cheaper than netflix and spotify. (if you use those features)
only thing I reever sold was fire phone… it went as low as a hundred bucks with 1 year of prime for free. sold the phones at a loss and kept prime. it runs out on about 40 years. sold on eBay mind you.
Meh. Guess Amazon is soon going to come off my list, especially with how they treat non-prime members.
Somewhat related. Curious if any resellers have run into this issue. It is clearly a violation of Prime terms to use Prime to buy items on Amazon and resell those items on Amazon,
“Prime members are not permitted to purchase products for the purpose of resale”.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_373730582_3?ie=UTF8&nodeId=13819201&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=cent
I bet you loads of people buy and resell on Amazon using Prime. I wonder if those resellers have been banned or if their Prime membership has been revoked or both.
I personally use another account to buy items on Amazon for resale. That account does not have Prime. Amazon tries all sorts of ways to get me to sign up, but I don’t. I’ve had no problem getting free shipping with the $35 requirement, just takes longer. I’m going to have to find higher priced items now with the $49 limit.
Anyone buy using Amazon Prime to then resell on Amazon. Suffered any consequences?
Is there anything on Amazon worth reselling? The price is at best on par with BestBuy, Walmart etc.
There is during some of their lightning sales. I picked up an outdoor water filter for ~ 150 and sold for around 275.
Yes. Lightning deals and AZ price tracking sites are good starts. They will find some deals and usually Amazon knows it’s a deal and won’t allow you to scale up, restricting the amount you can buy. Still I can find a few profitable deals a week for a few minutes of my time going through various sites, using my experience. Been selling on AZ for 8 years.
Be careful Amazon restricts sellers from certain categories unless you jump through hoops. I occasionally see a profitable deal or two in Beauty but it’s not easy being approved for the Beauty category so I don’t bother buying. Here’s a link about pre-approvals:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14113001
I haven’t done any diligent searches for resale at WM although I know many make a living at it. I don’t consider BB on par with Amazon prices. Think they are overpriced unless you find coupons.