Amazon offers free shipping for orders of $35 or more. Prime members get free shipping on any amount, but non-Prime members pay for shipping on orders less than $35.
One catch has always been that to trigger the $35 free shipping you needed to have $35 of items which are fulfilled by Amazon themselves. They didn’t all need to be sold by Amazon, but they all needed to be fulfilled by Amazon.
LA Times reports the good news that Amazon now will allow third-party sellers items to count toward the $35 threshold, effectively tripling the number of eligible items. This is only the case for third-party sellers who are offering free shipping. Items from sellers who are charging for shipping will not count toward the $35.
You can see the change on Amazon’s website:
Here’s a look at my shopping cart from my backup non-Prime Amazon account:
The rubber bands are not being shipped by Amazon but they still trigger the $35 threshold to get me free shipping on the belt which is being shipped by Amazon.
HT: MyMoneyBlog
Awesome news!! Thanks for the tip. I’ve hated that change with Amazon and the increase to $35 as it used to require the items be fulfilled by Amazon.. I’ve had dozens of items sitting in my Amazon shopping cart for the past year multiple times as I had to wait to reach the $35 amount. I have purchased A LOT less from amazon the past year because of this… I just found better deals elsewhere and didn’t have the shipping nuances.
Cheers!!!!
Yeah, it’s a significant change.
Yep, I can confirm Amazon changed free shipping policy on 1/27