You know how you could get “Free Super Saver Shipping” on qualifying Amazon items by ordering at least $25 per order? Those halcyon days are behind us now. Today, Amazon announced it is bumping the minimum order amount to $35.
“This is the first time in more than a decade that Amazon has altered the minimum order for free shipping in the US,” Amazon says, as if that makes it better. “During that time, we have expanded free shipping selection by millions of items across all 40 product categories.” And golly, if you sign up with Amazon Prime you still don’t have to worry about any of that! (And, needless to say, if you buy Kindle e-books, you don’t have to worry about it either.)
I’ve subscribed to Prime for some time now, and I have to admit it comes in handy. I can order whatever I want (that qualifies) without worrying about scraping together enough things that I might not need right then to meet the minimum. And the streaming videos I get to watch at no extra charge are just an added bonus.
I have to wonder how long it’s going to take for folks like my parents, who still don’t see the benefit in paying $79 a year for “free” shipping, to decide it’s worth going for? I wonder if that was part of the point of the price increase?
(Found via The Verge.)
In the near term, I suspect that the $35 minimum will just push my Amazon orders a smidge further apart; I’m rarely in a hurry for AZ orders, so I’ll just wait until I have one more thing I want to get. If I wanted streaming video, though, that’d be an excuse to try Prime.