Amazon Prime Is About to Get Worse

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Amazon Prime is about to get worse? Am I missing something? You will still be able to get free two day shipping, just not from the retailers who choose not to participate. How does that make Amazon Prime "worse?"

So basically, if a merchant in Florida doesn’t want to two-day ship west of the Mississippi, or a merchant in New York doesn’t want to ship to the west coast, they don’t have to. And that means that some of the merchandise that’ll pop up as Prime eligible won’t offer two-day shipping.
 
It in worse for customers as you don't get the same level of benefits. Makes sense to me. Today you get free two day shipping on everything, maybe soon you will only get it on 1/10th of the things you order. Makes it less worth the money for some if they can't get the same free two day shipping on everything and have to start paying shipping more often on items.
 
This only affect third party Prime eligible shippers, nothing shipped by Amazon is affected by this.
 
Exavior said:
Today you get free two day shipping on everything, maybe soon you will only get it on 1/10th of the things you order. Makes it less worth the money for some if they can't get the same free two day shipping on everything and have to start paying shipping more often on items.
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Sure, if this new program resulted in in only 1 in 10 items being Prime eligible but I can't imagine a single scenario where Amazon would let that happen. Prime membership would plummet under those circumstances.

The only people I see this impacting is the merchants selling on Amazon that won't 2-day ship. Most consumers will just buy from another seller that DOES offer the free 2-day shipping.

ocellaris said:
This only affect third party Prime eligible shippers, nothing shipped by Amazon is affected by this.
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Exactly
 
When was this not the case? I remember this was always the way it worked. I'm confused.
 
Anyone who likes to do expedited shipping on Amazon know, you only do it on items shipped by Amazon. 3rd parties usually miss the promised date forcing a reimbursement or they purposely didn't process the order in time so it would take 3-4 days instead of 1-2, but technically they did make the promised window.

I bet it became a customer service issue. Now they can just say that the problem 3rd party sites are ineligible for prime shipping.
 
There's already a ton of items that don't get 2-day shipping even from amazon, it started with bulky items and is moving into more items that are still prime, but prime is 3 days instead of 2. It's been getting worse for awhile.
 
Almost everything I buy on Amazon comes directly from an Amazon warehouse anyways, so this doesnt really affect me at all.
 
Cancelled my prime. Seemed like lately anytime I wanted to order anything, I had to do a lot more digging to see that even if it was "Prime 2-day" if that wasn't including some 2-week processing window that wasn't necessarily obvious. Had to add items to cart, see when it would actually be delivered, remove, try a different item/merchant.

Usually I don't care that much, but in the last 2 months there were a couple events I had where I wanted some of these item guaranteed within that window; one didn't make it and others I ended up just not getting at all because I couldn't find any that would get shipped in time.
 
Yeah, they're free to not do Prime, and will fall off my Prime searches. We can all do what we wish!
 
Sounds like business as usual, just giving "not fulfilled by amazon" prime sellers flexibility. Bought a 500gb evo (only god knows why) Friday at 2am and it was at my doorstep today. Now I shouldn't have bought the ssd because it was a stupid after bar decision, but hell they shipped it fast.

I also got a cap. So there is that.
 
I'm sure I'm like a bunch of the guys who do actually pay attention to who it's fulfilled by. It's our own damn fault if we ordered it from someone who doesn't do two day prime.

As a photographer I order a lot of odds and ends and unfortunately they tend to come from shipping places that don't do prime. Doesn't phase me any.
 
Sounds perfectly fine to me too. Businesses are in it for profit. If it's too expensive for them to offer two day shipping then they should have the choice to decline that option. Only entitled consumers would think otherwise.
 
Steve said:
Amazon Prime is about to get worse? Am I missing something? You will still be able to get free two day shipping, just not from the retailers who choose not to participate. How does that make Amazon Prime "worse?"
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Just think some other merchant and 7 day ship instead of two. Sure shipping is free, but if it takes forever to reach your doorstep is that $99 still worth it? Lately I've started using Amazon for my computer parts and while there's usually more than one seller there's usually not that many sellers for the special stuff (like cables, fans, and specialty items). I put up with the one or two Amazon Prime seller because not only are they the same price elsewhere but because I get the item within 2 or 3 days tops. Essentially it's no better than NewEgg Saver which is dirt cheap. So essentially you are paying quite a bit for music and video streaming if you aren't buying tons of items from Amazon.
 
Isn't this how it already works? I've ordered stuff over the years where the merchant didn't do Prime shipping. The thing that is worse is most of my Prime 2 day orders this year have taken more than two-days.
 
Most of you are missing the point. The product will still claim amazon prime but when you purchase it will not offer 2 day shipping. This mean these products will still show up in prime searches. There will not be an easy way to distinguish 2day eligible and not eleigible without viewing the actual product in your cart. This seems a little deceptive to me. What exactly is prime about a seller if they dont offer free 2day shipping?
 
docmal said:
Most of you are missing the point. The product will still claim amazon prime but when you purchase it will not offer 2 day shipping. This mean these products will still show up in prime searches. There will not be an easy way to distinguish 2day eligible and not eleigible without viewing the actual product in your cart. This seems a little deceptive to me. What exactly is prime about a seller if they dont offer free 2day shipping?
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Amazon is likely smart enough to not show those items as Prime eligible to user who are not in the seller's Prime coverage areas.
 
I have cancelled my subscription to prime before they started charging me $99/yr.
But even then, the reason I bought from prime was to order from Amazon themselves, in the first place. Not from 3rd party businesses. Those came only into question if Amazon didn't have the product I wanted, and their price was just as low.
 
I don't know about Murka, but in Canuckistan this is how Prime has always worked.

But hey! There's even a filter built right into the search.
 
Will the items in question still have free shipping? As orders <$35 get shipped for free.

Maybe it's because I live in a bustling city (San Francisco) but I almost always get my packages in 2 days.
 
If it can't ship under prime rules, then it shouldn't get the frickin check mark. Period.
 
I will continue my prime membership simply because they ship large tools for free. Even if it does not come in two days, who the hell cares when I can get a 300+ pound bandsaw, table saw, plate compactor or drill press shipped for free? In the past four years, I have purchased everyone of those and got them all shipped for free. They arrived in about a week, I didn't have to pay tax and I still got 2 day shipping on everything else I ordered throughout the year, plus streaming services.
 
Been up and down with Amazon. The price hike to $99 bux for prime was a deal breaker; but they offered their Fire Phone (excellent phone) for $189 plus a year of prime. We got 2. Big purchases, are usually next day even with Prime since there is a fulfillment center 50 miles from me. The tax free went away since they 2 fulfillment centers in my state now. Now they have added a streaming music service for prime members; that is good. We can usually find movies to watch on Prime video when we have time for it. If Prime membership was say, just free 2 day shipping; don't think I would bother.
 
I had prime last year when I was ordering a lot of stuff from Amazon pretty frequently so i felt like it was definitely worth it when I was using it, and I was able to watch through a bunch of shows I wanted to see as well. Eventually though I ran through everything I wanted to watch by the end of my year and also wasn't ordering as much so I didn't renew it. I definitely liked it when I had it though. I also split the $99 with my girlfriend so the $50 wasn't a bad deal at all.
 
Virtually all of my searches are with the checkbox for PRIME eligible anyways so this wont affect me at all. So only 3rd parties will loose out on those sales, as they will just get filtered away normally.
 
I have noticed about 3 times in the last month that when I am looking at a product it will say "Order in the next XX hours and get it by <2 days from now>".

But then once I order it and go back and look at the order status it has now changed to <3 days from now>.

I thought I was mistaken the first couple times, but the 3rd time I was paying attention.
 
This is disappointing. I like ordering from 3rd party sellers that use prime because I don't get taxed that way and I get the free 2 day shipping.
 
Ihaveworms said:
This is disappointing. I like ordering from 3rd party sellers that use prime because I don't get taxed that way and I get the free 2 day shipping.
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But that's the way it's always been. 3rd parties can participate in Prime, but don't have to. There has never been a time where 100% of items on Amazon were prime eligible.

If I'm understanding correctly, before 3rd parties had the black and white option of choosing to be part of the Prime service or not. Now they can limit it based on geography. Which can go both ways, 3rd parties may limit, but others that had opted out altogether may start offering limited Prime service.
 
Prime overall has been getting worse for awhile now...first the Add On items that are increasingly prevalent, then the "change" to the family accounts system, and now this. Also, the last couple of 2-day "guaranteed" shipping items I've gotten have not showed up in 2 days.

Making me seriously reconsider my Prime membership.
 
I don't see how an item can be listed as prime and not have 2 day shipping.... that's exactly what prime shipping is.
 
I don't think you are comprehending the changes correctly.
 
Exavior said:
It in worse for customers as you don't get the same level of benefits. Makes sense to me. Today you get free two day shipping on everything, maybe soon you will only get it on 1/10th of the things you order. Makes it less worth the money for some if they can't get the same free two day shipping on everything and have to start paying shipping more often on items.
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That's only if you believe people offering nationwide prime will abandon people. What you may actually see are MORE prime offerings, just that the new ones weren't going to buy into the process nationwide.

An example. I used to use a specific vendor of computer parts because they were in up state NY, and shipping form them via ground would get here the next day as long as I ordered by ~1pm to give them a chance to pick pack it before their pickup at the end of the day. If they were offering product through amazon, they might not offer prime service, but if they know there normal procedure gets them prime level of service to a bunch of zip codes, they might opt in if they can restrict the offering to prime users in those zip codes.,

In that kind of situation it would be a value add for everyone but far away prime users. What is unclear form the article is if you will start getting signal to noise issues. If it is not prime eleigble for me, it shouldn't show up as a prime item... for me.
 
raz-0 said:
That's only if you believe people offering nationwide prime will abandon people. What you may actually see are MORE prime offerings, just that the new ones weren't going to buy into the process nationwide.

An example. I used to use a specific vendor of computer parts because they were in up state NY, and shipping form them via ground would get here the next day as long as I ordered by ~1pm to give them a chance to pick pack it before their pickup at the end of the day. If they were offering product through amazon, they might not offer prime service, but if they know there normal procedure gets them prime level of service to a bunch of zip codes, they might opt in if they can restrict the offering to prime users in those zip codes.,

In that kind of situation it would be a value add for everyone but far away prime users. What is unclear form the article is if you will start getting signal to noise issues. If it is not prime eleigble for me, it shouldn't show up as a prime item... for me.
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I don't think that it should be listed as "Prime" if that's the case. I know I don't wanna find out after I add an item to my cart that I'm not in their area of 2 day shipping. Maybe they could list were they ship quickly to in the product description.
 
ocellaris said:
Amazon is likely smart enough to not show those items as Prime eligible to user who are not in the seller's Prime coverage areas.
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AssMan said:
I don't see how an item can be listed as prime and not have 2 day shipping.... that's exactly what prime shipping is.
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I don't know, I'm already seeing that today; I click the Prime filter on the side, and I still see items that will take over a week to get to me. So long as the shipping is actually 2 days, it doesn't take into consideration the processing/lead-in time to shipping, which seems like a huge loophole.
 
If the item is not listed as Prime, I don't buy the item. It's that simple. There's a reason why the criteria exists when I'm shopping.
 
Kaitian said:
If the item is not listed as Prime, I don't buy the item. It's that simple. There's a reason why the criteria exists when I'm shopping.
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If it still included in your Prime only filter, but isn't 2 day then that's the issue here. Now we have to wade thru shit to figure out which is really Prime, and which is only Prime for others but showing up for you.
 
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