7 Ways to Avoid Paying $99 for Amazon Prime Free Shipping

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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As PCMag points out, there are always alternative ways to beat the system and have given disgruntled Amazon Prime members a way to get around the $20 a year raise recently put into place.

At the end of the day, members are only paying $20 more a year or about $1.66 more per month – pocket change. But this is the Internet, so some people were predictably peeved.
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pcmag recommending that people buy enough items to cross the $35 threshold for free shipping and then return what they don't want.

that'd be great...until amazon kills that due to rampant abuse
 
I'm not rich by any means, but why the fuck are people so CHEAP? Oh no, an extra $20 a year.
 
Megalith said:
I'm not rich by any means, but why the fuck are people so CHEAP? Oh no, an extra $20 a year.
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$20 here, $20 there. It adds up quickly. People with the mindset to always save money will always be better off then those who always spend. There are two kinds of people in how they see money. You have people that see money as a limited resource, and you have people that see it as an unlimited resource. People who see it limited will always try to save money, while people who see it unlimited will believe if they can't afford it then they simply just need more money.

Guess which the middle class or higher tend to be?
 
Just purchased a gift prime membership for myself lol.. starting a day after my current subscription ends. Saved 20 bucks. This is a hotdeal!!!
 
The Amazon student suggestion might be a good solution for some, but the student accounts are more restricted than regular prime accounts. Unless they've changed something in the past year, the student account is for one person, period. A regular prime account can have multiple family members on it, at least for the free two-day shipping.
 
... oooor, don't be so hard up to get your crap so fast.. save stuff for later in your cart, and wait until you build up the 35$.
Jeez, I am starting to notice now a days, good service is considered getting crap fast, or maybe return crap fast...
 
Ashbringer said:
$20 here, $20 there. It adds up quickly. People with the mindset to always save money will always be better off then those who always spend. There are two kinds of people in how they see money. You have people that see money as a limited resource, and you have people that see it as an unlimited resource. People who see it limited will always try to save money, while people who see it unlimited will believe if they can't afford it then they simply just need more money.

Guess which the middle class or higher tend to be?
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What's the old saying, "don't write checks your ass can't cash"?

We were also taught to treat CC's like checks, and not charge what you don't have in the bank (or at least won't have in the bank by the end of the billing cycle). No interest or penalties that way. I think I've made 2 payments with interest in 20+ years due to emergency situations. I don't think a lot of people understand how much those minimum payments add up to in the end.

I'd hate to imagine what will happen when those "unlimited resource" people you mention suddenly have to live on a fixed income one day. :eek:
 
ReconSniper said:
Just purchased a gift prime membership for myself lol.. starting a day after my current subscription ends. Saved 20 bucks. This is a hotdeal!!!
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Nope...I purchased a gift one, they charged the $99.
 
Megalith said:
I'm not rich by any means, but why the fuck are people so CHEAP? Oh no, an extra $20 a year.
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Probably has something to do with costs of living always going up...and waged for almost everyone having been stagnant for 30 years in spite of record corporate profits. On top of savings/retirement funds getting wiped out by mortgage derivatives.
 
Since I started as an Amazon Prime member I have averaged about 85 orders a year. This year seems a little slow as I have only made 17, but add Prime Instant Video I still kind of think it is worth it. I will review my ordering habits at the end of November and make my decision if it is worth the $99 price tag.
 
If I were Amazon I'd cancel all PCMag (didn't even know they still existed or are still relevant, other than shitty articles like the OP linked one) affiliations, and affiliations with PCMags owners or sites that PCMag owns. That would be a decent response by Amazon: "PCMag showed you how to save $20, and in return we ended up saving a bundle on affiliate commission."

Xrave said:
What is Zinc and how does it work?
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All Zinc does is pass some of the commission they make on to you as savings. In addition they get affiliate fees from Dwolla and all the other crap they try to sell you. It's not a scam, but it is pretty sleazy.

As far as those who abuse Amazon's return system goes; Amazon will just ban them and move on. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar chains who do not accept returns from certain individuals who have a long history or returning shit.

At $99 Amazon Prime is a fucking Amazing service, and if you are too poor to pay the other $20 then you shouldn't be buying shit on Amazon all the time to begin with.
 
$20 is the equivalent going to see one movie. I'll still get more value out of Prime than watching a movie.
 
Easiest say to save money. Just steal things from local B&M

no shipping and no cost of item.
 
Actually, we have a "Hotdeals" section in the forum. So for obvious reasons, people like to save money. If you can save 20$ buy purchasing a gift now, why not do it? Save 20 bucks for the next year. In August 2015, I will have to pay the extra 20 bucks if want to keep Prime.

For those of us who strictly use Prime for faster shipments, unless you purchase enough throughout the year, it really add up in terms of savings. I purchase a lot right now, but when they finish the Amazon warehouses here in Florida, sales tax will be added, making a lot of items I buy on Amazon just easier to pick up at Walmart with my other groceries. So My Amazon purchases will be reduced, and so will the need for Prime.

Also, reviewing random online polls about will you be canceling or not, it looks about 75/25 as far as people staying to leaving. So in the end, the extra cost will pay for the people leaving, and cover some of Amazons increased costs as they describe. They wont make more profit than they are now by much at all, if any.
 
mynamehere said:
I'd hate to imagine what will happen when those "unlimited resource" people you mention suddenly have to live on a fixed income one day. :eek:
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Their mentality is more money. Rather then saving the money they have, they'll go make more. Is your time better spent cutting coupons for hours, or working and getting your hourly wage? Is it better to fix your laptop, which you'll spend hours doing, or work those hours and buy a new one? Is it better to spend money to clean your cloths, or buy whole new cloths for a bit more money?

Meanwhile, companies have boardroom meetings on how to save a penny. Not joking, cause if you sell millions of a product for a penny more, that's a huge chunk of change in their pockets. No company thinks that spending $20 more here or there isn't a big deal.
 
Oh noes! First they charge tax and now raise prices.

Try and get the same stuff up here in Canada, we've always paid taxes and shipping is usually more plus things are marked up more here than the US.

You do not have my sympathies ;)
 
Ashbringer said:
Their mentality is more money. Rather then saving the money they have, they'll go make more. Is your time better spent cutting coupons for hours, or working and getting your hourly wage? Is it better to fix your laptop, which you'll spend hours doing, or work those hours and buy a new one? Is it better to spend money to clean your cloths, or buy whole new cloths for a bit more money?

Meanwhile, companies have boardroom meetings on how to save a penny. Not joking, cause if you sell millions of a product for a penny more, that's a huge chunk of change in their pockets. No company thinks that spending $20 more here or there isn't a big deal.
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I gotcha. Basically they'd be screwed if they ever found themselves on a fixed income such as disability (really being disabled) because there isn't really any working more to make extra money.
It's amazing how companies can spend dollars to save pennies and come out ahead. Yes, they they do it on quantity, though sadly many also do it by cutting quality.
 
Yeah, because everyone thinks an EXTRA $20 is just SO CHEAP. Come on. Amazon is already rich enough, and guess who isn't rich? All the normal people buying shit off Amazon.
 
ReconSniper said:
Also, reviewing random online polls about will you be canceling or not, it looks about 75/25 as far as people staying to leaving.
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Online polls are meaningless. Remember the people who said that they will boycott MW4, and then at any given time over 10k users in the boycott MW4 steam group were actually playing MW4.

An additional $20/year is $1.67 per month. You'd need a pretty damn specific reason to not pay another $1.67/month for all the video streaming, Kindle book checkout, and "free" shipping you can handle.

This is a tempest in a teapot and those who say that they will rage-cancel are lying (probably also to themselves).
 
Thuleman said:
An additional $20/year is $1.67 per month. You'd need a pretty damn specific reason to not pay another $1.67/month for all the video streaming, Kindle book checkout, and "free" shipping you can handle.
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Unless you're like me that doesn't read books (those were rendered obsolete when movies were made), doesn't want the streaming, and was already considering not renewing Amazon Prime 2-day shipping upgrade because it was already too expensive (only reason I got it before was because of the sale and splitting the cost among multiple people) along with a whole string of disincentives (less and less things are prime, more and more third party sellers offer it cheaper than prime price, and small things you used to be able to buy on prime were converted to add-on items making the $30 minimum for free shipping a moot point on prime).

An extra $20 on top of all that is enough to cause a lot of people to drop it, which is still probably fine for them if they can get plenty of people to enroll at really high profit margins.
 
I find it interesting how how people even accept this increase. So these are the people that mind paying 85 cents for a can soda lol.
 
Ashbringer said:
$20 here, $20 there. It adds up quickly. People with the mindset to always save money will always be better off then those who always spend. There are two kinds of people in how they see money. You have people that see money as a limited resource, and you have people that see it as an unlimited resource. People who see it limited will always try to save money, while people who see it unlimited will believe if they can't afford it then they simply just need more money.

Guess which the middle class or higher tend to be?
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Qft.
 
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