Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Shopping at Amazon

Amazon. We love Amazon and sometimes, we don't love Amazon. But we all shop at Amazon.  A lot.

I have been meaning to put together an Everything-You-Ever-Wanted-to-Know-About-Shopping-at-Amazon post for a long time, but there have been so many changes to Amazon programs this year, and  I was forestalled.  I think if you are going to give a company a lot of your business, you should know what you're doing, what the rules are and how to best take advantage of them.  So here at last, is the Daily Cheapskate Everything-You-Ever-Wanted-to-Know-About-Shopping-at-Amazon.



Amazon Prime:  this is Amazon's flagship program and with good reason.  For $99 per year, here's what you get:

• Free 2-day shipping on over 20 million items.  I think this is THE most important benefit of Amazon Prime.  Don't need your items in two days?  Amazon is currently offering a $1.00 digital credit if you voluntarily give up your two-day shipping and choose a slower shipping speed when you place an order. 
• Prime Music:  stream any number of Prime Music songs on to your computer, phone, tablet, etc. with no ads or pop-ups, for free. 
• Prime Photo:  unlimited free online photo storage in the Amazon Cloud Drive.  This is a really valuable benefit as you can automatically back up all of your photos in your phone, tablet and computer in full resolution via either 1) web browser, 2) smartphone app or 3) desktop PC software.  That means when/if your computer crashes or you lose your phone, your irreplacable photos are still out there in original resolution in the Cloud.
• Prime Instant Video:  Unlimited instant streaming of over 40,000 movies and TV episodes. 
• Kindle Lending Library: Borrow one Kindle Book per month from over 500,000 titles for free on any Kindle or Kindle-enabled device,  with no due dates (you don't need a Kindle to read a Kindle book, fyi, just download this awesome free Kindle App).
• Kindle First:  read two free new books each month, from a list of four of next month's ebook releases, ahead of their release dates.
• 30-minute early access to select Lightning Deals on Amazon, and new events on MyHabit.com
• Prime only promotions, i.e. half price on Fire TV stick, or 50% off your first Subscribe & Save item, and more sporadic offers during the year.
• You can give Amazon Prime Membership as a gift.  Frankly, I would LOVE to get this as a gift.  Think wedding, graduation, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, housewarming and just a generous way to say thank you.  If your recipient happens to already be a Prime member, your gift can be exchanged for an Amazon gift card instead, so it's practically risk free to give.

So those are the essential benefits of a Prime membership. If we treat the free 2-day shipping as the major benefit and the rest of the benefits as secondary perks, is Prime worth the $99 per year? Let's do the math.

Shipping charges for non-Prime members start at $3.99 on Amazon; let's round that up to $4.00 and round up the $99.00 membership fee up to $100.00, just because round numbers are easier to manipulate.  That means that if you purchase 25 items or more over the course of the year, you will save money on Amazon Prime (25 x $4 = $100) . (Of course, this is not an exact calculation, because many items on Amazon cost more than $3.99 to ship,  and some items, like SuperSaver orders over $35 or Subscribe & Save products, ship for free without a Prime account. But let's just guesstimate.)

Log into your Amazon account and click here to see how many items you purchased in 2013 (look in the upper left hand corner), and click here to see how many items you purchased in 2014.  Take an average of the two.  Did you buy more than 25 items on average per year on Amazon?  If you answered "yes" and assuming that most of those orders were less than $35, you would save money on shipping with a Prime membership.  Interested in trying Amazon Prime?  Just sign up for the free 30-day Prime Trial here.   If you've decided that Amazon Prime is for you, a free trial is a great way to dip a toe into the Amazon Prime membership pool, rather than to dive in.

Sharing Prime Benefits with family members or co-workers:  you can share your 2-Day Free Shipping benefits with up to five family members or co-workers and everyone will still keep their private account.  None of the other Prime benefits can be shared and if you are splitting the costs, you need to do it offline and collect the money on your own.  Instructions for sharing Prime Shipping benefits are here.

Amazon Mom:  Get free 2-Day Shipping and 20% off diaper subscriptions.  Also free Prime Instant Video, and free Prime Music, and Amazon Mom exclusive coupons.  Get your free 30-day trial of Amazon Mom here.  After the 30 days are up, you may continue your Amazon Mom benefits by joining Amazon Prime. 

Amazon Student:  The rules are here and you can sign up for membership here. In order to qualify for Amazon Student membership, you need to be a current student in college or graduate school with an email address ending in .edu. Get free 2-Day Shipping, free release-date delivery on video games, DVDs, books and more, free Prime Photo benefits, free Prime Instant Video, and free Prime Music. If you qualify for Amazon Student membership, you'll receive half off your Amazon Prime membership fee of $99 and pay only $49 per year. You're eligible for discounted Amazon Prime benefits for a maximum of 4 years, as long as you are a validated Amazon Student member.

Subscribing to  Amazon Subscribe & Save deals is a fantastic way to save money. It's almost risk-free, even if you are doing it just to get the discount and don't want to keep the subscription.  Be aware the you do NOT need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of Amazon Subscribe & Save and its free shipping.

The basic way it works is this:  you get a 5% discount on an order when you select the Subscribe & Save option.  If you get five or more orders delivered in a single month, your discount triples from 5% to 15%.   Each month, your discount re-sets to 5%; you need to have five orders in each month to earn that additional 10% discount for that month.

1. Sometimes an Add-On Item also has a Subscribe & Save option.  If it does and you use it with Subscribe & Save, you can ignore the Add-On rules.
2. You can (and you should) stack Amazon coupons with Subscribe & Save deals to maximize your savings.  If the coupon is a percentage off, that percentage comes off the original "gross" price, not the discounted Subscribe & Save price (saving you even more money).
3. If you are struggling to order five items in a single month and are wondering if it's worth it, do the math.  There are many cheap Subscribe & Save items that will actually save you money if you order them. For example, if you ordered 4 items totaling $100, you'll save 5% and spend $95.  Adding an additional item will save you another 10%, or $10. So ordering an additional item  that costs less than $10 will actually reduce your final bill.  A great way to use the five-order advantage is to order the things that you need (paper towels, toilet paper, detergent, cleansers, certain food items, etc.) and then if you need more orders delivered to get to that five order-minimum, order items that you can use that are under $5.00.  
4. You can UNsubscribe to Subscribe & Save very easily, by going to your account as soon as your order has shipped.   Even if (worse case scenario) you completely forget to unsubscribe, Amazon will not send out an additional order without shooting you a warning email first, giving you ample time to unsubscribe and cancel any additional orders in time. 
5. Set your Subscribe & Save frequency to "every 6 months."  This will give you the most time to cancel your subscription.  If you are super-nervous about forgetting to cancel your subscription as soon as the order ships. you can always set a Google calendar reminder.  You can select your own delivery date for Subscribe & Save (and change it as often as you want).  Set your Subscribe & Save delivery date very close to the end of the month. If you set it to the 30th, as I've done, you will have until the 21st to make all decisions and changes to your Subscribe & Save orders.
6. Be aware that you don't need an Amazon Prime account in order to use Amazon Subscribe & Save.  You get free shipping on every Subscribe & Save order, even without a Prime account.

Read everything you ever wanted to know and more about Amazon's Subscribe & Save program here.

Got Engaged?  Create an Amazon Wedding Registry.  It's one of the smartest places to register (and you can still have registries at other stores if you like), and here's why:

• 10% Gift – Receive a wedding gift after your event date: a 10% completion discount up to $100.  This gift can be used to get 10% off of anything that Amazon.com sells for up to 90-days after your wedding.  To qualify for this promotion, your registry must be created at least 30 days before your wedding and the registry must have had at least one item purchased from it.
• World's Largest Selection - Amazon has, well, everything.  Register for all the items you both want.
• It's universal - keep track of what you want from anywhere and add anything from any other websites to your Wedding Registry with the universal button.

Got Baby (on the way)?  Create an Amazon Baby Registry.  Even if you don't want to make this registry public until after the baby is born, it's a really smart move to create one, and here's why:

• Get a 10% completion discount of up to $500 on select items remaining on your registry. Get 15% as an Amazon Mom member.  The Completion Discount begins 60 days prior to the Baby Arrival Date you entered in your Baby Registry and expires 90 days after the Baby Arrival Date
• It's Universal. You can add anything from any website. 
• Returns are free for 90 days. Just print a label and send it back and Amazon will pick up the return shipping. 

• Guaranteed Accelerated Delivery:  Some Amazon items have a specific, stated Guaranteed Delivery date. If an item that you order does not arrive on this date, contact customer service to either get a refund on your shipping costs (if you're not a Prime member) or a one-month extension to your Amazon Prime membership (if you are a Prime member).  You can extend your membership for free this way for up to twelve times in one year.  Instructions are here.  Even free Prime trial memberships are eligible to take advantage of extending their memberships (by one additional month, one time).  Prime Student memberships are not eligible.
• Price-matching:  Amazon will price-match on television and cell phone purchases only.  Details are here.  
• Price protection:  if your price drops after you purchase an item, contact customer service to get your price adjusted.  This applies only to items shipped and sold by Amazon.  The official rule is that you must contact them within 7 days, but they are often lenient about adjusting a price, so even if more than a week has passed, contact them anyway.

Bookmark these Amazon sections and check them as often as you remember to.

• Amazon Coupons
• Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day and Amazon Lightning Deals
• Kindle Daily Deals:  reduced prices (usually $1.99) on various ebooks in different genres
• Free Daily Android App:  Get a different paid Android app for free every day.
• Amazon Best Sellers:  the most popular, highest-selling Amazon items for that day
• 100 Free Kindle Books
• Free Music MP3 Downloads

Did I forget anything important about shopping at Amazon? Please drop me a line and let me know.

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