Here’s an odd complaint. Reader T says:
I bought two books on Amazon – and my total came to $24.74. So I scouted around and found a site (www.filleritem.com) that lets you choose a small priced item to bump the price over the $25 to qualify for free shipping. I chose a small wooden knob for $0.72.
So today I got email – they did a partial shipment! Guess what’s coming in the first box? Yep, the knob I didn’t really want – the one that’s only there to get me over $25.
Why doesn’t Amazon make a new item “Give money to charity” for any amount – that qualifies for free shipping – and not cost them an extra $2.28 (plus their labor and materials)? They would get good press, save money, and save me from receiving and discarding an item I had no use for – full of win all around.
[The 'which charity' question could either be a big list (complicated) or just a simple top-ten list - most everyone could find a charity they don't object to with the Salvation Army and the Red Cross and United Way and some military hospital charities in the list.]
============================================
The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com: ———————————————————————
Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal
———————————————————————
Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC): 1 Laurey Au Natural Wood Mus… $0.72 1 $0.72Shipped via USPS (estimated arrival date: 19-March-2008).
Tracking number: 9102xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx——————————————————————— Item Subtotal: $0.72
Shipping & Handling: $2.28Best Value Savings $0.00 Super Saver Discount $-2.28
Total: $0.72
——————————————————————–
You have only been charged for the items sent in this shipment. (Per our policy, you only pay for items when we ship them to you.) The following items will ship separately, as soon as they’re available: ———————————————————————
Qty Item Price Not Yet Shipped
———————————————————————
1 (book 1 ) $7.99 1 1
(book 2 ) $17.16 1This shipment was sent to: (redacted)
Donating money to charity to quality for free shipping is a very nice idea. We hope Amazon will consider it.
(Photo:Robert Scoble)
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@Gorky: Not be a cheapass? Dude, I was placing an order for a single item that was ~$17 from Amazon, and shipping was $7.
So lets say your order is like $24.50, and the shipping is $8. Wouldn’t you pay $.72 to get the $8 removed? You should, instead of blithely accepting a 30% increase in the total cost of your order for no good reason.
I mean, another solution is for Amazon to “offer” you super saver shipping for the price difference between your order an the price threshold, in this case $.50 shipping instead of $8, but since what they’re really trying to motivate here is a higher sales numbers (which by accounting rules must strictly only consider dollars in exchange for merchandise), they can’t do this either. The knob increases their numbers. Charity does not.
I second the “don’t be a cheapass” motion. I compile my cart over time and ship it once it goes over $25.
@Michael Belisle: If you’re not even willing to spend $0.72 to get the free shipping right away doesn’t that make you even cheaper? He is the one spending more money over time, right?
I think your complaint is with his being wasteful not cheap.
This is actually a really good idea. It could generate quite a bit of cash for the charity as well as quite a bit of good publicity for Amazon.
But, because Amazon is banking on people buying another $8 book in order to get their $24 purchase over that $25 hump, they’ll likely never consider it.
@KenSPT: “Once again, who really cares? It’s not my fuel that their wasting, nor is it my packaging.
Waste away. “
unbelievable attitude. It’s all of our fuel, all of our packaging, ALL of OUR PLANET!
@Rectilinear Propagation: You’re right: “don’t be a cheapass” was probably a bit extreme.
I might have just been complaining about not keeping with “the spirit” of the promotion. Or wastefulness is good too. I’ve searched for filler items, but made sure they were something I wanted anyway, like creme-brulée cups. (I haven’t made creme brulée yet, but it’s nice to know that I can.)
(Quick related story: I once ordered $49 + $10 shipping from Bodum, but didn’t see free shipping for orders over $50 until afterwards. I called them up although they couldn’t change or cancel the order, they let me order an $8 mug-which they shipped separately from their New York store-and credited the shipping. That’s customer service.)
You are missing the point from a business perspective. $25 is an arbitrary amount they have set. The point is that you get free shipping for orders of AT LEAST $25. When the order comes out to $23 or $24, they are hoping you might add another more expensive item and actually end up spending $35 or $40. If they gave you the option of just adding the change, they’d probably lose out on a lot of those extra sales. For every customer that works the system by adding something really cheap to get over the limit, I bet 2 or more add a more expensive item.
Job Security, buying that door knob is like giving charity to the guy who made it.
I bought two Blu-Ray movies that are being released in May. Along with them, I ordered a Star Wars Yoda lightsaber that I didn’t need right away, intending for the lightsaber to be ‘held’ for me until the movies were released, thus making sure I’d get it but not have to pay for it yet (they’re out of production now, so I didn’t want to wait and then find it was too late).
I picked the “group items into as few shipments as possible” option, because I wanted everything to come in May. Also, ungrouping items wouldn’t give me free shipping.
Amazon shipped the lightsaber right away, and in fact it arrived today (and that’s a rather unusually-proportioned box, let me say, I bet it got some odd looks at the dock downstairs).
Why doesn’t “group items” actually stick, Amazon!? Come on already, you’re spoiling our carefully-laid plans! I can afford to pay for the saber now, but I didn’t really want to…
Yet doing the same thing for the Special DVD Edition of Quake 4 worked perfectly and the other items I’d ordered along with the game came in the same box as the game, a month or two after the order was placed.
Anyone have a clue what’s up with Amazon’s logic? (All of these items were shipped from Amazon’s warehouses, not from third parties).
Something that is being forgotten here is that you have the option to (in most cases, over 90% of the time for me) opt to receive things in 1 or in multiple shipments. Yes, Amazon does opt for several shipments from time to time, but on the final checkout page, simply clicking “ship my items in fewer shipments” almost always consolidates them into a single shipment, though it can add a little bit of time to order processing.
I think we as consumers need to realize that rapid shipping is what people care most about online – if we’re interested in fewer shipments for ecological reasons, practicality reasons, etc, then we have to remember that getting things to your door ASAP, even if it means doing oddly illogical things like multiple shipments per order is what the public (including most of us, I would assume) has demanded with our hard-earned dollars. Amazon’s shipping model is built to optimize speed to get boxes out the door, and if we’re not adding additional criteria we’d like our orders to meet, it’ll require some light strategizing on our parts, which is often as little work as clicking a radio button before hitting place order.
Tinyrobot: I just ordered some things, and did select the “as few shipments as possible” option (in fact you must d this to get free shipping anyway), and my things are still coming in two packages. Which happen to be scheduled to arrive on the same day. It happens all the time.
I don’t quite get this “order a useless piece of junk to get free shipping” thing because there is always something else that I actually want. I have something like 230 items in my Amazon wishlist.
Just another reason I use Prime. Sure I end up buying more, but hey if it’s cheaper and I don’t have to pay taxes or shipping, what’s not to like.
Prime is great – shipping here in Manhattan is so fast that with books, DVDs, Movies etc I usually get them in less than 24 hours, even though it is theoretically 2 day shipping. If I want a $8 book I can just order it and not try to spend a minimum of $25. I do wish Amazon would be more efficient in their packaging, though – I’m no greenie, but you often get a tiny item in a huge box, when a padded envelope would have done very nicely.
In my opinion, many of the complaints posted by consumerist are silly. This one, however, is not. Amazon should go for it. They won’t, however, because the vast majority of people will not use a filler item to get to $25. They will either buy a real item (perhaps thinking of all the waste involved in a filler item) or just pay the shipping charge.
Amazon persisted in listing certain books that they never seemed to actually have in stock. I would order them and get an “no can do” email, repeatedly. It was annoying, until I realized I could use it to my advantage. Whenever I needed a filler item, I would just throw one of those books on the order. Voila! No shipping charge, no paying for something I didn’t really want.
Seems to me that they might be better off offering “your order with shipping = $25″ if you’re under that price and your items are eligible for free shipping. That way instead of dealing with the little items, they’d be keeping that difference in price.
Of course, whether that would be worthwhile would depend on how many people buy cheap items, how many actually pay for the shipping, and how many *keep shopping* and buy more expensive items (with higher margins) to get the free shipping.
There is some hidden great advice here — who knew there was anything on Amazon less than a dollar? Not me. Amazon’s cost of supplying the extra item isnt my problem. Maybe I’ll keep a jar of knobs to keep track of all the free shipping!
@tinyrobot: You did read the comment RIGHT above yours before you posted that, right? No, we didn’t forget.
It doesn’t freakin’ WORK to do that as they’ll do whatever the hell they want to despite your instructions.
I’ll give you guys a better one. They have this new “Pre-Order Price Guarantee” when you pre-order movies. If the price drops at all inbetween when you place the order and when it ships, Amazon will refund the amount. Sounds great, right? Funny, one of the items I ordered dropped in price one penny. That’s right, Amazon have me a $0.01 refund. LOL! Honestly, Amazon can keep that penny and save on the transaction fees.
wow, someone really consider about what amazon earn or not
Anyway, I use a different filler item finer site which seems to be more reasonable since it has some nice feature such as multiple categories, sorted by discount/price/review and EVEN search!
forget to mention
the amazon filler item finder I use is
[www.clickingsave.com]
I usually search for what I probably will need and get ones which I could use and with discount.