If you like to shop at Amazon, but don’t want to sign up for a Prime membership [list of benefits], and don’t want to place $35+ orders, we have some good news for you. It looks like Amazon has lowered the free shipping threshold from $35 to $25. While price-checking some of the Bag The Bags, this came up, the minimum shown is $25 instead of $35. This showed up when not logged on to an Amazon account, and also if logged on to a non-Prime account.

If you want practice/test this, here’s a sub-$25 item, screenshot of which can be seen below:

I don’t know if this is a limited time or limited scope experiment (Amazon LOVES to experiment) or this is permanent. (permanent until they change it again that is).

In the previous iterations, books got free shipping with $25+ orders, presumably price-matching the long-standing Barnes & Noble offer. If this sticks, it means books and non-books get free shipping on $25+ orders.

Starting April 19 (2017) Walmart will begin rolling out a new feature, if you select store pickup for a purchase, you may be able to get a small discount on the purchase price. In other words, they are paying you to do the delivery to yourself 🙂 This feature will slowly ramp up, they are planning to include 1 million items by the end of June. As usual, YMMV depending on product availability and location. This will be offered on the 48 contiguous US States.

I am guessing this is a feature that got inspired by the Jet team, which has all kids of nickle-dimer discounts on the Jet website (pay less if you forgo returns, pay less if you pay with debit card, pay less if you buy in quantity, etc). I don’t know if the other Jet features will make it to Walmart, but for now, if you are fond of store pickup, you may be able to save!

More details on the Walmart blog.

Starting April 1st in 2017, Amazon will collect sales tax on all states that collect sales tax. It is already doing so in the vast majority of the states, but with this latest group, it will complete the puzzle. It will obviously not collect sales tax in states where sales tax is not collected (Oregon, Alaska, etc). Details via CNBC.

But because things are never quite as simple, there is a distinction, for tax collection purposes, between products sold and shipped by Amazon (they collect taxes) and products sold by 3rd-party sellers through the Amazon website. The latter category is still up in the air as literally any and every person on earth (and beyond) can be an Amazon seller.

The ever-changing retail landscape has more store closings. The regional chain HH Gregg is closing 40% of its stores (88 of them in 15 states) plus three distribution centers per The USA Today. Bankruptcy is one of the restructuring possibilities according to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile the reborn “Ritz Camera and Image” is closing one store, in Towson (Maryland), according to an email sent to customers. Their Bethesda (MD) store continues.

As the Amazon World Turns! At the moment when you surf around Amazon product pages without being logged on to a Prime Amazon account, you will notice that the free shipping minimum has changed again. Instead of $49+, you only need $35+ in products sold and shipped by Amazon, and/or sold by 3rd-party sellers but fulfilled by Amazon’s facilities. The $25+ book option also remains in place. I am not sure yet whether this is a temporarily experiment or permanent. It is possible that Amazon is price-matching the Walmart-Jet $35 minimum.

For example, here’s a random $40 item that shows free shipping for non-Prime members.

UPDATE: the Prime benefits comprehensive guide has been updated with this, along with a screenshot of the rare Prime shipping from 3rd-party sellers option [see a6300 post].

Fry’s Electronics (fries not included) has now launched a Free Same-Day Delivery service that covers out 500 (high margin?) products. If you place an order before 3pm local time, you will receive your order the same day. Cameras are not included, but some printers, along with select computers and A/V gear are included. Details at their promotional page. You can check whether this service is available near you using their zipcode checker.

The first major impact of Walmart purchasing Jet and giving Jet more power over the Walmart website is happening now. Walmart is cancelling their Shipping Pass service (it was a $49 per year service that got you free shipping Prime-like), and will be refunding paying customers for the service. At the same time, they will lower the free shipping threshold from $50 to $35, and many items will be eligible for free 2-day shipping. Details at the Walmart help pages.

PS: Walmart has an open marketplace (like Amazon, NewEgg, Best Buy, Sears, etc), so the free shipping terms apply to items shipped by Walmart itself (not 3rd-party sellers). As usual with these type of offers, they cover the 48 contiguous states. Non-48 addresses and APO/FPO addresses with US zipcodes will get the free 3-5 day shipping. Until Star Trek Transporters (TM) become commercially available.

Finally Amazon has launched a page where Prime members can keep track of their “slow shipping credits”. These are the “No Rush Credits” that you get if as a Prime member you select a slower shipping method for an order that is eligible for free 2-day shipping. The slower-shipping is not always slow, it’s just that they ship it in a non-priority way, but it can still get there reasonably fast.

The page is this https://www.amazon.com/norushcredits but all you have to remember is to type norushcredits (no rush credits) since amazon.com is easy to remember 🙂 It looks like this (“View Image” to see full size):

Just in time for the holidays, NewEgg is offering a new delivery option for your order, regardless of the shipping delivery speed you select. You can pick up your order at a local participating FedEx Kinko’s facility. In the “Review” stage of the Checkout process, you can select a FedEx location to receive your order. Look for something like this in that page, below your “Shipping Info” column:

There is no additional fee for this delivery option. Your shipping fee is whatever your default delivery fee is, which a lot of times it is free or close to free.

Another benefit of this is that if you live or work or travel to multiple locations on a regular basis, you can send your orders at where you are, instead of having them all go to your home address (assuming the delivery estimates work and such).

This was a Groupon special but only available to Groupon the company 🙂 They have purchased competing social deals website LivingSocial for an unspecified low price. Another social deals site goes down, Amazon folded its own AmazonLocal, while NewEgg’s “NewEgg Flash” continues but it’s semi-integrated into the main NewEgg site now. Details and discussion of the acquisition via Techmeme.

It is a day of shopping news today, we have an interesting oddity, some of Amazon’s own hardware devices have been discounted to new low prices across the internet, at various competing online retailers, but not on Amazon’s own website! This is a 1-day sale. It is a very interesting move, it’s like their hardware department is trying to convince competing retailers to invest in carrying/selling Amazon branded devices.

Example of these sales, the latest Paperwhite goes for $90 at Staples and already sold out at Sears. Their 10-inch Fire HD tablet (with microSD) goes for $150 at Sears, the Amazon Echo goes for $130 at B&H Photo, a handful of these on sale at Best Buy and so forth.

This is a 1-day sale, so it is possible that Amazon is planning to discount them on their own website after this sale ends. They’ve already been playing with rotating sales. But this is only a crackpot theory. I have no clue what’s going to happen.

PS: maybe they need to have a reality TV show of all the meetings where the Hardware people were pitching this and the people running the Online Store were screaming NOOOOOOO! 🙂

Amazon has an official 30-day low-price guarantee policy on HDTVs. For other items, the last few years, their customer service representatives would often make “one time exceptions” if an item you purchased dropped in price within 7 days after purchase (and you contacted them asking for a refund of the difference).

This soft benefit is apparently going away now according to Re/Code.net which speculates that part of the decision to do so is motivated by a number of 3rd-party services that offer to automatically track price drops of items you purchased and notify you to take advantage of price guarantees. Some of these services require logins to your shopping accounts to do the price-tracking automatically, while others need access to your email. The Amazon representative contacted by Re/Code took a customer security angle to this.

I’m gonna venture a guess that it’s not just security. Security is a very valid concern, I would never let a 3rd-party (especially newly launched startups) have access to my email or shopping accounts. But no doubt about it, this is also a dollars and sense type of thing, if millions of people keep getting small refunds on millions of purchases, it’s goodbye quarterly profits for Amazon and back to losing money 🙂

More discussion via Techmeme.

UPDATE (3:49pm ET): as of this check, it looks like the Amazon website is back to normal…

[Read more…]

Once upon a time, Amazon offered free shipping with an order of $25 or more. A few years later, they increased the minimum purchase amount to $35. Fast forward to now, and we have another change. The minimum is now increased to $49 or more. However, there is a caveat for books (physical books, not e-books), if you buy $25 or more of books, the books (and everything else in your order) qualifies for free shipping. (the usual restriction of sold and shipped by Amazon, or fulfilled by Amazon applies).

You can find more details at their Free Shipping Help page. Annotated screenshot crop of that below:

It is an interesting split here between book and non-book purchases. I don’t know whether it’s the media mail aspect of books, or perhaps their flat nature that makes packaging and shipping them more predictable. Or a romantic tip of the hat to their early days being a book seller. Or perhaps a more pragmatic reason, the Barnes and Noble website offers free shipping with $25+ orders 🙂

This perhaps may create a fork in the road for some shoppers when making sub-$50 purchases (eg new movies, new CDs, consumables, small accessories, etc). Buy the items elsewhere or sign up for a Prime Membership ($100/year) and get free 2-day Prime shipping and all the other benefits (I still have to create the long-promised post with the Prime benefits/cons).

NOTE: the $25 limit remains for the Add-On program ~ look at the purchasing minimum mentioned in any Add-On item, for example, here’s a Melisandre-Red mouse pad that is part of the Add-On program.

This flashback becomes a flash forward! Circuit City is coming back later in 2016. Two New York area based money people bought the company name and related assets from the Tigerdirect parent company late last year. The new company will have both a website and brick and mortar stores, with some focus on millenials. Details of this development at TWICE (via Engadget).

Please note for purchases made 12/24/15 and later at Tigerdirect’s website, all sales are final. There will be no returns, no refunds, no exchanges. If a product is covered by a manufacturer warranty, any issues with the product must needs be addressed through the manufacturer’s warranty. This is posted on the Tigerdirect’s Return Policy page.

In a very long press release, Amazon revealed a number of tangible and semi-tangible factoids about their Black Friday 2015 Holiday shopping season. The camera and photo segment there reveals that the Fuji Instax (instant film camera), the GoPro Hero4 Silver, and its AB headstrap mount were their top selling items under the Camera and Photo category…

It is interesting to see how things change for the mythical average consumer. A few years ago, every techie wanted to have a dSLR to call his/her own, and the various tech blogs were heavily covering the latest hot cameras du jour. Now it seems the average mythical person wants an instant film camera and an action camera :)… The retro theme was also there in Audio, a turntable was ahead of a classic A/V receiver and a fancy-techie SONOS player :)…

Another interesting factoid, “Members worldwide uploaded more than a billion photos for free with Prime Photos this holiday.”. They certainly did not do that with Kindle Fire Phones, so the app must be popular with other devices 🙂 [remember, if you are a Prime member, you automatically get unlimited Cloud Photos!]

Jet.com is trying to inject some new energy and ideas in the world of online shopping, and they have been getting more funding, encouraging further experimentation. However, when it comes to buying capital/investment type of gear (eg where the manufacturer’s warranty is important, such as camera gear), it’s a big risk. Why?

Jet, unlike other sellers with open-marketplaces (such as eBay, Rakuten, NewEgg, Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy), does not tell you who the seller is before you order. You don’t have to bother figuring it out or pick a particular seller from a long list or incur additional shipping fees for items sold by the 3rd-party sellers (as opposed to the “home team”). That’s nice and convenient for household items (you are probably not going to use the manufacturer’s warranty on the kitchen towels!).

However what is a plus for small purchases, becomes a big negative for things like camera gear. Because not all marketplace sellers are equal, and only some of them are authorized by the manufacturers, you have no idea whether you are getting an authorized-USA product or a grey-market product before you order. Considering all the shenanigans we know (and not love) about camera gear selling, and some sellers are less reputable and reliable than others, this is a big wild card and risk.

As of October 1st (2015), Target is now price-matching a number of online and offline retailers, including Amazon, NewEgg, Best Buy, Sears, Walmart, Costco, and more. Details via The Consumerist.

According to sources at Recode, Amazon may be planning to expand the Prime 2-day shipping benefits to include products shipped directly by select 3rd-party merchants, without the items having to be physically present at an Amazon Warehouse or facility. It is a delicate dance, since Amazon and the 3rd-party merchants will have to negotiate how the actual shipping cost is paid, and the merchants would have to trade-off losing direct sales on their website from regular customers who instead opt for the free 2-day Prime shipping.

Amazon has been adding more features to its Prime service, but the new additions were not shipping related (Cloud Photos, Music, Radio, Video, Kindle First, eBook Lending library, 30 minute early access to deals, etc). In fact, a few years ago, they pulled back on the free 2-day shipping benefits by putting select low-priced items (typically $5 or less) under the Add-On Program, requiring Prime members to place an order of $25 or more before the shopping cart would allow them to buy the darned things (and you can’t pay shipping out of your own pocket for Add-On items even if you beg and plead with the shopping cart).

But perhaps Amazon’s hand may be forced by changes in the marketplace too, specifically on the shipping front, not the ever-expanding list of non-shipping benefits. Shoprunner continues to recruit online retailers for a meta-free-shipping service (includes the official Pentax and Casio stores, NewEgg, Tiger, Staples but not any camera-centric retailers), and has various promotions for discounted or free service. For example, some American Express credit cards include a free Shoprunner service.

Even though NewEgg participates in Shoprunner, they also have their own NewEgg Premier service that goes for $50 per year and offers free 3-day or less shipping. And Walmart is making progress towards their own $50/year free shipping service.