And often if you look at “other sellers that may not provide free shipping” link, you will find, they do have free shipping for a product at the same price. Only difference is, they haven’t won the buy-box
Or the price from other sellers may be a dollar or two more, with free shipping, or less with a couple dollars shipping. Either way, much of the time you can find the same deals with or without prime.
Amazon usually has several sellers that offer free shipping as well. Plus, some of them don’t charge sales tax. I don’t mind waiting a few extra days if I don’t have to pay tax. Like I said, I still have 11 months left on my prime account. I won’t be renewing.
Amazon have lost a lot of business from me over the last few years. Prime isn’t worth it for the number of orders I place, and I don’t care about the other benefits. They’ve raised the minimum order value for free shipping without Prime, and now they’re even restricting some products to Prime members only.
If I see something I want on EBay or AliExpress, it gets ordered. If I see something I want from Amazon, it goes on my wishlist until I have the minimum order value for free shipping. If it turns up on EBay or Aliexpress in the meantime, it gets ordered there, it comes off the Amazon wishlist, Amazon lose that sale, and they wait even longer for me to amass an order that qualifies for free shipping.
Item available to Prime members only? I view that about the way I would view an upraised middle finger. No business for Amazon then, either.
On the subject of replacing people with machines: sure, it’s great for the bottom line in the short term. What happens when all the people have been replaced, no one has a job and no one can afford to buy all the stuff those machines are making?
I would be a lot happier if our politicians and big businesses were actually planning ahead for how they’re going to make the economy work then, instead of blithely saying they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. If they’re not careful, they’re liable to find their unemployed rioting citizens burning it first.
Well clearly not from everyone else, because they just released their earnings and are getting record numbers, massive increase in profit.
Yeah, I do that fairly regularly. Minimum was 25, then went up to 35 or something, now it’s back down to 25. Got a lot of orders that are 26, 27bux. :smiling_imp:
Got a whole bunch of “save for later”s in my cart, too. Ooh, price went up? Delete.
Only time I’ll insist on getting something from Amazon vs others is if it’s iffy and I might want/need to return it without any hassle.
That’s a good point - I do stick with Amazon if I suspect that something might need to be returned.
Yeah, like that DSO138 people mentioned. You could get the kits, but they had zero guarantee. So I ordered the pre-built (“welded”) one from Amazon, so it either works or it doesn’t. Just got it, should try it out, see if I need to return it. 
Sometimes a few bux more is worth it, in case things go south. I don’t want to get a cracked display, and then be offered a nice shiny quarter to make it right.
I used to use Amazon Prime a lot, since Prime will ship items to Hawaii with standard (1-2 week) shipping for free, while many other retailers require you to pay $$$ for super-duper-express overnight shipping (which still takes 3 days to get to HI) or they simply won’t sell to you.
But, once I move to the continental US, I’m going to be dropping Amazon Prime like a bad habit.