Amazon gives non-Prime members free shipping at $35 or more of eligible items. Instead of simply letting users get the product with free shipping, they’ve added a discount that prices it exactly one cent below the $35 limit, while only subsidizing the price with $3.38, which is about half of what they’ll then charge you for shipping.
Easy fix, don’t buy from Amazon.
I try to when I can, but I tend to have major difficulties doing so.
I tried Ebay, they restricted my account and said the only way for me to get it un-restricted was to buy a product from a limited set of brand-new partner suppliers (e.g. Logitech, HP, etc) that were all over $100, and nothing I actually needed.
I tried buying some chargers from Anker and they also restricted me and said they wouldn’t let me make a purchase because my email seemed suspicious (I don’t use Gmail), so I had to go back to Amazon and buy it there instead for practically the same price, even though it would have actually been cheaper on Anker’s own website since they had a discount code that would have worked for my order.
I bought something on Target because I’d been given a Target gift card, Target cancelled my order 3 times and made me contact customer service to remove an invisible hold on my account.
I frequently try checking third-party sites for the same products, and the prices are way higher (e.g. A product I plan on purchasing is $80 on the manufacturer’s site, and $58 on Amazon, with the price frequently dropping to $38) because Amazon literally mandates that the cheapest price must be on Amazon. Often times, these price differences are so drastic that I could end up paying double for the same product.
I also tend to get Amazon gift cards from relatives even though they already know I dislike using Amazon when I don’t have to, so it’s often somewhat unavoidable.
Don’t get me wrong, those are just the worst instances so far. I’ve bought quite a few items from elsewhere before without issues, it’s just that I tend to have the occasional issue that makes it practically impossible to buy elsewhere.
Believe me, I do my best to not have to spend money on Amazon, but it’s either so drastically more expensive that it’s simply not reasonable to buy elsewhere, or for various reasons I mentioned before, I’m not even capable of placing an order in the first place.
What in the world are you doing to get restricted and cancelled at different sites?
Don’t ask me, I’ve been asking the same question myself 😅
The only things that had originally come to mind were my accounts on those stores being new (but who makes an account there then just lets it sit for like a week), me using virtual cards to avoid using the same payment info across different sites (but many other people do that with no issues), using my non-gmail email (but other people also do that with no issues), ad & JS canvas blocking (but as needanke mentioned earlier, they don’t seem to have problems), or possibly just something with my address itself making its way onto some shared-around list of addresses not to ship to for some reason, but none of these explanations really seem to make sense.
I’m genuinely just as stumped as you are.
I know, I only took this specific screenshot because it happened to show up as a recommendation within Amazon’s interface and I noticed the price and discount seemed odd. I intend to try buying it (or at least, a similar set made by iFixit) on their own site when I end up actually needing it.
What’s the alternative? The other places I can order a big box of cheap stuff from (Walmart, Target) are run by even worse people and have even worse service.
I once ordered porcelain plates from target and they arrived with no packaging. I don’t mean insufficient packaging, I mean four plates just thrown in a giant box with absolutely nothing else. Somehow 3 were not broken.
Right now I want 1) creatine and 2) cheap t-shirts and I don’t wanna pay for shipping them separately. I can’t find any place where I can get both at a reasonable price besides one of the above. I’m actually considering a costco membership but I’m only going to ever order online from them so I doubt it’s worth their stupid membership.
Generally, I believe the convenience of cheap shit delivered to your door comes at the invisible cost of exploitative labor practices and/or excessive consumerism by the means of low quality crap that will need to be replaced regularly or through “buy more and save” deals. If you want to avoid supporting that, you’re probably going to have to spend a few extra bucks buying from a smaller business or buying secondhand.
Convenience isn’t free and if we want to reduce our dependence on harmful institutions we’re going to have to make some sacrifices.
I do this. But, I’m also lucky to live in a city with second hand shit everywhere. Not everyone lives in a city.
But, google shopping will tell you an alternative store to buy most things online. And compare costs for you. This gets tricky if you’re also trying to cut google out of your life though. There really is no ethical consumption under capitalism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, in the case of the OP, the alternative is the manufacturer: https://www.ifixit.com/Tools
Either buy more expensive shirts or stop buying creatine if you want to stop ripping them
Walmart and Target aren’t run by worse people. I’ve never heard of Target or even Walmart employees being forced to piss in bottles or a robot will fire them.
They said, they are still bad people, as retail capitalists, but are you ready to have that conversation?
Retail capitalists are fine, but Amazon, Walmart, and Target all did the maga loyalty thing after Trump’s win. I don’t need to buy from someone who shares my politics or even doesn’t disagree with me, I just need them to not be outright oligarchs using my money to support dictators.
Target also have free 2 day shipping and 5% discount if you use their “Red Card”, which is free. It’s available as a debit or credit card. I’m using the debit card version which doesn’t require a credit check or impact your credit score.
Sure, it lets them track what you buy, but they can already do that if you pay with credit or debit card. The only way to not get tracked is by paying cash or buying prepaid Visa/Mastercard gift cards and swapping them periodically.
So you literally never buy from Amazon?
You must live in a very major city.
It’s literally not even hard, but yes you have to put some effort into it, and of course it isn’t convenient. You’ll probably save money, though - Amazon hasn’t had the best prices on 95% of items for many years now.
If you aren’t OK with being slightly inconvenienced, you can always keep supporting Nazis 🤷♂️
“Not convenient”? Have you any idea what it’s like to live in the US rural south? It’s Walmart, Amazon, or just fucking die.
there are a lot of companies that sell things direct to consumer, using the exact same shipping infrastructure that amazon would otherwise be using, if it doesnt already.
If you live rurally, go campaign for funding the USPS more, trump fucked that one, you can thank him for that.
“If you don’t have access to even remotely consistent alternatives than just go solve the USPS for us” are you for real?
Why would you order from amazon instead of directly from ifixit?
Yeah but then ifixit gets the money instead, and amazon gets nothing. I want to pay ifixit for their stuff, not amazon. Amazon didnt do anything to deserve money from that purchase.
There are a lot of vendors who only sell through amazon though. That seems more like they are explicitly saying they prefer the amazon shop but I could be interpreting that wrong.
As another user replied to you earlier, yeah, it’s substantially more expensive after shipping. Nearly 50% more, in fact, but in this specific instance I wasn’t actually planning on buying this specific bit set, the price and subsequent notice of the discount just caught my eye when it was in Amazon’s list of product recommendations.
Because you already have an account set up with amazon.
Because you’ve used amazon before and feel comfortable with them.
I mean those are legitimate answers, but people around these parts don’t take kindly to primers
Stop using Amazon
I’ve switched to eBay. The delivery time is often the same and the returns are ok too
A few years ago I mused that we might see the day when eBay becomes a more trustworthy platform to purchase on than Amazon. I’m not sure when exactly the streams crossed but I think we are past it now
That happened years ago. Better search and more trustworthy sellers since products aren’t co-mingled. No way is some seller with years of positive reviews going to send you broken junk and not try to make it right.
I wish I could do more shopping there, but eBay in Canada is extremely expensive which has lead to it being kind of a ghost town compared to the US. $20-$50 shipping fees, even on tiny items, is common.
So I’ve started to use AliExpress more often. Literally the exact same item on Amazon but without the markup - sometimes even half the price. It’s not a great solution but the online shopping selection here in Canada is awful.
Just gotta avoid Amazon drop shippers. Thousands of feedback + free expedited shipping + free returns = maybe a drop shipper.
You have to offer free returns for top rated seller status. It puts you higher up in searches.
I’ve found that a lot of stuff listed on Amazon is about the price of shipping higher than it is on eBay I guess to account for the free Prime shipping. If you don’t have Prime, there really isn’t much reason to not use eBay since you’d be getting doubly screwed without the free shipping on Amazon.
Start using Amazon, but in an elaborate drop shipping scam where you sell a $.25 item for $38 and have Amazon pay you $3.99 to ship it to yourself as a proxy.
Nahh their workers still get exploited (even more than the average laborer)
It’s too convenient. Order something Sunday night, I’ll definitely have it by Tuesday afternoon if not earlier. I always wait until I have enough items I need over $50 before I place an order anyway.
In my area I can order something popular at midnight and receive it by 10am. If you’re in a major metro area, they can usually do next day, same day, and overnight on a lot of items.
90% procent of products on Amazon are from AliExpress dropshippers anyway
Order something really fucking heavy extra and refund it.
Almost everything on Amazon you can also find on eBay. Sometimes it is a couple of bucks more expensive, but it’s usually due to shit like this. Haven’t bought on Amazon for 4 years now.
This must be very different in the US because over here eBay would be like just lighting your money on fire (since you have 0 recourse or reimburse options while Amazon’s primary upside is how trivial replacement and reimbursements are). I mean de-amazon sure, but not for a place that’s as anti-consumer as can be, which of course makes sense for actual second-hand purchases where you have no legal liabilities by the seller anyways.
If you’re buying on ebay and use PayPal, PayPal provides the consumer protection. That’s been my experience anyway.
Amazon are getting bad about refunds and replacements plus have a major problem with counterfeit goods due to how they mix 3rd party and Amazon sourced goods in their warehouses.
They can’t refund your house if it burns down because Amazon sold you fake electronics.
EBay is fine for the smaller cheap Chinese tat that you can find on amazon, and PayPal provides consumer protection. Go to other retailers for electronics - any site or shop that does not use third party sellers.
This is such a tired trope. eBay has improved well beyond when it was just the wild west of third party sellers. I’ve not had a single issue on eBay in the last 3-4 years of purchases. Ive actually had extraordinary customer service through eBay. Recently purchased a used $50 coffee grinder and it arrived with cosmetic damage from shipping. Contacted the seller and they refunded the entire purchase while also letting me keep the item.
Hey just the last 2 weeks I had two separate friends be ripped off on ebay. Yeah it has improved, but it’s still a ton of scummy shit.
And the cheap stuff you can find for half the price on AliExpress. That’s where they source their shit anyway
Unless they lose your stuff. Then you’ll see that consumer protection on all orders guaranteed involves you fighting with a wall that keeps denying your claims with no recourse. Aliexpress is much cheaper… As long as things work out. If they don’t, it really sucks.
Yeah and anything of value I would not get from Amazon due to the risk of counterfeits. Amazon pools its stock for an item with that provided by 3rd party sellers in its warehouse - either can be delivered to a customer based on which is closest not who you think you’re buying from.
So you can easily receive dodgy goods from 3rd party sellers that may he counterfeit or refurbished rather than new, when it says “sold and dispatched by amazon”.
Get your expensive items from other retailers that dont have 3rd party sellers. Get your cheap random Chinese manufactured crap from EBay or Aliexpress. Get your digital content from other stores like ebooks.com where you can legally remove the DRM and keep your content forever.
Fuck Amazon.
I always try to buy in the store, but most of the time the store either doesn’t have the item I need or it costs 200%.
Now see, I wouldn’t know because I don’t check prices on the Internet. I just go, buy some shit if it’s there, if it’s not, I get annoyed & maybe try somewhere else if it’s important enough for me at that moment.
I guess I just don’t like online shopping, it feels like a chore to me.
That said, I am privileged enough to live somewhere where there are multiple options for shopping close by, so, easy for me to say.
