There are a lot more comments about this on the web than I ever realized. Many Amazon customers view the $79 annual fee as excessive, but others defend it including Omar who thinks of it as $6.58 a month, as he orders something from Amazon at least twelve times a year.
Yet, here’s a man who shops at Amazon, but paid nothing in shipping fees for a whole year. He bought three dozen items, too.
I think that the charges for shipping one book are high, especially on a percentage basis, about $4.00 if you buy one item. But if you add other items to get the Super Saver uber-$25 rate, you have both bought more stuff, maybe something you didn’t want or need, and you get slower shipping for it.
I run the numbers with a random hardcover book. At first, I save 30 percent, but I add on the shipping. Suddenly I’m saving only 12 percent. I can almost match that at my brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble with their 10-percent-discount membership card, and I have it now.
The overwhelming advantage of Amazon over brick-and-mortar coompetitors is the incredible range of their offering in any department, and — doggoneit — their community.
Face it. Once you start reading the reviews, you can’t stop. (The best reviews are salty, like classic potato chips.) And frequently I decide I don’t want that brand-new bestseller anyway, after a few scorching 1-star comments.
But once you join Amazon Prime, you are no longer an independent customer, you become a member. Now you have that $79 fee to think about. Do you want to buy a title at Barnes and Noble’s site, where you have to pay more shipping? (This is in a Wall Street Journal article.)
So, in fact, the fee may not only cover Amazon’s costs, but be set high enough to make the average consumer move their shopping from lots of other places, whether online or off. One blogger notes they now buy their drugstore items online, using Amazon Prime, which is anecdotal evidence that the new program is working. (This is starting to sound like those online grocery-shopping schemes of last century, a creepy locked-room life.)