Amazon’s price discrimination

Logged in or out, trying either account I have access to, I get the $17 price. I’m not a prime member.

$17.13, prime member. Although to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t buy a transcend card in the first place. They’re just… buggy. Believe it or not, the Sandisc Ultra 2/3 line is quite a bit better performance- and reliability-wise.

$17.17 here, not and never have been a Prime member. I see that one of amazon’s “more buying choices” for this product, an “eek Technology”, is listing it for $14.14. So the other times you added it to your cart, did it come from eek’s amazon store rather than amazon’s amazon store?

robertdfeinman – It’s not free, I pay $79 for it. It bugs me that Amazon calls it free shipping when it’s charging me $79/year for it. Since when is $79 free?

Tangential to your post, but one hiccup in appreciating the “free” two-day shipping is that the carbon cost of air transport rather than ground transport can be rather a lot, and I feel environmentally uncomfortable using it when I don’t actually need the items promptly.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a prime member and it’s showing $17.13 for me when I am both logged in and logged out of my account.

I get the $17.13 price following your link, both when I am signed in as a Prime member and when I am signed out.

BUT – looking at your screenshots, you’re comparing the price from two different vendors – the $17.13 price is if you buy from a seller whose sales are “fulfilled by” Amazon (and $17.13 is the price for non-Prime members also), and the second is if you buy from “Eek Technology” (as a third party seller, they don’t participate in the Prime program).

I suspect what is going on here is that all of the options are available for all buyers, but that Amazon figures that Prime members would rather place an order that’s eligible for Prime shipping.

Incidentally, if you’re signed in as a Prime member and click on “More buying options” you get a list of vendors selling the card. Some prices are cheaper, but the shipping varies. All of the costs + shipping add up to $17.13.

Worth noting as well is that it is shipping from “eek Technology” and not from Amazon proper.

I have Prime as well and decided to check out a few other products, first not logged in and then logged in. Here are two price discrepancies I found:

Sony Blu-ray Player (BDP-350): $249 not logged in, $269 logged in
Panasonic Blu-ray player: $342, $349

However, I looked at a few books and they cost the same. Nevertheless, I won’t be renewing my Prime membership either.

When logged into my account (not prime), I get 17.13. Log out and presto magic, it’s 14.14.

Annoying.

$10.54 for me – not a prime member

Interesting story. Wonder how it turns out. 14.14$ for me, a regular on Amazon.

Ok, before I sign in, I get $10.45. Now I am Canadian, but it should be more and not less thanks to exchange rate and I used the link on the post, so it should essentially be the same. Once I log in, it’s still $10.45…HMmmmm

And since electronics often ship from sellers other than Amazon, it is reasonable that many of those products would display this phenomenon. At least line of thought, this may allow me to justify renewing my Prime membership…

As a non-Prime customer, I am being offered the card for $14.14 from “eek Technology.”

FWIW, online retailers have been playing with prices for years…

*blinks*

I’m not logged in, and I’m getting $10.45. But that is quoted as coming from “DigitalEtc”, not “eek Technology”. Same price when I’m logged in, but I’m not Prime.

Amazon would be leaving money on the table if it didn’t charge you extra. Because you pre-pay the shipping costs, those are a sunk cost to you. If you go to another vendor, you will have to pay for shipping. Hence Amazon can now charge you a higher price and still beat another vendor’s price.

The “free” shipping subscription is simply a con job. The idea is to trap you inside their system with a sunk cost that creates a barrier to leaving. For reasons both rational and psychological, they can charge the folks who have been trapped with that sunk cost more than the ones who never paid it.

I checked the prices as a prime member and non-member/not logged in. I have to agree with Dan – you were probably looking at two different sellers – Blue Proton and Eek. I use Amazon all the time as a prime member and have not found price discrepancies. In fact, when you factor in rising shipping costs, a prime membership is actually a decent deal. About 70% of the time, my orders come the next day too – something I’d have to pay a lot more to get from other sellers.

When I tried it on the browser where I’m logged in with Amazon Prime, I got a price of $17.13; when I tried it twice on other browsers, I got $12.63 and $10.45.

But I’m pretty sure this isn’t a case of price discrimination; it’s a product of the fact that none of these items are being sold by Amazon itself. When there are several sellers offering the item (none of which is Amazon), the site is probably programmed to send Amazon Prime users to the seller whose sales are eligible for Amazon Prime.

Of course, if Amazon is sending Prime customers to the most expensive seller, you can always get around that by clicking on the link that says “30 used & new available from $10.45.” (That bring you to a list of very other seller/price mentioned in this comment thread.) It would be really annoying to have to do this, I admit, but I’d probably recommend doing it anyway.

Anyway, until someone comes up with an item sold by Amazon itself at different prices to Prime customers and regular customers, I’m skeptical that this is an example of price discrimination.

Incidentally, the idea expressed above that Amazon or any other merchants “have to” make up what they “lose” in one area by charging more in another area is a common misunderstanding of the capitalist system. Every merchant charges as much as they possibly can for any given item to any given customer. Whether or not they have lost money on some other aspect of their business is irrelevant. Once you buy Amazon’s free shipping option, you are a captive consumer, just like the spectators at a baseball game. The hot dogs inside the baseball stadium don’t cost more even though the fans have already paid to get inside. They cost more because the fans have paid to get inside. You paid to get inside Amazon. That’s why Amazon can now charge you more.

P.S. I’d observed the same as noted by a few above, that the Digital Etc. price is $10.45 and the Eek Tech price is $14.14. If I click through to Digital Etc. or Eek Tech through the “30 new and used available from $10.45” then the price shown is $14.14 or $10.45 accordingly.

Thank you for this post, eszter, for this post. It raises doubts in the trustworthiness of Amazon and, maybe, other online shops. BTW: It lists $ 10.45 for me, not logged in.

I appreciate the point about these being different vendors, but note that I just clicked through to the item and was going with what I was shown (without searching for a specific vendor). I’ll emphasize one more time that this is not free shipping, it’s shipping I already paid for so in total my cost is, indeed, more than $17.13 if I go with what I’m being offered as a Prime member. Of course, as was noted above, the shipping cost in my case is sunk cost.

The alternative people here are considering is that I go buy it somewhere else, but in the end have the same costs. Wrong. My alternative here has been not to make the purchase at all. I don’t know if or when I will. It’s taken me years to get around to purchasing an SLR camera, I’ll just wait longer now. And I’m not planning on going back to Amazon in general, so overall it’s definitely a loss for them in my case.

Logged in (not a prime member): $12.63 on amazon.com. Is that some funky exchange rate because I’m Canadian?

Following your link it was $17.13, refreshing the page (!) made the price drop to $12.63 with $4.50 for shipping. In either case I was not logged in.

Could it be that it switches randomly between different offers of price + shipping = $17.13 and that random switcing happened to correlate to your actions?

edit: $17.13 when totaled

Interestingly, I’m getting 12.63. (Not that I’m complaining!) I did the free trial of Prime, and then decided not to renew — perhaps they put me in the privileged class of total cheapskates? (I also buy a lot of used stuff from them.)

What’s happening here is that Amazon is showing you the memory card from a different supplier based on A) your Prime membership, and/or B) your geographical location. If you’re logged in as a prime member, they give you the price it would be as fulfilled by Amazon, with two-day shipping available. If you’re not logged in, you appear to get a supplier who is closest or has the cheapest shipping to your area. (When I look at the link not logged in, it’s coming from ChiTek, for $14.14.)

So, I think the lesson is that you should always look at the prices offered by other suppliers, even if you are a Prime member, and if you don’t have to have it in two days. The default offer may not always be your best bargain, but I haven’t done the math, so maybe it is.

(I’m not affiliated with Amazon, BTW, just a long-time customer and Prime member. Also, a lurker on this blog. Hello.)

But, you get the 2-day thing for the $17.13, where as if a non-prime member wanted to get the two day shipping I’m going to guess that the price goes up.

Oops, posted before I saw Eszter’s further remark, but:

t’s costing that plus the shipping you’ve already paid for. Yes, it’s a sunk cost, but it’s still a cost.

Except it’s two-day shipping, and Amazon may believe that you value that more than the regular shipping from the other company. For example, to get close to 2-day shipping from the other vendor, you have to choose “Expedited,” which raises the shipping cost to 7.45 and the total cost to 21 and change.

“But it matters to me, more on principle than based on the $3 differential”

Can you articulate the principle you’re referring to?

@30 –

In essence you’re accusing Amazon of deliberately not selling items itself for less than the price of what the marketplace vendors are charging, including shipping. All in an effort to job its prime account holders. That motivation seems unlikely to me, but of course that is a matter of opinion.

If this situation holds true for all of your Amazon purchases, well then your prime account is costing you extra (or only buying you 2 day shipping). But if it’s just these kinds of sub-$20 items — which, as others have pointed out, have a different logic to them — you could still be getting something for your money.

I get it that everyone is ending up with $17.13 based on different product price plus shipping options. Except that they are not. If you’re a Prime member then you have already paid for shipping so this product isn’t costing $17.13, it’s costing that plus the shipping you’ve already paid for. Yes, it’s a sunk cost, but it’s still a cost..

Well, it may or may not be worth it for you, but you ARE getting more for Prime. After all, it’s not so much about “free” shipping, as fast shipping, at a fairly low average cost if you order a lot of stuff. (And a little less thought, since you c an just order an item or two whenever you please, without worrying about grouping things together to minimize costs or qualify for free shipping.)

In this case, it looks like the rest of us can get it in 5-7+ days for $17.43, while a Prime member gets it in 2 days for $17.43 + ($79/# of yearly purchases). Worth it? It depends.

(Either way, I don’t know if there’s still any evidence for outright price discrimination here. It looks like for non-Prime customers, Amazon shows the item from a random vendor – sometimes with shipping costs hidden, while Prime customers are naturally only shown the Prime-qualified vendor.)

And in exchange for that sunk cost, you get prompter delivery. That’s bascially what Amazon Prime offers, and that’s what you are getting. Usually what Prime offers is the difference between 2nd-day and super saver. In this case, it happens to be between 2nd-day and whatever the outside vendor defaults to, but it’s stilll the same value proposition.

On the basis of the two seconds thought that I have given this issue so far in my life I declare: we should be angry (or at least concerned) about bulk discounting and not (usually) about price discrimination.

$12.63 when not logged in; same when logged in (not a prime member). On the other hand, they’re also quoting $4.50 in shipping, so it’s $17.13 for us “commoners”. Guess free shipping is the same as service compris

Tech Bargains, a deal aggregator/search-and-shop- engine thing, lists the TS8GSDHC6 at The Upgrade Place for $73.00
[shipping] $2.95
Your Best Price:$75.95.
And a quick glance at the Upgrade Place itself finds that, yes, that is what it is, and that is what it costs.
Further confirming my growing suspicion that I’m inhabiting an alternate but adjacent universe, from which it’s possible to participate in some, but only some, of the same activities as yourselves, over there in that one.

I get $10.45 not logged in, but I’m coming out of Europe, so who knows what they do in that case.

Eszter, I think it’s worth reiterating the point about shipping speed. After all, on Amazon sourced products at least all anyone has to do to get free shipping is have a total order of $30 or something (I forget exactly how much). Low enough to be usually practical, but you often end up combining items. Which of course is part of Amazons plan with this, that you’ll just add another little something to get up to the free shipping threshold, but that’s a different marketing issue.

My understanding of the prime membership is that what it typically gains you is free 2-day shipping, rather than free regular shipping. If you buy things from them fairly regularly and want the fast shipping option, it’s going to potentially save you a lot of money. I suppose the same is true if you regularly buy items < $20, as the shipping cost might be high enough to total much more than $79.

Anyway, it seems that the analysis above is about right, that the different sources advertise lower prices but make it up on shipping, and your only advantage in this case as prime member is 2-day shipping vs. normal shipping (so really you should have been comparing costs with equivalent speed shipping charges, in which case you save money). This is basically the point of prime membership, isn’t it? I haven’t paid much attention to them, so I don’t know if their marketing of “prime membership” is misleading in this way.

It seems fairly clear that the underlying price of the device plus shipping is about $17. Logging in at different times, or from different accounts, gives you offers from different vendors for more or less the same price, if you include shipping. This is a pretty common practice for vendors on Ebay, for instance: have lower face prices, but hide the difference by inflating the shipping. It’s pretty clear that this is not price discrimination, and that Eszter drew the wrong conclusions from her limited trials with the system. The price differences are entirely based on what vendor you get shunted to, which changes depending, based on some obscure algorithm, depending on whether you’re logged in, who you’re logged in by, when you refresh the page, etc. And the end result of the whole thing is: Prime members get to pay $17 and get two day shipping, non-prime members get to pay $17 and get 3 – 5 day shipping. There’s no overt price discrimination (no price discrimination at all, actually), and Prime members are getting a better value for their $17. So I think we can all safely go back to shopping at Amazon and put away our righteous indignations hats for another day.

$12.63 for me!

Eszter, you’re totally off-base on this. Here’s how it works:

Amazon sells things in several ways:

1. Directly from them to you. In this case, you can use your Prime and get free two-day shipping. (And non-Prime members can spend $25 or more and get free “Super-Saver” (aka slow) shipping.) On this product, Amazon charges $17.99.

2. As a broker for other companies. In this case, the other companies can charge whatever they want — they set their own prices and their own shipping charges independently. Amazon just handles the checkout process and merchant disputes, sort of like eBay for non-auction purposes; they don’t ship you the product or get your money, they just get a cut of the merchant’s money. In this case, you can see (by clicking on “31 used and new”) that there are a handful of Featured Merchants, all of whom are selling this for various combinations of price and shipping. In this case, they appear to sum out the same, on other items (such as that Rebel XSi) they don’t. Amazon has no control over what these people charge. And Prime, of course, doesn’t work with these people, because you didn’t pay them $79 for the free shipping.

3. With Amazon Fulfillment, which is what that Blue Proton ($17.13) price is on this one. I don’t really understand this arrangement, but basically Amazon takes the money and ships it, but you’re really buying it from someone else in some sense. You can use Prime on “Fulfilled by Amazon” orders, presumably because Amazon takes a large enough chunk of the pie (or that they bill back to their partner) or something.

4. Random non-Featured new and used people, who work like the Featured ones but don’t get front page placement.

Now where it gets weird is this: Amazon has some algorithm (they don’t say what it is, and it changes over time) for which merchant they show you immediately. It’s not always themselves — sometimes it’s one of the Featured Merchants. It seems like it’s usually the cheapest one, but in my experience, that’s not always true.

So in this case, if you don’t have Prime, all of them (except Amazon themselves, ironically!) end up being the same price after shipping, so they show you one at random. But if you have Prime, the one from BlueProton is the cheapest (since it includes two-day shipping), and that’s what they show you.

You’re not getting ripped off, you’re just getting confused.

Prime, $17.13. “Sold by BlueProton and Fulfilled by Amazon.”

On the right I see: “More buying choices”, listing DigitalEtc, eek Technology, ChiTek, etc. at a variety of prices that, with shipping, all add up to $17.13 — plus “Amazon.com – $17.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.” The shipping quote for DigitalEtc, etc. appears to be 3-5 business days.

I do think there’s a bit of bait and switch here in that what my $79 is getting me is not in fact free shipping but merely an upgrade from standard to expedited. This is not price discrimination per se but it is misleading given that what they advertise is “Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping!”

Another way of looking at it — I don’t know how Amazon’s third-party merchant relationships work — is that the third-party merchants are squeezing out every penny they can by quoting a lower list price than Amazon but charging the same in total. Either way, though, I blame Amazon, since they’re the ones setting the rules.

The two-day shipping charge for DigitalEtc, by the way, was over $20.

David, the third-party merchants are really third-party merchants, not divisions of Amazon. Amazon isn’t responsible for their pricing — those guys could sell for $3 and massively undersell Amazon (in this case, in fact, all of them are underselling Amazon by 82 cents), and it doesn’t mean that Amazon is ripping you off (unless you believe that Amazon is obligated to have lower prices than any other retailer).

All Amazon is doing is showing you its competitors on its front page, while extracting a fee from the competition for that.

Non-Prime membership: $12.63 from ChiTek

Have a link for “31 used & new available from $10.45” which lists the $17.13 price from Blue Proton, then the $10.45 (+ $6.68 shipping, for a somewhat suspicious $17.13 total) from Digital Etc, and so on for various other vendors. They seem to be listed in order from cheapest to priciest, including shipping costs, which for the Blue Proton item is free with “Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.00.” So, you’re (Prime Members that is) paying yearly for free shipping on an item everyone can get free shipping on, under certain circumstances, or another vendor. I didn’t bother with Prime Membership when it came out, because most items fulfilled by Amazon could be shipped ground for free.

MicroCenter has “house-brand” memory, UBS flash drives and SD cards and such for very, very low prices. I picked up an 8GB USB drive for $6 or $7 from them. That’s from an actual store, mind you. Woot.com is another great place to pick up cheap memory, when they’re selling it, of course.

I read somewhere [it might even have been here] that second-hand books are priced in this market by software, juggling demand and availability [and thus charging 000’s of $ for the last available copy…] Is there not probably something similar happening here? Battling spiders, as it were?

BTW, it’s telling just how much comment this post developed, given that what’s at stake in the most frequently-used example is the price of a cup of coffee. But then, hard times…

I do think there’s a bit of bait and switch here in that what my $79 is getting me is not in fact free shipping but merely an upgrade from standard to expedited. This is not price discrimination per se but it is misleading given that what they advertise is “Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping!”

“Unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping for $79”, you mean. Which seems pretty clear if you parse the word “Free” in the correct context. (Or self-contradictory in a really obvious way if you don’t.)

2. $22.71, 3-5 days [Blue Proton]

My screen says “Blue Proton” is also eligible for Amazon prime (it’s shipped from their warehouse), so that’s seems like your best bet if you’ve got a Prime account (it’d be $17.13+avg. prime cost).

(N.B., the same card is available on Newegg for $13.99, free shipping.)

I guess the main issue is solved… I am interested by Sharon’s take, that all the $17.13 vendors are the same store under different guises (but probably not amazon itself). I guess that makes some sense, if you see an article priced at the same price three times you think that’s probably the right price, and others might be fooled by the low price/extra shipping trick.

Another possibility could be that these stores have the same supplier and pay the supplier the same price, and use the same profit margin. Especially if they use bots with an algorithm that says “If some else sells the same article, lower your own price unless minimum profit margin has been reached”.

In markets where people price by hand I seldom see such a perfect convergence.

@98 I think the ‘bot scenario is more likely than Sharon’s cotention.

Pricing information is both easily available and easily available to software in a lot of these markets. Even without automatic pricing, online availability radically normalized used book pricing, for example. I expect that these (particularly low-costz) consumer articles have behaved similarly, but with rapid updates.

I’ve noticed some items with near identical pricing (when shipping & taxes, if any, are accounted for) across large numbers of unrelated vendors. I can only imagine they are all watching each other, and have similar enough wholesale costs to have hit some sort of equilibrium.

I’ve also noticed some minor cleverness like pricing with $x.98 instead of $x.99, in order to appear earlier in lists sorted by price….

that at times Prime members pay twice for shipping.

It’s not the same shipping though, is it? How is it less accurate to look at that pro-rated part as paying for your “shipping upgrade”, as it were? I’d argue that it is in fact more accurate, when you consider that in some very real (but constrained) sense, “free shipping” is the normal case for amazon. You’re actually paying less, as people have pointed out, for the equivalent service here, not more.

As an aside, I don’t think it’s worth the $79 either, but that’s because I see little value in expedited shipping…

…at times Prime members pay twice for shipping.

How do you figure?

I mean, the equal comparison here is what it takes to get the item with 2-day shipping – $17.13 with Prime, but $20+ without.

Otherwise, AFAIK, to be eligible for Prime, items have to ship from Amazon’s warehouses (sold directly by Amazon, or “fulfilled by Amazon”). But then those same items are usually the ones eligible for the free “Super Saver” shipping too.

In other words, the choice you’re making with Prime isn’t supposed to be shipping charges vs. $79 for free shipping. It’s free shipping vs. $79 FAST free shipping.

@64:

In essence you’re accusing Amazon of deliberately not selling items itself for less than the price of what the marketplace vendors are charging, including shipping. All in an effort to job its prime account holders. That motivation seems unlikely to me, but of course that is a matter of opinion.”

Isn’t it more likely, if anything, that Amazon would prevent its marketplace vendors from undercutting it rather than that Amazon would refuse to undercut the vendors?

To contrast, here is an item sold by Amazon that is eligible for Amazon Prime two-day shipping:

Kingston DataTraveler 4 GB USB Flash Drive

The price is $11.78, as of this writing. If you have Amazon Prime, you pay $11.78 total, and you get two-day shipping. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you pay $11.78 plus shipping costs, and it doesn’t arrive in two days (unless you pay even more in shipping costs).

Just to clarify how Prime membership works… It does not offer free shipping all around, which has been clarified in previous comments. It does offer free two-day shipping for the flat rate of $79 for one year. Since my membership will expire in a little over a month and given today’s discussion here, I sat down to figure out if Prime membership is really beneficial.

Based on the 10 orders that I’ve placed since joining Prime…
I would have paid $72.34 total in shipping for standard 3-5 day delivery. If I chose two-day delivery for my orders, I would have paid $146.89.

I’m a Prime member so I paid my $79. As determined by some commenters, the Amazon Prime eligible items may have standard shipping built into the price (the main reason for the supposed price discrepancy). If that’s the case, let’s assume that I paid $72.34 in built-in standard delivery costs. $79 + $72.34 = $151.34.

So at this point it’s roughly a break-even situation. However, from this point on, any purchases will clearly make Prime more beneficial. Essentially, the more purchases, the more cost effective Prime is.

Will I renew my Prime membership? Probably. For a couple of reasons – my items usually arrive the next day, not in 2 days; purchasing via Amazon saves me time and gas costs since the closest major retailers are 50+ miles away; and Amazon Prime prices tend to beat most major retailers when factoring in shipping costs. And I can share my membership with family members making it more cost effective in the end.

Hope this helps some understand the situation a little better.

Wait, OK. So if you’re a Prime Member you have to take 2-day shipping on what you buy, whether you want it or not?

That’s what it looks like (I can’t verify, not being a member). Or at least you can’t opt for slower shipping at a lower price. You might be able to specify 3-5 day or whatever it is, but at no savings.

So if this is correct it really is only worth your while if you value the expedited shipping enough you’d pay for it (at least more than $79 worth) anyway, or you like to order lots of things less than the ($25?) free shipping threshold, and don’t want to wait and aggregate them.

Oops, no, I had that wrong. It looks like you can click on the “used and new” link, get the product cheaper and then pay for shipping separately and end up with the $17.13. So yes, you’re paying the same in the end that way.

So this all boils down to Amazons $79/yr for free 2-day shipping not really being worthwhile for you? Plus a dash of confusion due to Amazon’s multi-layer approach being more opaque than it could be?

Perhaps if instead of typing, ‘free’ 2-day shipping for $79 p/yr, we typed, ‘$79 flat-rate 2-day shipping for a year on all eligible purchases’, everything would be fine and we could simply ask, ‘am I likely to want more than $79 worth of 2-day shipping this year?’ If so, great, I’ll get it, if not, fine, I’ll pass.

Eszter, prior to purchasing the $79/yr plan were you aware of the free shipping options available without this plan? I ask this because I’m trying to understand how clear this is to someone not familiar with their system. This is difficult for me, as I had used it regularly before there was an “amazon prime” so when they started flogging the prime membership I had a look at what was offered and quickly determined it wasn’t useful to me.

In your case, did it seem like this was the only way to save on shipping?

I thought I was paying for shipping for the year.

No, you were paying for unlimited 2-day shipping for the year.

That’s not the case as here I’m paying for shipping again.

Please explain to me where there is an extra shipping charge. Amazon quotes a price (from their own stock) of $17.99 for the item. You get that shipped to you for free, in two days, given your Prime membership. Other vendors may have different price (item + shipping) combinations, but they’re not covered by Amazon Prime. How is Amazon double-charging you?

To break this down. a non-Prime member pays:

Base item price: let’s say $10
Base shipping fee: $7.13
Extra 2-day cost: I get $10.98

So, if you look at it a certain way, a non-Prime member pays “twice” to get 2-day shipping too: the base fee, plus the 2-day fee.

But that’s not really what’s going on. The right way to look at it is that the 2-day shipping fee is just broken into two parts, one of which is already included in the $17.13 price.

The same goes for Prime – the $79 doesn’t cover ALL your shipping costs, just the extra part that gets you up to 2-day shipping.

Watson Aname, I randomly checked some items that I’ve ordered via Prime, and some are not eligible for Super Savers Shipping even though purchased / fulfilled via Amazon. (Not sure of all the technicalities of why or why not an item would be eligible.) In reflection, I think that’s one of the reasons I decided to try Prime for a year – not everything I wanted to purchase was eligible for free shipping. Also, I don’t think Prime is for everyone. It all depends on your purchasing habits etc. And, again, in my situation, where we live isn’t convenient to major retailers, and shipping companies are notorious for stretching the delivery limits, whereas with Prime the purchases are flagged as express and actually get here in the proper time frame, many times sooner. :)

You are absolutely right that by charging you $17.13 for the product, they are effectively cheating you out of your purchased unlimited shipping. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they go to lengths to make sure some vendors include shipping into the retail price of certain (particularly low-ticket) items just so they can offer you free shipping without actually giving you any discount or costing them any money.

Also, while the particular arrangement of cost + shipping seems to vary across the board, and that may be for something as innocently manipulative as trying to catch consumers with different thresholds of price or shipping, it’s worth noting that Prime members are consistently given the highest price before shipping, minimizing the value of the Prime membership, in this case at least to $0.

I have a prime and a non-prime account, and saw the prime account come up at 17.12 an the non-prime come up with 10.45 + 6.68 shipping, or 17.13. I never saw the 14 dollar price come up. If you look at the “Used and New” pricing it will slow you all of the prices sorted by price + shipping cost ascending. So even though the item price may be less, the total cost is higher.

We will now double check everything, but I believe that Prime is still a good deal.

Amazon.com is not a free market and is not subject to normal competition. There is no “elsewhere” to go. Neither is iTunes (90% royalty on independently distributed music), audible.com (similar), PayPal (arbitrary payment practices), EBay (hassling small sellers), Craigslist (criminal hangout). Krawk!

Wow, 136 comments on the question of who’s ripping who off for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Priorities, folks, priorities…. At least try to make some general points amidst the squawking.

Prime Shipping is a shady product…

That’s an unwarranted accusation.

Amazon clearly indicates that Prime applies to items sold and shipped by Amazon, and that it does not apply to items sold and shipped by other vendors selling via Amazon.

I’ve used Prime for a number of years and have never found it confusing or deceptive. When I buy something at Amazon from a non-Amazon vendor, I’m clearly told that the puchase is not elegible for Prime shipping.

Prime pays off for me because I easily buy enough from Amazon each year to more than cover the annual Prime fee.

Transcend 8 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS8GSDHC6
Other products by Transcend
——————————————————————————–
List Price: $32.99
Price: $12.63

“The best money is made by charging for services you never
provide. Enjoy the feeling of power.”–Clipcoin’s Guide for
Capitalists, Mammon Press, Hell, 400th anniversary edition, ©2000 CE.

Caw!

You got ripped off — I mean, you paid $79 for Amazon Prime, but anyone could have gotten free shipping from B&H, so you double paid.

Some of you think I don’t get it while others of us are equally convinced that you don’t get it.

The latter has a membership of around 1. The former has a membership of an indistinct but much larger number.

Can’t wait to hear about the camera. I just hope it arrives intact. Kidding…

”Eszter, I think your irritation is entirely misplaced. Prime pays for 2-day shipping and reduced rate on overnight shipping. Ground shipping for non-members is already free for orders over $25.”

No, ground shipping is already included in the price – orders under a certain threshold have an added charge and some items after paying an added fee get additional service[s].

Prime Shipping is a shady product…

That’s an unwarranted accusation.

Most marketing ploys are “shady” in that they strive to get one to spend more, often on items not needed.

“I’m not going to engage in that activity since stating the same thing repeatedly doesn’t seem to change people’s mind too much.”

Uh, isn’t repetition one of the main tools in the marketers box, be they selling DSLR’s or political candidates? I mean, read my lips; trust but verify lest I feel your pain and then will be reduced to needing to change my way of thinking to a faith based system of hopeâ„¢.

Eszter, you are, actually, confused about this. I’ve just read all the comments carefully, as well as checked Amazon’s prices. Not to mention that I think well of you and think that there’s many opportunities to be confused and some of those opposing you in this debate are also confused.

Bottom line: Amazon isn’t charging “Prime” members “twice” (or merely more) for shipping than non-Prime members because non-Prime members are never offered lower base prices for items than are Prime members for Amazon’s own items.

Furthermore, a Prime membership doesn’t just give members an upgrade to two-day shipping for free (not including the cost of the membership, of course), it also really is free shipping on all items that are eligible that would not otherwise have had free shipping (because they weren’t part of a sufficiently large order).

Some people have tried to understand your objection by assuming that you incorrectly thought that “free shipping” in the Prime membership meant that shipping from 3rd party vendors would be free. I don’t think that’s where your confusion lies. I think that your confusion lies in the fact that those 3rd party vendors have base prices that are less than Amazon’s. And from that you conclude that you’re paying for shipping implicitly in that price, and then also paying for it with your Prime membership.

And this may be the case. It also may not be. It might be the case that Amazon has higher overhead than the others’. The deeper problem here is in the assumption that there’s a discrete shipping price at all with any of these vendors, Amazon included…that Amazon’s base price is greater than the 3rd party vendors doesn’t mean the shipping is included in it any more than it means that the much higher cost at a brick-and-mortar retailer includes “shipping”. The cost is higher, for whatever reason.

Muddying the waters is the fact that all the vendors have retail+shipping totals that are the equal to the Amazon base price (which is what the Prime member pays, total). This is simply the result of the fact that they are competing with Amazon and each other to have the lowest possible price. Note that the non-Prime Amazon customer pays the highest amount (when shipping is included) in this particular example of this item. None of them are likely to actually be paying the amount quoted to their shipper. Again, it’s a mistake to think that there’s a discrete shipping cost on a per item basis that you can then quantify as being the amount you’ve paid for with your Prime membership. Another vendor I use offers “expedited” order fulfillment. Does that mean that the $2.99 I might pay for a particular order to be “expedited” is what it cost that vendor to “expedite” that order? Of course not.

The only comparison that has any relevance at all is the comparison between what Prime and non-Prime members pay for the same item, not including shipping. And it turns out, they pay the same price. Therefore, Amazon is giving you exactly what they said they’d give you for your Prime membership: free two-day shipping on many items that are sold directly by them. Whether that’s worth $79 a year depends entirely on how you use Amazon. If all your purchases would have qualified for their free shipping anyway, and you never wanted them shipped within two days, then it’s not worth it. If many of your purchases wouldn’t have qualified for the free shipping, and especially if you often choose two-day shipping, then it’s worth it.

Given what I’ve written above, if you still have objections, could you try to explain them more clearly?

It seems a little rich to spark off a conversation like this by claiming Amazon discriminates on prices and then decide you want to take it offline when people point out the errors in your reasoning Eszter.

Most marketing ploys are “shady” in that they strive to get one to spend more, often on items not needed.

That, MarkUp, is an odd way of defining shady.

Where I come from, shady means dishonst or criminal. Trying to get me to buy something I may not actually need is neither.

I’ve seen no evidence that Amazon Prime is dishonest or criminal. Is it intended to increase Amazon sales? Sure, but that’s not shady. It’s clearly explained that Prime applies only to items shipped by Amazon, and it’s also clearly explained that it does not apply to the many other vendors who sell on Amazon.com.

Trying to convince people to buy what they don’t need is the essence of a market economy. Otherwise, we’d all still be living in one-room huts in scattered villages walking out to the fields every morning. Human are never satisfied. Marketing just takes advantage of the trait.

As for social conidtioning, well, we all have to take responsibility for the things we allow to be done to oursevles. If people are conditioned by advertising, then they, at least, ought to be clever enough to recognize what’s going on. Frankly, though, I don’t see any difference between being conditioned by an ad and conditioned by envy over the neighbor’s Shiny New Toy. It’s just the way we work.