No, it’s not a planet on Star Trek, but something new (I believe) at Amazon: Amazon Prime.
Unlimited Express Shipping
* Free Two-Day Shipping on over a million in-stock items
* Overnight Shipping for only $3.99 per item?order as late as 6:30 PM ET
Effortless Shopping
* No minimum purchase required
* No need to consolidate items to save on shipping
Convenient Sharing
* Share the benefits of your Amazon Prime membership with up to four family members living in the same household
For $79/year (special introductory price).
Looking at Amazon’s usual shipping, standard book shipment is $3/shipment, $1/item, for 3-5 days. If you bought individual books, that’s 20 shipments break-even cost for 2-day shipping. DVD’s are $2/shipment, $1/item.
On the other hand, while I buy a lot through Amazon, I (a) rarely buy just one thing at a time, so as to minimize shipping, and (b) usually buy at least $25 a pop to get free shipping. So the cost savings for me would be less likely.
On the other hand, I’ll confess that sometimes I buy something extra just so that I can get that $25, so if that were reduced, I’d save money sooner.
On the other hand, it’s not clear how many items it will apply to, and I’ve been doing more shopping via Used Items of late, which certainly won’t apply (but which increases the one-off costs).
*sigh*
Something to ponder, and an interesting idea from Amazon, as once people are “locked in,” they’re certainly more likely to keep buying …
I wonder if this will be the first step to eliminating that free-shipping-on-orders-over $25.00, or raising the “over” limit. I don’t use Amazon enough to make the $79.00 feasible (at least, not until I get a “real job”), but I do depend on a combination of no tax + free shipping to make a couple of purchases a year.
I certainly don’t know the economics of it on paper, but it would seem to me that there are folks who are in your situation that would make it worthwhile to do the $25-free-shipping thing still.