| The short answer is it saves us time, it saves us money and we get things not available anywhere else.
An Amazon Prime membership costs $99 a year ($49 for students) or $10 a month billed monthly. Membership has a lot of benefits like two-day expedited shipping for no extra cost, music, movies, tv shows and access to a number of products that are at deep discount compared to non-prime offerings.
WHAT??? I can hear some of you saying alarmingly? $100 a year for what?
It may sound expensive compared to Costco, Sams, BJ’s or who knows what club membership fees but Amazon Prime is going to deliver your purchases right to your front door, no hunting around, no driving from store to store, no parking, no annoying cold and flu germs from all the other shoppers and NO waiting in check out lines. Depending on where you live the gasoline savings alone will go a long way to paying for your yearly Amazon Prime membership. If what you order is not right you can send it back and Amazon will pick it up, pay the shipping and refund you, easy, simple, fast, the best customer service anywhere.
If an average family of four just buys their bathroom tissue (aka toilet paper) for an entire year through Amazon Prime the savings on the toilet paper alone will add up to more than the $99 Prime membership.
I bought Starbucks whole bean coffee in the grocery store for years, I would stock up on it by buying the BIG bags at Sams Club, these bags are annoyingly large and take up precious pantry space. Now we order our coffee beans through Amazon Prime “Subscribe and Save”, we save money, time and pantry space plus we always have the freshest beans in conveniently sized bags. Coffee filters? Yep, we get them from Amazon for 1/3 the price at the grocery store. When our old compact Mr. Coffee maker died the replacement came from Amazon.
For years I used little inexpensive coffee grinders, the kind with a propeller-shaped chopper blade that spins to chop up the coffee beans. In spite of how hard I tried I could never get the coffee exactly the same every time. So I did some internet searching which led me to the Breville coffee grinder on Amazon. Mary thought I was crazy for spending $200 on a coffee grinder. Well that was over seven years ago now and it’s been seven years of the best, most consistent delicious coffee we’ve ever had. I can grind a single cup or a whole pot in seconds. After you understand the controls you can dial in exactly the way you like your coffee and it will be that way every time. I’ve never seen one of these in a store, sure there are lots of coffee making machines but a precision burr grinder like our Breville is a daily joy and a good friend.
The Canon AC power adaptor for my Canon 5D Mk III camera is over $135 from B&H photo. I bought a no-name clone (with lots of 5-star reviews) from Amazon from under $30 and it works great.
The breadth of items available through Amazon is unmatched by any other membership club on the planet. At Amazon you can find really odd things that you would not even know where to begin shopping for elsewhere.
Recently I went searching for a backup hard drive, Amazon hooked me up with a Seagate 3TB hard disk for under $90 and it was here in two days. The local Best Buy store wanted $219 for a similar size drive.
How about odd things like electric guitar parts? None of the music stores in our area have much of an inventory or selection, everything is custom order and they quote a week or two before you can come back to their store to pickup what you ordered. I easily found matched concentric replacement knob and pot sets for my Fender Telecaster Deluxe guitar on Amazon, I had them in two days, delivered right to my door. I also got a new Seymour Duncan PAF replacement guitar pickup for $53, a big savings over the $110 “discount” price in the local music store.
We moved from LA to Florida a couple of years ago and in the process we lost an important video cable for our TV. I went to the local Best Buy and they wanted over $30 for a six-foot replacement DVI video cable like the one we lost. I went back home and looked on Amazon, we got one delivered for $6, two days later we had our new cable and TV happiness returned.
One of our hobbies is playing guitar and singing, we have over 30 guitars. Replacement guitar strings from Amazon are usually less than half the price of what local music stores sell them for. The lower purchase price makes it easier to change the strings more often and sound better.
We live at the end of a quarter mile dirt road on a little five-acre farm outside Melbourne, Florida. Shopping in brick and mortar stores can be a bit of a drive for us. No worries, UPS, Fed Ex and USPS deliver Amazon Prime products right to our front door, they even delivered a USB phone charger the day before Hurricane Matthew which rolled through that night.
Mary bought my new Apple Mac Pro from Amazon, she got an extra 10% off by having her income tax refund come through Amazon, that combined with an extra 10% Prime price advantage got me the new computer I wanted for much less than any other retail outlet, more than $200 off the best direct price from the Apple store.
By trade I’m an electrical engineer and have done sound and video contracting for over 30 years. Finding parts for building the systems I design can be a bit of a chore through traditional channels. Amazon Prime delivers everything from DIN rail to relays and sockets to power supplies, all the odd components I could ever want with almost everything delivered in two days. No more electronics wholesaler contracts or searching for parts, I know where to go if I need something, not only are items usually lower in price, often times they’re just not available anywhere nearby at any price.
We love music and Amazon delivers from the biggest inventory on the planet. Music compact discs are often only five to eight dollars each and come with free high-quality mp3 downloads too. Many musical artists now only release physical media through Amazon, personally I like the sound of CDs better than compressed mp3 files so I appreciate buying the discs for less. The latest CD release from The Outlaws is only on Amazon and if you like Robin Trower his latest CD as well as his full back catalog are all there too.
Amazon Prime has the best return policy on the planet. If you get something and it’s not right or does not work it is easy to return it for refund or replacement, Amazon even pays the return shipping cost. We buy a lot of stuff from Amazon so we inevitably end up with four or five damaged or not working items per year. Never a problem, it is so easy to return them with Amazon, they even come pick it up from your front door so you don’t have to go anywhere to ship the return. Compare this return system to returning something to Walmart, have you seen the lines at Walmart customer service? There is nothing we like or want from Walmart enough to go in their stores, Amazon matches or beats their prices on virtually everything.
How about security, I remember when I signed up for Amazon 10 years ago, I was very reluctant to put my personal information into an online retail computer system. I was worried about being hacked and having to fight with my credit card company over wrong charges, identity theft or something gone amiss. In all this time and hundreds of purchases I’ve never had a single problem using Amazon.
Amazon also has strange things you just don’t find in brick and mortar stores. Do you work on cars? Have you ever needed a “Battery Clamp Spreader”? I got a replacement car battery from AutoZone for one that developed a bad cell. When I got the supposedly exact replacement home I found that the battery post on the new battery was substantially larger than the original battery. I tried everything in my extensive toolbox to open the battery clamp on my class A motorhome, nothing could do the job. I looked up “Battery Clamp Spreader” on Amazon and they had it. AutoZone showed they have one too but when I drove to my local AutoZone brick and mortar store they told me it was only available online. Their online store showed out-of-stock and 7-10 day delivery when it is in stock. Advance Auto Parts did not have it. Home Depot did not have it. Northern Tool did not have it, same for Tractor Supply Company and Harbor Freight. Most of these places looked at me like I was crazy for asking for such a thing. I was bummed out that I could not install my new battery today but fortunately Amazon offers next day delivery on many items for only $3.99 per item, gimme that battery clamp spreader tomorrow, easy money.
Amazon reviews are something else that sets this retailer apart. Other online sales outlets have reviews but look at them, with a few notable exceptions there are rarely any there. Now look at Amazon reviews, there are lots of reviews on a huge variety of popular items. I really appreciate when people take the time to write an honest review, it can provide a serious fast track to deciding if something is right for you. Because I believe in the review system I write reviews for almost everything I buy, it’s a good feeling when another shopper messages me and thanks me for my thoughts. My honest, user focused reviews have received over 700 “helpful” replies from other Amazon shoppers.
Friends see some of the things I buy from Amazon and ask where I got them, when I tell them they’re surprised it came from Amazon. Flat panel displays, subwoofers, speakers of all kinds, lava lights, guitars, instrument cables, extension cords, water pumps, tenor saxophone, tenor and alto saxophone reeds, saxophone stands and straps, light bulbs, dog treats, computers, bathroom tissue, grass seed, tuna, label maker tape refills, cleaning supplies, wire, connectors, safety glasses, ear plugs, vacuum tubes, vinyl car top conditioner, vacuum cleaners, inflatable hot tub, chairs, floor cleaner, electric drill batteries, battery chargers, cameras, lenses, wireless microphones, computer software, DVDs, security cameras and recorders, cell phones, shoes, socks, pants, bamboo plants, laptop batteries, patch bays, dishwashing detergent, hot tub chemicals, organic fertilizer, sun screen, hats, reverse osmosis water makers, water quality test equipment, flower pots and saucers, bed sheets, pillow cases, pillows, solder, torque wrench, metric allen wrenches, minibike rear view mirrors, microphone stands, drum hardware, cymbals, drum heads, computer monitor mounting arms, fans, slippers, binoculars, SSD’s, liquid fertilizer, shelving units, Thunderbolt Dock, books, USB hubs, modems, routers, ethernet cables, guitar and bass stands, picture frames, guitar picks, laser printers, copying machine paper, curtains, photography lighting stands and so much more.
I could go on and on but by now you probably get the idea, we are BIG fans of Amazon Prime. Their range of products, service and price are unmatched by other retail outlets. That’s just one of the reasons that so many things we talk about in our blog are all from Amazon, it’s our favorite place to shop.
|
|
