03-21-2015, 07:33 AM
Frankly, I don't know how Amazon can afford to do it. Sometimes we get 50# sacks of parrot food shipped via prime and pay MUCH less for the parrot food and free shipping than JUST the shipping cost would have been.
Amazon does use a service called "Parcel Pool" which is a freight forwarder that takes the packages from the amazon warehouse to the USPS sorting facility in Honolulu. From there it enters the mail stream. It adds about 3-5 days to the shipping time compared to using priority mail. If you order 10 different things via Prime they may ship using different services and arriving at different times. Some stuff may come first class or Priority Mail and get here in a few days, others get diverted to Parcel Pool and take extra time. They have warehouses scattered all over the country and some of them stock different items than the others so they can't always combine things into one box.
To us it was initially worth it because there are some things they will ship via Prime that they will not ship to Hawaii even if you hit their free shipping order threshold.
We also watch some Amazon Prime programming.
Subscribe and save is awesome. For example I was offered 5% discount if I "subscribed" to get a car air filter delivered every 6 months. So I got the filter and then cancelled the subscription.
They can also have fantastic grocery sales. We got bottles of BBQ sauce for 36 CENTS with free shipping. You have to look for deals like that. But just a few clever orders pays for your Prime membership for the entire year.
Amazon does use a service called "Parcel Pool" which is a freight forwarder that takes the packages from the amazon warehouse to the USPS sorting facility in Honolulu. From there it enters the mail stream. It adds about 3-5 days to the shipping time compared to using priority mail. If you order 10 different things via Prime they may ship using different services and arriving at different times. Some stuff may come first class or Priority Mail and get here in a few days, others get diverted to Parcel Pool and take extra time. They have warehouses scattered all over the country and some of them stock different items than the others so they can't always combine things into one box.
To us it was initially worth it because there are some things they will ship via Prime that they will not ship to Hawaii even if you hit their free shipping order threshold.
We also watch some Amazon Prime programming.
Subscribe and save is awesome. For example I was offered 5% discount if I "subscribed" to get a car air filter delivered every 6 months. So I got the filter and then cancelled the subscription.
They can also have fantastic grocery sales. We got bottles of BBQ sauce for 36 CENTS with free shipping. You have to look for deals like that. But just a few clever orders pays for your Prime membership for the entire year.