Amazon scraps free delivery on some items

Saving and Making Money

Updated on 24 July 2013 | 3 Comments

Amazon is ending free Super Saver Delivery for orders under £10 in several of its departments.

Amazon has scrapped free delivery on many items unless a customer spends a minimum of £10, although a lot of its most popular departments are unaffected.

The departments that have escaped the new delivery charge are:

  • Books;
  • DVDs and Blu-rays;
  • Music;
  • Video games;
  • Software products.

If an order under £10 doesn’t contain an item from any of these departments, it will incur a delivery charge.

This change applies to products fulfilled by Amazon only; normal delivery charges will continue to apply to items supplied by third-party sellers.

Amazon Prime unaffected

Customers who have Amazon Prime, which offers unlimited free delivery for £49.99 a year, are unaffected by the change and can spend as much or as little per order as they want.

One obvious way to sidestep this new charge is to buy an item from one of the categories above that’s much cheaper than the postage and packing you would have otherwise paid.

Another is to shop around and see if you can find the item cheaper elsewhere when you factor in the postage and packing.

Or you could see if you can earn enough cashback from a cashback website to partly or fully offset the postage costs. Both Top Cashback and Quidco offer cashback on certain Amazon departments.

There is speculation that this change may herald the start of more overall higher pricing as Amazon looks to grow its profits.

What do you think of the move? Will it make you shop around more? Let us know in the Comments box below.

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