Amazon's minimum order size for free shipping is now $35

I am amazed at how amazon remains doing business with so low margins or no profits. We love amazon at my house and being Prime members, we are almost ordering everything under the sun from Amazon that we possibly can. Here is why we love it:<p>- The reviews are actually useful. I just bought a 70 inch TV through amazon and the critical and helpful reviews really helped me get going with settings on the TV that would have taken hours to research on google otherwise.<p>- Shipping is superfast. Most items are delivered within a day or two with prime.<p>- Btw, if you are a parent of a baby, then check out Amazon Mom. It is free with Prime membership and gives you further discounts if you subscribe to ordering baby stuff like formula, diapers etc. on amazon. Also we compared the prices and it is almost impossible to beat amazon for these things as well.<p>- No need to go drive to a store. Sometimes I need to buy $10 item for which I might end up spending $2 on gas.<p>- Easiest returns if the need arises.<p>- Not to mention that Amazon prime gives you access to lot of great videos, movies, shows etc as a bonus.<p>One drawback with prime is that not all items are Prime eligible. Specially what they call &quot;add on items&quot;

The &quot;no minimum order size&quot; statement about Prime is a bit disingenuous. Many low-cost items are now Add-On Items (<a href="http://amzn.to/1a4NFBI" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;amzn.to&#x2F;1a4NFBI</a>), meaning that Amazon will only ship them in an order of at least $25.<p>Prime has become a bit less useful over the past year due to the introduction of Add-On Items.

I abuse Amazon Prime to no end. I live in the boonies and don&#x27;t have a car so they&#x27;re actually my lifeline. Bought a pack of 50 machine screws the other day and including the free 2-day shipping to my door it was only $1.35. Unbelievable.<p>But I am glad Amazon is raising prices. I don&#x27;t want them to falter and hope they continue what they&#x27;re doing. I&#x27;d be screwed without em.

The only side effect this will have is that it will push more people into buying Prime. Great comments in the other Amazon thread about how they&#x27;re really playing the long game [1].<p>Personally, I think Prime is a serious USP for Amazon that is often overlooked. It&#x27;s pretty controversial among analysts (from what I understand) with some claiming it&#x27;s causing explosive growth [2] yet with others unconvinced it&#x27;s sustainable [3].<p>Definitely a company to watch over the next 10+ years though...<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591509" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6591509</a><p>[2] <a href="http://news.investors.com/technology/030513-646807-amzn-prime-memberships-will-boost-profitability.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.investors.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;030513-646807-amzn-prim...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/26/prime-is-killing-amazons-profit.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fool.com&#x2F;investing&#x2F;general&#x2F;2013&#x2F;04&#x2F;26&#x2F;prime-is-ki...</a>

Our company sells a lot on Amazon yearly - the split of sales using Prime, the $25 free shipping, or nothing is about 33% each. I wonder how that will change.

When Amazon first introduced Prime I was able to get any of their products next day regardless of what warehouse they were in. I live in NY and occasionally some stuff would come next day air from say Arizona at probably a large loss for Amazon. Recently though they took the 3.99 next day option away from items that they do not have located in my warehouse (PA). Then the 2 day items do not ship directly from the other warehouses, they must have trucks going from KY to PA and then UPS takes final miles. Previously I would get 2 day items direct from other warehouses.<p>So I think they are transitioning to a system where they maintain stock in every warehouse, and every warehouse is within 2 days UPS ground to everyone in USA. If you ship things to Amazon for Fulfilled by Amazon they want you to ship to at least 3 warehouses. Prime is a major reason I buy everything from Amazon. Often I can find goods at lower prices from other retailers online but the free second day shipping that is always on time cannot be beat.<p>So this latest super saver shipping change I think is Amazon basically making shipping free due to its superior distribution system. Paying UPS for to door delivery from nearby warehouses for all these items is most likely less money than it costs stores for rent and other costs associated with brick and mortar.

Anybody knows how much it was before?

&quot;<i>This is the first time in more than a decade that Amazon has altered the minimum order for free shipping in the US.</i>&quot;<p>The BLS&#x27;s Transportation Services urban CPI has increased 29% since August 2003, or 2.6% annually. Amazon would need to have offered the free-shipping-for-orders-over-twenty-five deal for the last 13.3 years, or since before June 2000, for this threshold increase to be on par with inflation.

Amazon UK used to be no limit but it&#x27;s now £10 limit. However, this can be bypassed slightly by adding any media item (for example CD&#x2F;book&#x2F;DVD).<p>A lot of people had fun finding the cheapest piece of media, I think someone found a warehouse full of 10p cassette tapes at one point being sold by a company and handled by Amazon, thus giving people 10p shipping for orders under £10.<p>Regardless, if you have 4 friends you can split the cost of prime up to 5 ways (yourself + 4 friends) for next day. In my experience, at least, this has worked even delivering to different addresses. You have to list them as family members, 3 of my &quot;family&quot; are housemates and a fourth lives down the road.

As a prime member, I didn&#x27;t even realize there was a minimum... Anyways, if I need to buy something I usually buy it on amazon both because its cheaper, but also i love seeing the box on my porch :D

Sales taxes are going to bite into their business. My state (Massachusetts) has forced them to charge sales tax starting some time later this year, and that&#x27;s bound to affect sales.<p>Tax-free New Hampshire is 45 minutes away from Boston, and I suspect that once the sales tax kicks in, all those malls and outlets up north are going to see an uptick in business.<p>In fact, probably that&#x27;s why they&#x27;re squeezing the shipping now, because of this impending hit that they know they&#x27;re going to take, until people become resigned to the tax.

Maybe they are just trying to push more people over to prime

There has been similar changes in their European operations some months back. Many items are no longer covered by complementary postage. Deliveries also seem to take longer to &#x27;ship&#x27; (that might be my imagination though). I think it&#x27;s all related to Prime, them trying to make a subscription service look more valuable by disabling the alternatives.

fun fact: The comments here read like reviews on amazon itself, suspiciously positive ;)

Good for them. This and the other similar change they did recently (&quot;add on items&quot; for Prime so that you don&#x27;t end up ordering $1.5 items with free 2-day shipping) makes me believe Amazon will be more profitable and survive in the long term. I find Amazon extremely useful and love their customer support.

I tried Prime, found on my first order (as a Prime user) of several small items that none qualified for free shipping so I guess they weren&#x27;t in the &quot;15 Million items&quot; category, yet those were the ones I needed. So I canceled. If the free shipping worked out, we would go for it and probably drop NetFlix even though they have a better choice of shows and we got hooked on their House of Cards series. We probably would keep both. Until I feel that their Prime membership will support us when we need to buy something we will remain non-members of Prime.<p>We still spend several hundred to several thousand dollars per year, Amazon makes shopping so easy.

my amazon prime pays for itself every year just off my dog food purchases. 30lbs bags of food dropped at my door can&#x27;t beat it.

Is there a significant ethical difference between purchasing from a store or from a large online retailer? In one case, shipping to the store is bulk, and employees may make low wages, but they interact with other people. For a retailer Amazon&#x27;s size, warehouses run on people who read orders from handheld devices and are timed for retrieval speed per box filled. Then shipping is done per parcel. How have you decided what&#x27;s the right behavior to encourage with your dollars?

Not only is Amazon price competitive, saving the 2 hours going to the store and back is a huge deal.<p>Amazon has eliminated about 90% of my non-food shopping.

What was the minimum order size before? I&#x27;ve had Prime for a number of years and can&#x27;t recall.

What great timing considering the other post. AMZN &quot;buys&quot; growth with their shipping expenses, and if they want to become profitable something has to give, and this is it. Their attempts to become more profitable will come at the expense of revenue growth.

In a decade it amazon has raised the minimum order by $10. Given that Amazon is a pure data driven company, we can guess this is the inflation cost which turn out to be 3.4% as per US Gov data the inflation for last decade is 2.29%<p>I would rather believe amazon than the govt

Don&#x27;t scare me like that! I thought you meant for Amazon Prime members too.

Wow. Amazon must read HN.<p>We just decided on another thread that free shipping should start at $35. Great job.<p>;)

I stopped Prime because I was buying stuff I didn&#x27;t need. If someone comments under me, &quot;Oh, I just order household items&quot;; I guarantee this board has been sprinkled with paid commenters.