Without making a song and dance about it with a full announcement, Amazon have quietly raised the minimum order value to qualify for FREE Standard Delivery from £25 to £35.
First up worth emphasising, this doesn’t impact Prime Members. The £35 minimum free delivery order value only applies to non-Prime customers. And the delivery charge varies – orders with books are free if the value of books is over a tenner, otherwise you’ll be paying between 99p and £4.99 for most orders under £35.
You should also be aware that the £35 order limit for FREE Standard Delivery only applies to goods sold by or fulfilled by Amazon. If you are ordering from a third party seller shipping from their own warehouse you can’t dodge the delivery costs.
Ways that you can legitimately dodge delivery costs are to
- Sign up for Amazon Prime (£95/year)
- Group orders together until you have a £35 order
- If you are close to £35, buy something cheap (or something that you’ll need like loo roll) to bump your spend up
- Include £10 worth of books in your order
- Check if you can collect from a Locker or pick up location for free.
Naturally there are plenty of complaints at Amazon jacking up their minimum FREE Standard Delivery order value up to £35, but in truth the vast majority of customers won’t notice. So many people already have Prime and will be entirely unaffected, whilst others who are occasional shoppers won’t have realised the minimum used to be £25.
One Response
Silly question from someone who avoids Amazon …. if I “buy something cheap to bump your spend up” and subsequently return it (change of mind/doesn’t fit), do they come after the extra postage costs which would have applied on the reduced order??