Went to order some cat treats and saw that I could get a 25% discount when I sign up for Amazon’s subscribe feature.
So I clicked on it and the total in my cart didn’t reflect a 25% discount.
When I went back to see what was up, I noticed that the discount went down to 5%.
Unclicking the box will show a 25% discount again…
UPDATE: A commenter mentioned that the text reads “up to 25%”, so I went to a different item, added it to my cart and got:
But clicking on that checkbox also brings it back down to 5%.
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I’d file a report to the FTC or whatever your governing body is for deceptive billing practices, provide all the proof possible then immediately cancel any and all Amazon accounts and never look back.
Scamazon provides nothing of benefit.
Scamazon provides nothing of benefit.
Unfortunately, they are still the most affordable place to shop for many of the things I need. Our local walmart has the same treats for $1 more “on sale” and our local petsmart is $2 more. 💀
Nuts, seeds, and dried fruit are significantly more if I get them locally.
I have to pick one evil.
I mean, the top says “up to”, which technically means Amazon doesn’t even need to apply a discount. I would be more concerned if it said “save 25% today” and then dropped to “save 5% today.”
But it’s not a slot machine. It’s not “click and see what discount you get”.
And for what it’s worth, I went to a different item, added it to my cart, got the following:
Clicked on it and it went to 5% 🤷♂️
Ok now I’m invested. What happened to up to? That’s supposed to be their excuse, that there’s some sacrificial lamb out there, which knocks a quarter of the price off for subscribers, this one just wasn’t it. Now you locate the rare holofoil “no up to” Amazon listing and you don’t get the 25%? Tyranny I say! We must overthrow! We demand up to 100% of the means of production!
The one missing “up to” was the same product, but a different flavour.
I feel like I’m in some weird a/b testing, but it looks super deceptive regardless.
“up to” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
Plot twist, there’s actually no way to get “up to 25%”. It simply isn’t a tier they offer for their subscribe and save option 😱
I noticed a few months ago that if I would put things in my cart and not order them right away, the price in my cart would jump a lot without notice, but the price on the page would stay the same. Like, I added something that was $30 to my cart, 2 days later it was $50 in my cart but the store page still showed the price as $30 and there wasnt the usual “an item in your cart changed price” message. I had to delete it from my cart and re-add it to get the price to drop. There was no deal, it wasn’t subscribe and save, nothing. This happened multiple times. I also had prime and couldn’t tell you the last time my shipping took less than 2 weeks, and I live near a city. I’ve since canceled prime and stopped ordering from Amazon unless I can’t find what I need elsewhere. Want to scam me, fuck you.
I’m not surprised to hear of strange happenings like that.
There were a few months several years ago were I’d randomly have like THOUSANDS of a single item added to my cart. Stuff I’d never order, never wish list, and never searched for.
Sometimes my shopping cart would have like $15,000 worth of stuff in it.
They couldn’t explain it, and the mystery was never solved.
Change your password. Change all your important passwords.
Yeah, did that after the first time. Enabled 2fa, too. Checked for any other devices that have access to my account, and nothing came up.
It happened several more times, and nobody could figure out why.
I thought Alexa might have been a culprit, but I have the option to order using Alexa disabled. Strangest thing ever.
Same. I had some books in my cart that I was planning on ordering, next day they were all significantly more expensive…
I think you need to add a certain number of shipments for it to reach the higher bands of savings. It looks slightly different in the UK, but probably the same mechanism.
It was pretty handy for diapers and such when babies were born. (But then you read about how they killed diaper companies to achieve it 😑)
I think you need to add a certain number of shipments for it to reach the higher bands of savings.
Yes, they do things in tiers.
However, when I look at all the items available under “subscribe & save”, there are only three tiers that I see: 5%, 10%, and 15% with most being 5% / 15%.
In the pet food section specifically, the discounts range from 0% to 10% with most being 5%.
Why would Amazon even tell me that I’ll “save 25% today” on the item if that’s never even achievable?🫠
You have to have 5 items in a subscribe and save delivery to get the maximum discount listed on each of the items.
If you put your 25% item into a delivery next month and also subscribe to 4 other items in the same monthly delivery that show “up to 10%” discount, you’ll get 25% off the first item and 10% off the other 4.
Remove one item so you only have 4 items in the delivery and you’ll probably (I’m simplifying) get the lowest mentioned discount on each item rather than the highest - e.g. 5% instead of 25%.
What about the item that says “SAVE 25% TODAY”, rather than “up to 25%”? That one also gave me 5% after I clicked on it.
I’ve used subscribe and save in the past, so I know how the program works. But I can’t recall this wording/behaviour before, and it was always clear what discount I would get before clicking on subscribe.
Edit: Ok, the above strangeness only happens when the item is in the shopping cart. When I view the item’s full page listing, it says “subscribe and save 5% now and up to 10% on repeat deliveries”. So where the “25% now and 15% later” thing comes from, I have no clue. But it almost tricked me.
Yeah it’s tricksy. Probably relies on people forgetting to update their subscriptions.
LOL. Probably.
Better than Walmart’s subscription service, though. They don’t even warn you that something is about to ship, they just ship!
Amazon at least asks you to review the next shipment (which they tend to ship WAAAAY too early, 100% of the time).
Yup Amazon is getting worse, like everything else.
I’ve noticed recently that delivery estimates have been getting less accurate as well.
Before,2 day shipping meant 2 day shipping. Now? Not so much.
Of the last 6 Amazon orders I’ve placed 4 of them either changed arrival dates after purchasing, or were “delayed” in shipping
Like others have said, they don’t guarantee two days shipping however. Their thing now is if you spend $x per order or pay more, even if you have prime, they’ll overnight it (location dependent).
I live a 20 minute drive from several large amazon warehouses and one of their largest air hubs. When two day shipping was guaranteed, we’d often get most items the next day since it goes out almost immediately and we’re very close. We noticed the last few years most deliveries take two days at least with many being delayed to 3 or 4.
Finding prime less and less of a value I cancelled at the beginning of this month as I was set to auto renew. We’ve ordered two things since. Both items we have received in the past in 1-2 days. Now they take 5-7 days for free shopping, which is fine mind you, but it shows me that rather than shipping the item they are intentionally holding back the order from being picked from the warehouse to create the delay.
Rather than prime adding value, it’s simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
Nothing else on prime is worthwhile. Thursday night football sucks and when I do want to watch it if my team is playing I’ll just pirate it. Same goes for anything on prime like The Boys will just get added to the Plex server.
If you order something without an active prime membership, it shows the long delivery time, like a week or whatever.
If you then subscribe to prime before it ships, like the next day or something, it will update your shipping to the prime 2 day window. And will be delivered within that window.
It’s all entirely artificial. I’ve done this several times and it always works that way (small order of needed items, then realize I have the free trial again so sign up and order whatever else I’ve been needing and putting off). Fuck Amazon.
Rather than prime adding value, it’s simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
I mean, I suppose you could say something like that. But the problem is that nearly every other non-Amazon online retailer has ungodly slow shipping and you often have to pay an extra fee for shipping on top of it.
I know Amazon is a horrifyingly large mega corp, but there isn’t a decent alternative. They actually do provide a good service for the pricetag. (Unless we’re talking their digital services which I’ve never used and are trash.)
Maybe I’m just lucky because I don’t live in a rural area. So my packages actually come relatively quickly. Other retailers make me wait over a week and pay for the privilege to wait forever.
It depends on the company for sure. I’ve noticed a much better delivery time for most things I order nowadays through other companies. 5-7 years ago it would take at least a week for pretty anything to show up. Now most items are 2-3 days.
Fully agree though, it certainly depends on where you live.
I keep hearing this thing about delivery.
I can say that personally here in Spain, of course it’s a completely different place, the overnight 1 day shipping still works. Just saying that the enshittification is not global at least on shipping. Of course all depends where you are located and each product if they are prime or not, which hour you order it, etc… But the day they say is the day your receive it except some very very rare exceptions when there is a delay.
Of course that’s just my experience in my town…
I don’t think two day shipping is an advertised feature anymore. Depending on where you live, I’ve seen ordering directly from manufacturers is the same or quicker than Amazon most of the time.
When they say “arrives on the 22nd” I expect it to arrive on the 22nd. I don’t care if it’s same day or a week later.
I need to start just ordering directly from manufacturers.
I’ve had that happen recently too. Last one was clearly lost. It kept cycling in and out of their same warehouse. Happens with IPS and FedEx from time to time too.
up to
See the update. It also showed “Save 25% today.”
The “up to” amount isn’t actually possible to get for this item.
