Subscribe and Save has been awesome for diapers and random household stuff!
The power of S&S:
2011: $710
2012: $1,134
2013: $3,245!
I didnt know that tool existed either…the reports it generates for me though are not summarized. Are you guys doing that in Excel or something?
Yup.
5
Yeah. Had to manually add tax to item cost for those items where it was charged, and had to be sure to use the item subtotal column as opposed to item price to account for instances where I bought multiple of something.
Didn’t take too long, but was moderately inconvenient.
If you don’t have Excel you can always upload the .csv files to Google Docs, add a row, click on the cell below the amounts, click the SUM command and highlight all the cells with amounts in them, then hit return. That’s how I got my totals.
Wow, so far I have everyone beat in earliest usage on Amazon:
1997: $444.56
1998: $687.03
1999: $777.09
2000: $522.29
2001: $709.29
2002: $539.83
2003: $855.46
2004: $854.58
2005: $132.07
2006: $541.21
2007: $63.39
2008: $112.94
2009: $40.28
2010: $735.19
2011: $3369.58
2012: $2237.86
2013: $4370.09
2014: $235.88
Doesn’t include digital purchases. You can see a period of unemployment and a move that didn’t afford me much (2005); riddled with debt payments (2007-2009); unemployed and moved again (2009-2010) nicely paying job (2010) and joined Prime at the end of 2010. While the spending went up tremendously, having a lot more available stuff to buy on Amazon in conjunction with a couple of expensive purchases (2 digital cameras from 2011 on, and a lens) definitely contributed. I think during those middle years I did a lot of shopping on Ebay but stopped after a few years completely.
— Alan
Most of the time even if I find something cheaper at a different site when I factor in the shipping I might as well get it on Amazon being a Prime Member.
I think it is a very strong loyalty program especially factoring in the free movies/tv and now even kindle books to borrow.
I just didn’t bother going back to the beginning. My first amazon order was october 1998.
Yeah, I kinda’ wish I didn’t know about that tool. I’ll probably be playing with excel charts all day.
1999 $334.97
2000 $494.20
2001 $883.36
2002 $655.95
2003 $968.69
2004 $467.44
2005 $284.18
2006 $2,827.43
2007 $3,485.82
2008 $3,917.48
2009 $4,475.77
2010 $4,568.60
2011 $3,567.10
2012 $4,755.15
2013 $6,460.80
I became a prime member at the end of 2005, and it’s fairly easy to see what happened next.
Ditto. I’m 1998 as well. Not a lot to show; that was back when they pretty much only sold books.
It’s not just a store. It’s -the- store. Nobody else has their range and nobody else is really competitive on any sort of consistent basis. But you’re right - if they suddenly became predatory and evil right now, it would be easy enough to settle for spreading one’s business around the competition. My worry is that they’re on course to be able to simply muscle competition out of existence, kind of like how Wal-mart has become the only local retail option in a lot of areas through sheer clout and predatory business tactics.
My first orders were DVDs, actually, interestingly enough.
The nature of the internet is that it’s impossible to physically muscle out your competition in that classic walmart type fashion. Amazon is trying to outmaneuver its competition through local/faster shipping, but if they truly broke bad you could always order from somewhere else and just have delivery take an extra day or two, or pay an extra dollar.
They won’t be able to use the exact tactics Walmart does, no. But I think it’s unrealistic to expect the nature of business on the internet to be an automatic palliative for monopolies.
Curious: do you guys get lots of household stuff from Amazon? There are some classes of items (particularly food, but some home items, too) where they seem to come in way over big retailers like Walmart. An easy (and perhaps unfair) example is soda: the cheapest 12-pack I can find of Coke products is a 12-pack for $20; I can get 24 for $7 at my local Wally World, and even classy grocers have it way cheaper. Tons of stuff–even processed foods like Little Debbie cakes, chips, etc. are all way more on Amazon than in-store. Like, enough to the point that even if you’re valuing your time at the obviously fire high salaries y’all earn, it’s still cheaper to go out and get it yourself.
I mean, yeah, stuff like games, DVDs, new books, kitchen equipment, etc. all seem way cheaper or at least competitive on Amazon, but I mean, if you’re dropping $6 large a year at this place, are you grabbing the TP and cokes while you’re at it and just eating the cost, or do you guys really go through several TVs a year? :)
A lot of the household item prices I see on Amazon aren’t really competitive at all with what I can find locally and I’m up in Alaska so things here are already more expensive than the rest of the country. I’m assuming it does get to a more competitive price when you get that 20% discount when you have a lot of S&S and the convince of it all not having to remember to pick up more the next time you go to the store.
As much as everybody loves Amazon they’re already starting to flex their muscles and becoming the Wal-Mart of the internet with at least regards to videogames. I don’t know if it’s the same with books or kitchen equipment or tvs to the same extent but Amazon doesn’t seem to discount things unless another retail store already has and they just go and price match it. People already just assume Amazon has the best prices on everything or simply wait till they price match another store’s discount. As much as people hate Best Buy and other B&M stores they provide competition for Amazon and in 5-10 years I would hate to see what Amazon becomes without another or several big competitors to keep them in check.
2008 $ 544.02
2009 $ 930.12 (got PRIME in the summer)
2010 $ 2588.28
2011 $ 2384.31
2012 $ 2207.80
2013 $ 1696.46
2014 $ 287.24
As of late I’ve been buying less, probably due to the realization that I have too much STUFF.
Pretty much anything food related seems way more expensive on Amazon, than most of the local grocery stores.
I don’t buy food from Amazon except for bulk chewing gum. I buy pretty much everything else from them.
Unless it’s stuff I can’t normally find via local grocery outlets, I can’t imagine getting much of that via Amazon. Maybe in bulk, via subscription. It’d really depend.
That’s not counting for AmazonFresh, but that is its own burden: +$220/yr (on top of Prime), $35 minimum for orders for free “shipping”, and you’ll probably have to look for at least 24 hours lead time for delivery (and it’s only in 3 cities). At least they tend to use local merchants for a lot of the highlighted stuff; not exactly where the basic groceries come from.
Ah okay, so yeah Coke Zero is like this: 6 pack of 1/2 liter bottles $2.98, 20 pack of cans $6.49. This is, respectively, about $0.50 and $1.00 more expensive than Safeway I think. A 2 liter is $1.00 even, which is usually about something like $0.69. Produce seems to be slightly more expensive than usual, but not horribly so. And, in SF, if you don’t shop at Safeway or one of the hispanic markets, you pay a lot more than typical.
— Alan
I went back to 2004, when apparently I had no orders. Since my Amazon Email address is my oldest Gmail address, now I’m wondering when Gmail started up. I know I must have ordered the odd book or CD before then though.
Hmm, I just shifted my email address when I switched to gmail… except I can’t even remember what address I used before that.
— Alan