Amazon Reminds Us Why It Is Such a Great Place to Shop
This weekend my son had a birthday party to attend, but forgot about actually getting a present until Thursday. While he had some ideas he really hadn’t decided, and with the crazy schedule each of us had it just wasn’t clear when he would get to go shopping. At dinner that night we started to talk, and by the end of the night Amazon reminded us why it is such a great place to shop. Let’s dig into the details!
After some thinking and whittling the options, my son decided he wanted to get his friend a CD for a gift (the new A$AP Rocky CD Long.Live.A$AP). On Thursday after dinner we hit Amazon, where we find we have to order within the next ten minutes to get the two-day shipping to arrive by Saturday – so we were prepared for the extra $3.99 charge for next day.
Here is what happened instead:
– The CD is on sale for $6.99 (whereas the MP3 album is $10.99!)
– I have a $5 promo credit from … can’t even remember, probably Twitter or Facebook.
– I also have another $1 credit that gets applied (again, no clue)
– I select to use my Amazon Visa … and have loads of ‘points’ from earlier purchases.
– Choose free 2-day Prime shipping to get there on Saturday
By choosing the points, I end up using 107 points (equal to $1.07, 8% sales tax), which brings my balance to $0. So as of right now I have paid NOTHING to get my son a present for his friend’s birthday. But wait … it gets better!
– Because it is a CD, we get ‘auto-Rip’ – so we get the MP3 album added to our Amazon MP3 Cloud Player account for free (and quick download to iTunes). I since found that we could have chosen ‘this is a gift’ and it would NOT have been handled as an ‘Auto-Rip’.
Oh … and to make things even better, the CD arrives on Friday (~16 hours after we ordered).
So – we pay ZERO for a CD, get a $10.99 MP3 album freebie, AND get next day shipping.
Yeah, that is why I love shopping at Amazon!