#i wonder if they'd penalize me if i put junk in my order every time and then just abused the free returns. bc this is getting ridiculous

[thegeminisage]

i hate jeff bezos so deeply and its for an extra reason than all the usual reasons to hate jeff bezos ie the new shipping policy is fucking me over

used to be that if you got to $25 you could get free shipping. the number has now risen to $35. also, if you had an order that qualified for free shipping, you could add to that order within 24 hours and get free shipping on those items as well since it was all going to the same place. NOT ANYMORE

consider if you are Very Rural and want to buy an item that costs $10. because you are rural, the shipping comes out to about $6-$7. you are almost doubling the price of this item. (even worse if the item you are buying IS $7 or less - then you are doubling or more than doubling its price.) if there was ANY way to buy it locally you would not be buying it online for this very reason.

but with $25 free shipping, if you needed anything else, you could buy just 1-2 more items and get it shipped FREE, which is a great deal bc i don't usually impulse purchase but especially not on amazon BECAUSE of shipping fees. i usually do buy 2-3 things at a time. (even better if you were going to pay $7 shipping on an item that was $18 or more; whatever you put in your cart to get to $25 at that point is basically free.) yes, it takes a week to get here (again: rural), but you have chosen to pay with wait time instead of money. 10% sales tax gets your shit up to $28ish bucks and you're golden.

but NOW you have to get it up to $35. by the time you have enough stuff in your cart (and it is harder to fill up your cart to $35 when you don't impulse purchase) and pay the 10% sales tax, you're at $38 if you're lucky - i often have to go a dollar or two over and wind up paying $40 or more. which is. not quite double. of what i used to do.

FURTHERMORE, i am STILL paying with my time - i still have to wait a week for that $40 order. my ONLY alternative is paying $7 shipping on a $10 item (again, almost doubling the price) OR driving hours out of town in order to find it in a store OR paying $15 a month for amazon prime, a service which is useless to someone who is both poor and only orders from amazon a few times per year.

with the old system, i could pay with my money or with my time, but with the new system, i can pay with my money or i can pay with my time and also still my money, just slightly less. it's a no-win scenario. kobayashi maru of online ordering. i FUCKING hate it here