Small purchases can get you over the threshold for free shipping on Amazon. This can save you money if you don’t have Amazon Prime.
I recently bought a new cabinet to store my vinyl records, and it only comes in walnut. Now, walnut, aside from being ugly to me, doesn’t go with anything else in the room, which is primarily a black and grey wood theme. So I decided to change the color.
Since the pieces (IKEA-style) aren’t actual wood, but particleboard with a veneer of wood on the outside, I decided that instead of painting, I would wrap each piece in a “black wood” vinyl wrap. Basically, a giant sticker with wood grain on it.
I found what I was looking for on Amazon, after an unsuccessful look at my local stores. Unfortunately, after purchasing these rolls of vinyl wrap, I found my my cart on Amazon was something like $34.90, just shy of the free shipping threshold of $35 for those who don’t have Amazon Prime.
This has happened a bunch of times, and it’s moderately annoying, as I neither want to pay extra for shipping, or buy something I don’t really want to buy.
And I certainly don’t want to sign up for Amazon Prime to get around this.
Has this ever happened to you? This has been a challenge off and of on for me on various platforms, but at least, on Amazon, I’ve found a solution.
And it involves tacos.
Amazon Prime aversion
I’ve long talked about my suggestion that you cancel Amazon Prime, or just not sign up for it in the first place.
I have many reasons to back this suggestion up.
It isn’t just about the purchase price of Amazon Prime, which is about $139/year at the time of writing. That’s not egregious for many people.
It’s more that it’s a service you pay for that incentivizes you to spend more money at Amazon and less at other stores. Yes, Amazon is convenient and often inexpensive, but I think we spend enough there as it is.
And while fast shipping is really nice, I think that we’ve become a little too focused on it, and instead might want to consider the slow shipping movement instead.
Not having Amazon Prime creates just a little bit of friction, which I think is exactly what we need when it comes to purchases. Not a lot of friction, just a little bit.
So I kind of love that $35 threshold for free shipping. It keeps me from making thoughtless $5 purchases, and makes me have to interrogate myself on whether I want something fast enough to make it worth it to pay for shipping.
Sometimes I do, but most of the time, I don’t.
Which is why a cart amount of $34.90 is annoying.
Small purchases
For your approval, I submit to you the humble taco seasoning packet.
It’s low-calorie, vegan, and contains everything you need to take ground beef or vegetarian equivalent and make it into a tasty taco mix.
And at the time of writing, it costs $0.53 on Amazon.
This is the trick here. Don’t pay shipping. Don’t buy a bunch of other gadgets or toys that you don’t need or want.
Buy something that’s a few cents to get yourself over the threshold for free shipping.
You used to be able to do a search on Amazon for “one-cent items” or similar searches, but they’ve made this harder recently. But even if you don’t want taco seasoning, it still should be possible to find something inexpensive that you can use.
Cheaper than paying for shipping
Now, one could argue that buying a packet of taco seasoning is wasteful, and one would have a point.
But if I could buy a packet of taco seasoning and save myself a shipping fee against a giant multinational company that does not have our best interests in mind, this seems like a small price to pay. Literally.
So when my most recent box from Amazon showed up, it contained five rolls of vinyl wrap…and one single packet of taco seasoning.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get this cabinet project going. And then make some tacos.
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