How To Shop Amazon.com

I will literally buy anything on Amazon (well almost anything). From food (non-perishables of course) to makeup to furniture, I've bought it there. I’m huge on internet shopping, especially living in a big city. Why lug a big box of toilet paper around when you can get it shipped straight to your door at a great price? Amazon may seem like a difficult-to-shop website with a mish-mash of random products but here are some of my tips on finding what you want at a great price:

1.       Amazon Prime  - Amazon offers a great service called Prime. For a subscription fee of $79 a year, items that are sold by Amazon can be shipped to you within 2 business days, with no shipping minimum. You also get access to select movies, videos, and Kindle books. I know this may seem unnecessary to some but I’ve been a member for two years and really do value the speed of shipping. It cuts down on a lot of trips to the store to pick up things you forgot on your last trip.

2.       Subscribe & Save – Many items on Amazon are eligible for Subscribe & Save, which means you can receive 5% off if you sign up to receive an item on a regular basis (for instance, you can sign up to receive a bottle of dishwashing soap every 2 months). You can decide on the quantity and the frequency. You can literally just set it and forget it (which can be dangerous too but you can always cancel your next shipment if you don’t need it). Also, if you have 5 items shipping to you in a given month, you’ll receive 15% off instead of 5%.

3.       Marketplace – Thousands of people and businesses sell on Amazon marketplace so you’ll most likely find what you’re looking for, no matter how random it is. This also makes pricing very competitive. If Amazon doesn’t sell it themselves, you’ll find a marketplace seller that has it 99% of time. A lot of these sellers are small businesses trying to get into the .com space so it’s nice to give them business as well.

4.       Customer Service – I’ve heard some negative things on Amazon’s customer service and I can’t really understand why. For the most part, they provide quick and efficient service. They have live chat available, which can connect you to someone almost instantly. If you prefer to speak with someone, you can request to have someone call you (and  they actually do!). I’ve had issues to packaging and delivery in the past and they’re always resolved  and replaced it without a fuss.

5.       Know what you want or figure it somewhere else – Once of Amazon’s pitfalls is it’s tough to navigate site. It’s not the most consumer intuitive and I end up have to do a search for it instead. They’re product description are also lacking – sometimes there’s just not enough info or it’s incorrect all together. While brick-and-mortar stocks hate this and I’m am guilty of it, try to figure out exactly want you want either in another store or on another website. Match up the product numbers or UPCs. Then comparison price shop on Amazon. 

Now I know what people say…Amazon is the Walmart of the internet. I can’t say I disagree so I say this all with a grain of salt. Try not to forget the mom and pop stores.

*This is not a sponsorded post. I just really like to shop on Amazon.