I love Amazon.com. If I order something online, there's a 90% chance I'll get it from Amazon.com. We have Amazon Prime too, so almost everything can be at our house within two days. We use Subscribe and Save to get a discount on things like diapers, tissue paper, toilet paper, and other nonperishable necessities.
Our local Costco is 20 minutes away. Our local Home Depot is about 20 minutes away. If it's not urgent, I buy it on Amazon and it saves me an hour-long trip. We still go but now we don't need to lug massive packages back.
A few years ago, I ordered a massive 280 lb. snow blower. Not only was it delivered to my door with nice folks wearing white gloves but it was cheaper than anywhere else. (this thing was not fitting in my car!) I looked extensively.
One day, in the near future, some drone army might do the delivery with their robotic white gloves!
So in all that time, I've learned a few tricks about getting the best out of Amazon.com. I've read all the articles out there claiming to be Amazon “hacks,” where they just list membership benefits, tell you about the Fire stick, or tell you to check out Warehouse Deals or enlighten you about “subscribe and save.” Seriously, everyone knows about subscribe and save. Those posts are nice reminders, but those aren't exactly hacks.
Warehouse Deals is where Amazon sells any open-box and used products. You can often save big bucks because this is where they sell any returns and trade-ins. You get free shipping with Prime plus a 30-day return policy. It's certainly worth a look, there are hundreds of thousands of products here.
The next place is Amazon Outlet, where you can find big discounts on markdowns, clearance items, and overstocks. Warehouse is for used and open box items, Outlet is where Amazon is looking to empty their warehouse. Both can result in big savings.
Amazon Cash Promotion: Add $25+, Get $5 Amazon Credit
Amazon is pushing their Amazon Cash program – you get $5 Amazon Credit when you add $25 or more to your Amazon Balance. To add cash to your account, you get your barcode and go to a partner store (CVS Pharmacy, GameStop, etc.) to load into your account. It's a couple extra steps but if you're going to be at a partner store, you might as well get $5 for your trouble!
Get $39 for Using ShopTracker
ShopTracker is an app you install on your computer or phone and link with your Amazon shopping account. After you register, you'll be given a quick 4-5 question survey to see if you qualify (ie. have an Amazon account). If you do, you download an app and log into your Amazon account to receive a $3 digital reward in the form of a VISA gift card.
You also get $3 each month, for $39 total your first year!
ShopTracker is run by Harris Poll Online and it studies your shopping behavior to better understand how people shop online. Harris Poll Online is a well known and reputable survey company that has been around for 40 years and works with 74 of the Fortune 100 companies and 500 other firms.
Remember All Their Awesome Prime Services
I had to get the party started by singing the praises of Amazon Prime… just in case you were one of the last few people holding out.
Amazon Prime is the best. You get two day shipping, a ton of streaming content in music and video (TV, movies, etc.) plus photo storage and even special discounts, like 20% off new release video games and diapers. Oh, and you can get one free kindle book each month from the Kindle Lending Library.
There are a few versions of Prime. There's regular Prime, Amazon Student, and Amazon Mom or Amazon Family (it was recently renamed to Amazon Family).
They're all pretty much the same idea except Amazon Student is a 6-month trial whereas the other two are 30 days. Amazon Family also gets 20% off diapers and 15% off a baby registry.
Amazon Prime Refund: By the way, if you happened to sign up for Prime and lost track of the trial period (it's 30 days), you can request a refund if you don't want to continue past the membership but they billed you. Just go to Manage Your Prime Membership and click End Membership, if you haven't used any Prime services then they'll automatically refund you. If you have, you will have to go through the contact page and request a refund. It's harder to get it after you've used services but still worth a shot.
Take the No-Rush Shipping Bribe
With Prime, you get free Two-Day shipping. Amazon, in their brilliance, often offers a bribe if you are willing to accept No-Rush shipping, which takes an additional 3 days.
My favorite was the bribe has been $1 credit for eBooks, digital videos, and more. I will order individual items, separately, and opt for No Rush Shipping so I can get a $1 credit each time. They will usually all ship in the same box, so I'm not hurting Mother Nature with more boxes.
I've read tips from folks who say you should order a bunch of items with the slower shipping but then select 2-day shipping on the last one, thus getting all your items within 2-days plus the credits. Personally, this feels more like trickery (or thievery) than savviness but I don't begrudge anyone who does it.
Best part? Those $1 credits get used up by my lovely wife on books for her Kindle or movie rentals. (or one of these Kindle personal finance books under $1)
If you ever need to look up how many digital credits you have, click here. They don't make that page easy to find. 🙂
Consider the Amazon Prime Credit Card
We take a much closer look at the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa to see if it's worth it, but the short answer is a resounding “yes!” if you shop a lot on Amazon.
You get 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods, 2% at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores; and finally 1% on everything else. The cashback comes as Amazon credit by default but you can have it set to a statement credit or transfer to your bank.
Visit the Treasure Truck!
The Amazon Treasure Truck is a mobile Amazon.com store that offers one fantastic deal. It moves around and isn't available everywhere but you can find out the deal of the day in your area (if they're around) by signing up for texts. Just go to http://amazon.com/treasuretruck and sign up.
The truck itself is a little bit of fun for the kids too. When you show up, even if you're buying anything, they give out little toys. We stumbled onto one the other day and they had bouncy balls, brass coins, colored pencils, and other fun goodies for the kiddos.
Avoid Sales Tax with Third Party Sellers
Amazon.com collects tax in 45 of the 50 states. It used to be that they only collected in areas where there was a “nexus,” like a fulfillment center in Baltimore, Maryland. They don't collect it on third-party sellers who fulfill through Amazon. 🙂
You get all of your Amazon benefits, such as free 2-day shipping with Prime, without the sales tax since the seller is out of state and thus not subject to sales tax.
There doesn't appear to be an easy way to look up the state of a seller but the price listing now shows you estimated tax (and shipping), so you can make a quick comparison.
Discounted Prime for EBT Holders
If you receive government assistance, defined as having an EBT card, you can get Amazon Prime for just $5.99 a month rather than the $99 a year ($8.25 a month).
You get all of the benefits of Prime with only one exception – you don't have Household sharing. You can only get this price for 48 months and will have to qualify every 12 months.
Delete Search History
If you live in a household, chances are you share the same Amazon Prime account (no sense paying for two!). During the holidays, this can make shopping for loved ones difficult because Amazon will show recommendations to everyone that's logged into the account.
How do you avoid this? Delete your search history.
You can do it easily by going to your browsing history page here and deleting items. You can also purge the whole list on that same page by clicking on “Manage history” at the top right and clicking “Remove all items.” You can turn off browsing history too from the same drop down.
If you want it to track but just not right now, search in incognito/private mode on your browser so you aren't logged in.
Complain About Shipping Delays
If your ordered package doesn't arrive by the scheduled time, let Amazon know. If you had Prime two-day shipping, it might result in a membership extension or a credit to your account. It doesn't matter if the delay isn't their fault (like weather), because they made the guarantee so they will own up to it. If you don't feel comfortable holding them responsible for things out of their control, then only complain about the delays you want to. 🙂 The best way to complain is via the contact form.
We recently ordered a few items and due to some weird UPS delay, it arrived a week later. I initiated a quick chat with Customer Service, took a few minutes, and they credited us with a free month of Amazon Prime (valued at $8.25).
I'm glad it was messaging chat because it let me mix in a little passive aggressive faux outrage (I wasn't upset about it showing up late, heck I usually take the bribe!).
Price Drop Policy
Update May 2016: Amazon ended it's price drop policy for all items except televisions. :
If you buy an item on Amazon.com that is being sold by Amazon.com LLC and the price drops within 7 days, you can get a credit for the difference. Get your order number and head on over to their Live Chat system, where you can submit your request. It's a pretty simple process, they've done it a million times, and you'll get the difference as a credit you can spend later. The big thing to watch out for is that the seller is still Amazon.com, this won't work if it's a third party seller.
The next time I can take advantage of this I'll post some screenshots talking you through the process, until then here's a good walkthrough.
Find Any User's Wishlist
Did you know that you can find the List and Registry of any Amazon.com customer? You can search by name or, more accurately, by their email address.
Just go to the Wishlist search page and surprise them on their birthday. 🙂
Squeeze Last Cents on Prepaid Gift Cards into Amazon Gift Cards
Ever have a few of those prepaid VISA gift cards with like 50 cents left? You just want to get rid of them but feel bad about tossing fifty cents or a dollar? Squeeze the last few cents out by using them to buy Amazon.com Gift Cards – Email Delivery. Send them to yourself, copy out the code and paste them in your account. Boom, trash the card. 🙂
(50 cents is the minimum, unfortunately)
Earn Reload Bonuses
When you “reload” your Amazon gift card balance, you can earn an extra Amazon credit bonus. Simply go to the Reload Your Balance and look at the banner at the top.
If you've never reloaded before, you should see a Reload $100, get a $5 reward on your first reload offer:
If you've reloaded before, you might see a Earn a 2% reward when you use your checking account to reload your gift card balance offer:
Either way, unless your credit card is giving you 2% cashback (the only one I'm aware of that will do this is the Discover it Cashback Match card when Amazon was a 5% category!), this is a great deal.
Twitch Prime
Do you like games? Do you enjoy watching people play games? Twitch Prime is included with Amazon Prime.
Smile 🙂
Lastly, and this won't save you any money, but sign up for AmazonSmile. They donate 0.5% of your eligible purchases to a charitable organization of your choice. It'll cost you nothing, other than remembering to go to http://smile.amazon.com/ or installing a browser extension) and helps a charity out.
Do you have a favorite hack I missed? Or one on this list that you didn't know about? Let me know!
I can never keep track of when to check on price drops with Amazon. I use a cool site called Paribus to do that for me! You grant them access to your email box, and they will track price drops and file claims for you. They take a 25% cut… but you can bump that down to 20% if you use my referral link: https://paribus.co/
I use Paribus because I wasn’t keeping track of price drops myself anyway. Just last week they contacted Amazon on my behalf and I got refunded over $3! It feels like free money, especially because I don’t have to do anything haha 🙂
You can reduce the cut that Paribus takes by 5% for each friend you refer. I haven’t referred anyone (until today) but I still love having it!
Hi Kyle – I’ve heard about Paribus.co and I’m going to give them a look, especially since dealing with Amazon for a $3 price drop isn’t my idea of a good time.
That said, I removed your referral link because I prefer it if we kept the comments void of those. It can become a spammy mess if we don’t maintain that as a rule. (plus, Shaun notes that it might be against the terms & conditions).
Oh I understand Jim! I should have thought to ask before I just pasted that in there. Sorry about that!
I love Amazon too! I never knew about the ability to find others wishlists like this – so thanks! It will come in handy. Also, the ability to get rid of cash gift cards at Amazon comes in handy too – and often recommend that to folks who have those lying around.
It’s handy when you want to buy something for a special someone but have no idea what to get! 🙂
I second the recommendation of Paribus. They saved me over $200 on a TV I bought recently.
Kyle – beware. By posting your Paribus referral code here, you are likely violating their terms of service, which specify you can only distribute it via social media, email, or text: “You may also share your referral code via email, text, and/or social media…Referral codes should not be published or distributed where there is no reasonable basis for believing that all or most of the recipients are personal friends (such as coupon websites, Reddit, or Wikipedia). “
Thanks Shaun – good point, I cleaned up Kyle’s link so he wouldn’t get in trouble plus I’d like to keep referral codes out of the comments. It can become a never ending stream of comments from folks looking to pass along their referral link!
Thanks Shaun! Jim edited my link to avoid spam problems, but you’re right. I was violating terms, and I should have checked before posting that. Thank you for pointing that out!
No damage done, lessons learned all around! 🙂
Great post Jim. I love Amazon. Like other readers too I’d recommend Paribus. I’d also recommend signing up for Bing Rewards. It takes like 5 min each day to max out the points, but I estimate every 18 days I score a $5 Amazon gift card. I also use Swagbucks to score giftcards as well. I earn about $25 – $50 a month in giftcards that I use for Amazon or Target.
Thanks Vic!
So I did Bing in the past, used an autosurfer for nearly two years, and only recently got my account frozen. 🙂
Haha! Good job! I just manually surf on Bing web and mobile. Takes me less than 5 minutes to max out.
Maybe you can just open another account under a different email?
hahaha “good job!” don’t mock me!
I probably can but I didn’t yet.
Dammit Jim!
Now my Bing account has been suspended! I didn’t use an autosurfer, but just randomly typed characters to do the search bonus as quick as possible. I guess having a lot of searches that look like “aaaaaaaa” is a red flag for the Bing team.
That’s what I get for mocking you. Karma.
🙁
That stinks man.
I’ve been complaining about being an Amazon Mom for years now. (It’s not a big complaint, just laughingly noting how sexist it is.) Good to see it is now Amazon Family.
What snowblower did you get? I looked there myself in March of last year and just didn’t pull the trigger.
Lately they’ve been bribing me with $5 off of Amazon Pantry, which costs $5 to deliver (so free delivery) instead of the video credit. Maybe I’ve maxed out the number of video credit bribes they’ll give.
That’s a great idea for the Pre-paid credit cards. I’m going to do that. Great hack!
Finally, you keep up with the out-of-state tax savings and pay that at the end of the year just like everyone else, right 😉 ?
I bought the Troy-Bilt Storm 3090, which is listed at $1300 now but I got it at $1100; my third of a mile driveway will not stand a chance. 🙂
I hated it when they bribed me with Pantry credit. Who knows when I’ll ever use it… but digital credit, that’s like real money.
Yes. Yes I pay out of state tax savings. All the time.
I misread the article originally. I thought you spent $280 on a snowblower. I was looking at the complete other end of the spectrum ;-).
Haha I was looking for a snowblower I could use for 20+ years. 🙂
Chase Freedom had Amazon has a rotating 5% category so I stocked up on gift cards since I’ll eventually buy something at Amazon. You can also buy Amazon gift cards at like Staples or some supermarkets and use a credit card that offers 5% cash back. 5% doesn’t seem like much but it adds up if you spend a lot there.
Yeah I was thinking about taking advantage of that too if we ever got close to needing the spend. Amazon credit is as good as cash.
i buy Amazon gift card at Kroger then you can get 2x and sometime 4x the points that can be used toward gas pay with the credit card that gives you 5% back.
Oh that’s good! Thanks for sharing the tip.
We also love Amazon and have used the Prime services from “Mom” and “Student” programs for years. The prices are so competitive, and I love that I can avoid impulse purchases at retail stores and streamline my errands with Subscribe & Save. It’s hard to over-spend when almost all my real-life shopping happens during a weekly trip to ALDI.
Another good tip is to use the web site camelcamelcamel.com to see the price history of any Amazon product. It’s nice to see if the current price is relatively high or low, especially for bigger purchases. We also ordered a big, heavy item–our grill–from Amazon!
Yes, camelcamelcamel.com is a very useful tool, I need to take advantage of that.
My friend has a funny story about buying a grill from Amazon. They’re was some shipping mixup and he ended up with TWO grills! I wish I knew how to hack that reliably. 🙂
I am a huge fan of delayed shipping. I am always getting things. When the kids have off on vacation, I usually purhcase a movie for them for free. I am happy and they are happy.
Yeah, guilt-free spending on movies never hurt anyone!
Thanks Jim. This article personally made me $10 from using the tip about complaining when not receiving a prime item in the agreed upon 2 days.
Heeeey, that’s awesome!
I’m a fan of Amazon prime and Amazon smile. Is there any way to use the app and have it credit my charity or do I have to go through the browser?
Right now the only way is through the smile.amazon.com website, the app won’t be able to participate in Smile just yet.
I already use the amazon app but do not get the $5 credit. How can I get this? I buy a lot from Amazon. Also do not get the $1 credit for digital.
I think it’s not available to you if you are already using the app. As for the digital credit, sometimes they offer it and sometimes they don’t. I don’t know the rhyme or reason behind it.
You mentioned Subscribe’n’Save – not only is it a money saving hack – it’s a huge time saving hack! Weekends are crazy busy, especially for families with kids and all of their activities, so adding Costco/Sams to the list of stops on Saturday (as well as sitting down, writing a list of things to buy, loading, unloading) is not ideal. Money wise – any savings at warehouse clubs are eaten up by membership fees. Since we already pay for Prime, I “automated” as many of our supplies/non-perishable groceries as I could, so not only do I not have to go to costco, I don’t have to buy as much from the grocery store now. The prices are competitive and the selection is getting better. And they also have coupons. Best of all – I don’t have to think about it any more. Took a little tweaking at first to figure out our frequency, but now – paper towels just come just when we need them!
Another Amazon hack – AmazonNOW!
Thanks Ally! We are still figuring out our schedule on Subscribe N Save but the 5/15% savings is HUGE and the regular shipments, once you figure out that schedule, saves you a ton of time going to the zoo that is Costco on the weekends.
We use SnS on a number of food items. The price from Amazon without SnS is already cheaper than what we can get at Walmart, so the SnS discount is icing.
Getting the frequency right can be a trick, but we try to stay a little bit ahead on things we don’t really want to run out of.
Yeah, frequency is the tricky part for us too. I figure if we’re short, that’s fine we can just buy it from Costco. We won’t overstock by too much because we can always delay things.
I use the ability to change dates to fix my frequency problems. If I don’t need something I push it to the end of the month (or if it already is, I skip the month’s shipment).
If I need something earlier, I move the date up. It may still take 10 days, so I have to be sure that I at least have that much. That’s why I usually stock a little more than what I need.
I also put everything on 1 month subscriptions and just push the items I don’t need until the next month and keep the 5 that I do ready for that month. I’ve had C batteries that I’ve pushed on for a year because we simply don’t use them in much. I have a favorite sunscreen that goes fast which is often a filler item to get to 5 items to secure the bigger discount.
That becomes a useful reminder system too, because instead of removing a subscription and needing to remember it later as filler, you can just pull it forward. I like that idea a lot.
Came across your website. Love the hack on left over $$ on cards. Funny thing is I had one in my wallet and I had amazon opened on another tab while reading your blog.. SWEET!!
Thanks!
You’re welcome! I hate having gift cards floating around with just a little bit on it. I feel foolish using them but I can’t throw out money!
This is my first time here and this article was worth the read! Like you mentioned, many hacks out there really aren’t, so I appreciate the information you provided. The gift card one is excellent. One card I have is 49¢ – right under the 50¢ Amazon GC minimum – but that’s cool. I look forward to seeing what else you have on your site.
Oh no Amazon has a GC minimum now??? Grrrr… thanks for letting me know. I’ll update the post. 🙁
You mention there is some dishonesty in the delayed shipping/2-day shipping trick. But there is arguably far more dishonesty in the no-sales-tax trick. Most states _require_by_law_ that you pay use tax on any items that incur no sales tax (or the difference if lower than state sales tax). So what you’re actually recommending is technically tax fraud. You (almost certainly) wont get _caught_. But it is illegal and depriving the state (and the services it provides) of monies legally owed.
Ahh, that would be true if I was advocating that people don’t pay use tax… but I’m not.
But then it’s an anti-tip (unless I’m missing an implicit *nudge nudge wink wink*).
You spend time trying to find a seller where you won’t have to pay sales tax. Then you spend more time figuring out how to pay use tax. And you save nothing in the process.
We are taxed to death in this country. Almost 50% or more, if you include income tax, sales tax, property tax, gas tax, ultimately death tax (bastards, they want to steal from dead people). Sad. As a democracy, we really elected to pay that much? You must work for the government. You seem really concerned, if people evade taxes, you may get laid off due to poor collections or something like that. Ha ha!
Relax… the “death tax” only applies to estates over $10mm and that’s only if you weren’t clever enough to shelter it ahead of time.
As for the others, many pay for services (property typically pays for schools, gas pays for road upkeep) you use. Income and sales tax do too but there are so many credits and deductions that the vast majority of taxpayers do not pay any tax. Don’t believe everything you read.
Until amazon gets a grip on its huge problem with counterfeit products, I don’t plan on buying anything from any of their third party sellers, tax or no tax. The idea of ordering a name brand vitamin supplement and receiving a knockoff made in some Chinese slave labor camp was the main reason I let my Prime membership lapse this year.
Hmmmm I’ve never had that particular problem but if it’s pervasive, I could see how Amazon would have a big problem on their hands.
Wow. I didnt know that happens.
I got an Amazon Visa Rewards card that I use for Amazon Purchases. I get 3% in Amazon credit or cash back. It’s beneficial for those who do a lot of shopping online. Not recommended for people who do not pay off the entire balance immediately. Th interest fee would cancel out any rewards earned.
I put things on my wishlist and watch for the prices to drop. It doesn’t tell you the percentage increase, but it will show you the percentage it decreases from when you added it to your wishlist. Sometimes, a price will drop 25% or more and then I can purchase (if it’s something I want, but can wait to get).
For some reason, the app downloaded but cannot be installed because it is a ChromeOS instead of Windows PC?
Hi Sherri, I think we emailed and it looks like it doesn’t work on ChromeOS, unfortunately. 🙁
ChromeOS sucks. Unfortunately for a lot of things. Its a google product. They suck at everything else except search and chrome browser!
@Jim Thanks for the great article
Alert, shoptracker only works with Windows, Mac users are out of luck