Complaint Review: Amazon.com

Beware the Amazon.com shipping rip-offs.

I'll be the first to admit that Amazon sometimes provides some really good prices on books.  However, if you're not careful you can find any saving in the cost of your books more than offset by hidden, inflated, and unreasonable shipping/handling policies and charges.



1) Beware the per-book-rate.

Typical shipping charge for a book is $3.99; however, that charge is for -each- book, regardless of size, weight, or number ordered.  Now $3.99 isn't too outrageous for shipping a single book, (even though there are plenty of smaller paperbacks that could be slipped into an envelope and mailed for less).  The rip-off comes when you order more than one book, but less than $25.00 worth: you get charged $3.99 for /each/ book, even though they're going to be packed into one box and mailed for far less than that. 

For example:  I bought 4 children's paperbacks for a total of $23.96, and was charged $15.96 shipping.  In fact, all 4 books together weighed less than a pound, and could have been mailed in a US Post Office flat-rate Priority box for between $4.95 and $5.20 for the lot.



2) Beware of "free shipping" offers from Amazon. 

Under some circumstances (not all), if your order totals more than $25.00 Amazon offers "free shipping".  However, they may also offer (especially around the holidays) to get your order to you in two or three days*.  What they don't tell you up front is that if you opt for the 2-3 day shipping, you no longer have "free shipping" -- you get charged for the faster shipping.

Also, you have an option to "get your shipment faster" by having it broken up into a number of smaller shipments, which will be individually mailed as they become available.  This will indeed get you -some- of your order more quickly than the rest of it, but you will be charged the going rate for each additional shipment they make over the first one -- so much for "free shipping".

Then there's the infamous "Amazon Prime" offer-that-doesn't-look-like-an-offer.  If you check this box before checkout you will indeed get "free two day shipping" on your order.  Followed by a $79.00 bill for signing up for "Amazon Prime".

[* By the way, if you order late on Thursday afternoon, if the shipment reaches you by Tuesday, Amazon considers that "two day delivery."]



3) Beware of the "Amazon Sellers: shipping scam.

To me this is the most egregious of the Amazon shipping rip offs.  Amazon hosts many non-Amazon sellers.  Indeed, Amazon solicits them, advertises for them on the Amazon site, and includes their wares in Amazon searches.  I fyou are just buying a single item from one of these sellers, in general, no worries.

However, if you want to buy -multiple- items, or multiple copies of an item from an Amazon seller, be prepared to pay though the nose for shipping.   Every item under a certain weight sold by an Amazon Seller carries a minimum $3.99 shipping charge -- even if the item is the size of a fingernail and weighs less than an ounce.  Furthermore, if you buy, say, three such items -- all from the same seller -- you will be charged $11.94 shipping:  $3.99 for -each- item.

To me, the most egregious example of this was when I attempted to order ten SD memory chips (used in digital cameras) from an Amazon Seller.  At $2.02 each, the total cost of the chips was $20.20.  However, shipping charges were calculated to be $39.90 !
In other words, forty dollars to ship twenty dollars worth of goods.  

The worst part is, SD chips are each the size of a *postage stamp*, and weigh less than one gram.  Twice as many as I ordered could have been shipped in a single standard letter envelope for $0.44 first class postage.  Or they all could have been fit into a sturdy cardboard "priority mail" envelope with a 2-3 day delivery time, for $4.95.

Needless to say, I took my business elsewhere.

Amazon Sellers, it appears, are not permitted to COMBINE shipments to save their customers shipping costs.  The main reason I am writing this report is because Amazon WILL NOT OWN UP to this practice.  I've contacted a half-dozen different Amazon Sellers and asked them if they would combine multiple items into one shipment to reduce shipping charges.  Every one of them has politely responded that AMAZON WILL NOT ALLOW them to do this. 

Each time, I also contacted Amazon to ask them about this policy, and each time they replied that this was NOT THEIR POLICY, but must be a peculiar policy of the particular seller involved.  So we are faced with the idea that either 6 different, unrelated sellers, each with excellent records and feedback, are all lying about their shipping policies -- or that Amazon is lying about the shipping policy that AMAZON imposes upon its sellers.



So:  rip-off?  Or merely institutionalized inefficiency?

You decide.