My wife likes Juan Valdez Freeze Dried Colombian Premium Coffee. She likes to heat a cup of plain 30 calorie Almond milk & a teaspoon of that instant coffee. About a week ago she was almost out of her supply so I put it on my shopping list to pick up next time I went to the store, it's typically about $6.00 a 3.5 ounce jar. Dang it they were out. Not to worry that could easily be bought online & I don't even have to waste gasoline to go get it. Googling I found this. Amazon 3.5 oz Juan Valdez Freeze Dried Colombian Premium Coffee/Cafe Colombia 3.5 Oz Price: $14.99 ($4.28 / Ounce) & FREE Shipping Walmart (2 Pack) Juan Valdez 100% Colombian Freeze Dried Instant Coffee, 3.5 Oz Juan Valdez $8.69 Free in store pickup. I can walk to the Walmart Neighborhood market. So I took about 2 seconds to decide where to order & buy the coffee for my wife. I don't drink coffee. After the complete rebuild of the cervical portion of my spine I spent 3 weeks in a rehab facility. While there the coffee they served was so bad I couldn't drink it. When I was finally able to go home any coffee tasted bad to me. Go Figure. The good news though since not drinking coffee my blood pressure has stabilized at an average of 127 over 73.
That is SO true! If a person would look around you can almost always find what you are looking for elsewhere for less money. And in the case of Bob Kirk ... you can get it quicker and save a good amount of money by going to pick it up. Walmart will also allow you to order online and either pick it up for free at the store or have it shipped to your home. Many other store offer the same thing. There are a lot of people who pay for Amazon Prime and swear by it. I have a friend who has chronic problems with that. Latest example ... she ordered one of those Orange/Chocolate balls that you smack and it breaks into orange segments. She ordered it for her grand daughter for Easter. She ordered it 2 weeks prior to when she wanted it to arrive. It still hasn't arrived. Why? Because even though when she ordered it, the promise was made it would be there in a few days, that order was sent to a place in England to be shipped to the US. This is not the first time that has happened to her where orders either don't arrive at all, partial shipments happen or wrong stuff arrives. They say free shipping and people lose their reasoning minds ! As a non member of the Amazon Prime cult I find it particularly rude and a big bit of false advertising that so many items on Amazon are not available unless you opt in to the Prime thing.
I do shop around when I'm looking for something expensive, and I used to shop around several places before placing an order. I don't so much anymore. We live seventy miles, each way, from a city that has enough shopping places for me to find the things that I need, so I would have to weigh the cost of gasoline and my time against the stated costs of whatever I am going to buy. There is a small Wal-Mart about twenty miles from here but Wal-Mart carries very little that I want. I used to almost enjoy shopping around online, but with hackers accessing customer accounts from one online shopping place after another, I would rather limit the number of databases that have my credit card numbers, Paypal, or personal information. Given that Amazon.com carries pretty much everything that I could ever need to buy, I go there for nearly everything. If something costs thirty cents less at another online shopping place, I'll buy it from Amazon.com rather than open another online account. I have noticed that deliveries from Amazon.com are much slower now than they were a year or more ago. Rarely do I receive anything in the two days that Amazon.com tells me it will take. Typically, after placing an order, Amazon.com will indicate a date two days away as my delivery day. However, when I check on my order two days later, I find that they have changed the delivery date to a later date, and sometimes to a range of time that might be weeks from the original delivery date. Sometimes I will find that they haven't even shipped it yet at the time of the original delivery date. My wife is a much better complainer than I am, so when that happens to her, she contacts Amazon.com and often gets a refund of the purchase price as well as the product she had ordered. To the contrary, when I call to complain about something, they either hang up on me or threaten to call the police. Amazon.com hasn't done that to me because I don't call them. My wife also doesn't mind being on the phone for hours at a time, while I can't stand being on hold. So, while I agree that Amazon.com rarely honors its two-day delivery promise for Prime members, I still believe that it's worthwhile. Given that, other than groceries, I don't have much in the way of brick-and-mortar places to shop near me, I order a lot online and it makes sense to order it all in one place. Plus, when I do check on prices, far more often than not, I find that whatever it is that I want to buy is cheaper from Amazon.com. Their customer support policies can't be beaten, or at least I haven't come across anyone who does a better job. If I am unsatisfied with anything that I have ordered from Amazon, I put in a return request. Frequently, they refund my payment and tell me to keep the product. Otherwise, the return costs are paid for.
When ordering from the Amazon site, you need to pay attention to whether the item is actually sold by Amazon or is one of their marketplace vendors. The vendors have entirely different terms of service for deliveries, returns, etc. and are usually NOT Prime eligible. We've been Prime members for many years and it is well worth it to me. I enjoy the convenience, and their customer service is second to none. Plus I have an Amazon Visa card that pays 5% back on every purchase. With all the shopping I do, I can easily get my Prime annual fee back in card rewards many times over. I also like to shop online at Walmart, Costco, Target, Macy's, etc.
I use Amazon Prime for shopping and streaming movies. Because I no longer drive, it's nice and convenient. I've only had good experiences. I do not use it for groceries because I don't pay for the Pantry option. For $35 worth of stuff, Walmart delivers 2 day free as well and brings it to the door. I use this option quite a bit also. Then there are days I just feel like getting out, like tomorrow, and I'll shop in person. For me, it's usually more about convenience than price when it comes to me not having to leave my house. I'm such a mole,
Being new as an Amazon Prime member I have been very satisfied. Only a couple of snap-poos but clearly my error and customer service was helpful by explaining how-to for future orders. I will piggyback on what @Beth Gallagher mentioned about some vendors are not Amazon vendors as I learned from one of my snap-poos. Just knowing that I'm saving on shipping costs definitely covers the annual membership is a plus for me.