I'd file a report to the FTC or whatever your governing body is for deceptive billing practices, provide all the proof possible then immediately cancel any and all Amazon accounts and never look back.
Unfortunately, they are still the most affordable place to shop for many of the things I need. Our local walmart has the same treats for $1 more "on sale" and our local petsmart is $2 more. 💀
Nuts, seeds, and dried fruit are significantly more if I get them locally.
I mean, the top says “up to”, which technically means Amazon doesn’t even need to apply a discount. I would be more concerned if it said “save 25% today” and then dropped to “save 5% today.”
I noticed a few months ago that if I would put things in my cart and not order them right away, the price in my cart would jump a lot without notice, but the price on the page would stay the same. Like, I added something that was $30 to my cart, 2 days later it was $50 in my cart but the store page still showed the price as $30 and there wasnt the usual "an item in your cart changed price" message. I had to delete it from my cart and re-add it to get the price to drop. There was no deal, it wasn't subscribe and save, nothing. This happened multiple times. I also had prime and couldn't tell you the last time my shipping took less than 2 weeks, and I live near a city. I've since canceled prime and stopped ordering from Amazon unless I can't find what I need elsewhere. Want to scam me, fuck you.
I'm not surprised to hear of strange happenings like that.
There were a few months several years ago were I'd randomly have like THOUSANDS of a single item added to my cart. Stuff I'd never order, never wish list, and never searched for.
Sometimes my shopping cart would have like $15,000 worth of stuff in it.
They couldn't explain it, and the mystery was never solved.
I think you need to add a certain number of shipments for it to reach the higher bands of savings. It looks slightly different in the UK, but probably the same mechanism.
It was pretty handy for diapers and such when babies were born. (But then you read about how they killed diaper companies to achieve it 😑)
I think you need to add a certain number of shipments for it to reach the higher bands of savings.
Yes, they do things in tiers.
However, when I look at all the items available under "subscribe & save", there are only three tiers that I see: 5%, 10%, and 15% with most being 5% / 15%.
In the pet food section specifically, the discounts range from 0% to 10% with most being 5%.
Why would Amazon even tell me that I'll "save 25% today" on the item if that's never even achievable?🫠
You have to have 5 items in a subscribe and save delivery to get the maximum discount listed on each of the items.
If you put your 25% item into a delivery next month and also subscribe to 4 other items in the same monthly delivery that show “up to 10%” discount, you’ll get 25% off the first item and 10% off the other 4.
Remove one item so you only have 4 items in the delivery and you’ll probably (I’m simplifying) get the lowest mentioned discount on each item rather than the highest - e.g. 5% instead of 25%.
Like others have said, they don't guarantee two days shipping however. Their thing now is if you spend $x per order or pay more, even if you have prime, they'll overnight it (location dependent).
I live a 20 minute drive from several large amazon warehouses and one of their largest air hubs. When two day shipping was guaranteed, we'd often get most items the next day since it goes out almost immediately and we're very close. We noticed the last few years most deliveries take two days at least with many being delayed to 3 or 4.
Finding prime less and less of a value I cancelled at the beginning of this month as I was set to auto renew. We've ordered two things since. Both items we have received in the past in 1-2 days. Now they take 5-7 days for free shopping, which is fine mind you, but it shows me that rather than shipping the item they are intentionally holding back the order from being picked from the warehouse to create the delay.
Rather than prime adding value, it's simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
Nothing else on prime is worthwhile. Thursday night football sucks and when I do want to watch it if my team is playing I'll just pirate it. Same goes for anything on prime like The Boys will just get added to the Plex server.
Rather than prime adding value, it's simply providing the regular service, while they intentionally give non-prime members a manufactured worse service to entice them to pay.
I mean, I suppose you could say something like that. But the problem is that nearly every other non-Amazon online retailer has ungodly slow shipping and you often have to pay an extra fee for shipping on top of it.
I know Amazon is a horrifyingly large mega corp, but there isn't a decent alternative. They actually do provide a good service for the pricetag. (Unless we're talking their digital services which I've never used and are trash.)
Maybe I'm just lucky because I don't live in a rural area. So my packages actually come relatively quickly. Other retailers make me wait over a week and pay for the privilege to wait forever.
If you order something without an active prime membership, it shows the long delivery time, like a week or whatever.
If you then subscribe to prime before it ships, like the next day or something, it will update your shipping to the prime 2 day window. And will be delivered within that window.
It’s all entirely artificial. I’ve done this several times and it always works that way (small order of needed items, then realize I have the free trial again so sign up and order whatever else I’ve been needing and putting off). Fuck Amazon.
I can say that personally here in Spain, of course it's a completely different place, the overnight 1 day shipping still works. Just saying that the enshittification is not global at least on shipping. Of course all depends where you are located and each product if they are prime or not, which hour you order it, etc... But the day they say is the day your receive it except some very very rare exceptions when there is a delay.
I don’t think two day shipping is an advertised feature anymore. Depending on where you live, I’ve seen ordering directly from manufacturers is the same or quicker than Amazon most of the time.