You've probably heard of Amazon's new AmazonPrime service.
The way this works is that you pay a yearly $79 fee and then all
your order get two-day shipping for free or
overnight shipping for $3.99/item.
I place about 5-10 Amazon orders a year, all priced above $25 to get Super Saver shipping. Most of my orders arrive within 3 days. So, basically, I'd be paying for two things:
- The privilege of getting my orders a day earlier.
- The ability to make smaller orders and still have them ship for free.
Of course, the calculation would change dramatically if Amazon discontinued Super Saver. Typical item shipping costs without Super Saver are about $5.00 for a $25 order. I would definitely be willing to pay an extra $3/order for 2-day shipping. I wonder if that's part of Amazon's plan.
Of course, if you're ordering *a lot* of stuff from Amazon, say you're a reseller even of Amazon-sourced goodies, and you're getting maybe a delivery from Amazon per day, then $79 a year is cheap!
Barnes and Noble offers the same policy--free shipping on orders of $25 or more--as Amazon. Unless Super Saver is a loss leader that BN itself is just dying to ditch as soon as Amazon does, I don't see how Amazon can get away with eliminating it without simply driving lots of customers to BN.