Ad-Supported Kindle?

[Kali Yuga]

No, crich70 just didn't read the bit about "free shipping & handling" on Kindles.

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by astra

I thought so too, but crich70 includes this "s/h" into kindle price if you don't have amazon premium. That's what I don't understand. Shipping and handling is free. You don't need So, I assume it must be something else.

Added - Oops!! this was too long, sorry about that, I was on-a-roll, haha!

Prime membership is more than free shipping. First orders from Prime members are shipping the day they are ordered. Standard orders from non-Prime members ship anywhere from a couple days to a week later. Basically non-Prime member orders ship once the Prime orders are filled.

Next Prime membership lets me get anything I order shipped overnight for $3.99 per item in the order being shipped over night. This is maybe the best feature of the deal. I have had times when I needed an item overnighted for various reasons. I have no problems paying even $20-$30 to get multiple items shipped overnight.

Last the best savings is I do not need to drive to CostCo or other larger stores to get things I need. It's at least a 50-mile round trip for me to get to a city with something beyond a crappy Walmart we have in town. Add to that the time savings and convenience and the $79/yr for Amazon Prime membership is a fantastic deal.

Only negative is if the items I want are more expensive through Amazon or are shipped by Amazon on behalf of a Marketplace seller. It happens now and then but when it does the price from Amazon is usually a bit less than from the Marketplace seller + shipping. And if there is a cheaper Marketplace seller Amazon does add a note right by the price on the item page that tells you there is a Marketplace seller who has the better deal. But as a Prime member I lose the fast processing if I go with a Marketplace seller who ships themselves and does not warehouse their inventory with Amazon to let Amazon do the shipping.

I really love the $3.99 overnight shipping for bigger ticket items. I know when I order anything I just either want or need I just pay that $4 and boom, it's there tomorrow often even if I order at 10PM the night before. Again that has saved me a few dozen times over the years. Every time that savings alone has been worth the cost of the membership.

I know on the surface it does seem like Prime is not a good deal. But once you add in the various factors such as travel to get items, at $4/gal for fuel it does not take long to realize a significant savings thanks to Prime. Also though it's the same day processing, including Sundays, of my orders so they go out that day 99.9999% of the time. Non-prime orders can take up to 7-days to ship. So I do actually get my orders within 2-days of place my order. Seriously its saves me $100s every year.

Heck in areas like Seattle and a couple other larger cities, people with Prime can now get same day delivery free. That includes the grocery items Amazon now offers. In fact they are experimenting with actual food and produce in those areas. If I could buy most all food & groceries I would save $20-$30/week in fuel costs alone. But right now for heavy items even with Prime ordering online is just too costly. I was looking at Blue Diamond Almond "milk" (it's really just water/juice but hey... ) and right now on Amazon it is price at $25/case of 12-quart containers. That's 6-half gallons and the price locally for a half-gallon is $2.30-$2.99/half-gallon but via Amazon it's about $4/half-gallon and that is not for the refrigerated version but for the shelf-stabilized product. I much prefer the in-store purchase in this case.

Anyway those are reasons why Amazon Prime has significant value and many people are not aware of the way it works. But for me it's a great deal saving me not only cost but often the much more important time-savings. I have even stopped my Costco membership as even tires are cheaper via Amazon I can then pay my mechanic to mount and balance them. That last thing was the final compelling reason for me to keep my Costco membership, at least every 4-6 years for new tires.

[astra]

Originally Posted by grumpy3b

Added - Oops!! this was too long, sorry about that, I was on-a-roll, haha!

Indeed too long and unnecessary.
We do not discuss pros/cons of Amazon Prime membership. I wanted to point out that crich70 price calculations are incorrect.

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by astra

Indeed too long and unnecessary.
We do not discuss pros/cons of Amazon Prime membership. I wanted to point out that crich70 price calculations are incorrect.

nice to see your opinion. but in mine, the value of a Prime membership was indeed being discussed over the course of several pages.

[astra]

Originally Posted by grumpy3b

nice to see your opinion. but in mine, the value of a Prime membership was indeed being discussed over the course of several pages.

Sorry. My bad
Still my point regarding the kindle price is valid. It doesn't have to include s/h.

[grumpy3b]

Originally Posted by astra

Sorry. My bad
Still my point regarding the kindle price is valid. It doesn't have to include s/h.

No sweat, it's the web and with lots happening in a thread who can keep up!! I think I might have missed the gist of crich70's comment myself.

And yeah a person absolutely doesn't need Prime to get free shipping, that was your point? yes? (haha, don't want to whiff on that one)

I also infer there are more than a few folks who don't use Amazon a lot and don't even know their policy on items either purchased from Amazon or from a Marketplace seller who takes advantage of Amazon warehousing and shipping service, get free shipping on any order over $25. That is a really nice deal.

While I haven't added a K3 since we really don't need any new readers right now, but a basically free K3 due to all the added savings part of this deal is really hard to say no sort of deal. Even more so if someone is like me and uses Amazon a lot already. Oddly we don't buy many books from Amazon.

[crich70]

Yep that's what I meant. And I must have missed something while getting ready to checkout then because it seemed to be a good bit over $140.00 (I forget the actual total) with shipping included. I opted for the free trial of Amazon Prime though so the shipping didn't add on. And I do live in the U.S. so I don't know what is up there. I do know it was over $139.00 as the subtotal though. I wasn't trying to shift the topic just state what my own experience was. Maybe I caught Amazon on a bad day or something. Anyway I do still have to wonder if saving a mere $25.00 is worth the potential irritation of having ads pop up in any case. And what good does such do? With T.V. I can see the need since stations have to have sponsors in order to keep their doors open and pay for the programming they show, but does anyone really need to have ads popping up on their Kindle while they're reading a book? I for one don't have my Kindle on the net all the time. Just when I'm downloading a book, and sometimes not even then since sites like Smashwords allow me to side load books. So what's the need for the ads?

Originally Posted by wyndslash

i think it's shipping/handling? but the kindle is eligible for free shipping if you ship it to the US. that's why i no longer paid s/h costs on mine, and it arrived pretty quickly too.

[caleb72]

Hmmm - this might explain exactly why Amazon never wanted us to be able to change the screensaver on the Kindle - advertising space. It was all an evil plan from the beginning.

However, I'm not sure how much such advertising would impact me. Firstly, I sideload everything at the moment so I'm never connected to the internet. Secondly, I jailbroke my Kindle so that I could set my own screen savers.

Besides all that though, I'm not even sure if this version will be shipped to Australia anytime soon.

Regards
Caleb

[fjtorres]

Another thought:
Kindle with special offers is a K3 with alternate firmware.
This does not need to change when K4 comes out.
It would allow them to rundown any K3 inventory after K4 comes out instead of firesale-ing it.

Beyond that I think Tubemonkey is seeing the deal as a lot of people will; as a free Kindle or a Kindle with rebates. Because a lot of those listed deals are in effect rebates.

This is actually a very interesting social experiment--how many people will spend $114 to get a useful device now and a chance to save at least that much over time. Not terribly different from a wholesale club membership or an entertainment coupon book purchase. Too bad we'll likely never know how many people will jump in to this "Kindle buyers club".

It's not the kind of deal I go for but I know a lot of people who will go for it; educated, price-conscious middle-class families. Hmm, pretty much the kind of people buying the new Buicks.


If nothing else, this highlights how Amazon is truly playing a different game than the other reader vendors; we're sure not going to see Sony or the other hardware-only vendors go after this demographic.

[L.J. Sellers]

I think it will sell, but they should have gone farther and dropped to $99. Ads as screen savers wouldn't bother me, but I wouldn't want them to appear while I was reading. Ick.

The NY Times has a detailed article today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/te...ines&emc=tha26

L.J.
The Sex Club is $.99.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by crich70

Yep that's what I meant. And I must have missed something while getting ready to checkout then because it seemed to be a good bit over $140.00 (I forget the actual total) with shipping included.

Maybe if you wanted overnight shipping? Almost any order that's $25+ ships free from Amazon (exceptions for some really heavy stuff or stuff that comes from external vendors). I currently have a trial of Amazon Prime, but prior to that I would just add stuff to my cart and order it once it hit $25 so I didn't have to pay shipping.

[astra]

Originally Posted by crich70

I wasn't trying to shift the topic just state what my own experience was.

I am sorry if I came across like that. I didn't mean it.
Only wanted to point out a mistake.

[John F]

If I was going to buy a Kindle, I wouldn't want the ads. I would expect the price to be much lower if I'm going to have to deal with ads, basically free. When I pick up an ereader, I want to read. Period.

As far as the "deals", I don't really expect them to last. I use to look at the Gold Box deals, but now never look at them.

The $10 for a $20 gift card looks nice, a great way to get around agency pricing.

[Worldwalker]

I have a big problem with the time factor. Amazon will provide some good deals now, but they have no obligation to keep providing them; on the other hand, you have the obligation (jailbreaking aside) to keep providing Amazon with an advertising platform in perpetuity. There's a disturbing level of asymmetry there.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I have a big problem with the time factor. Amazon will provide some good deals now, but they have no obligation to keep providing them; on the other hand, you have the obligation (jailbreaking aside) to keep providing Amazon with an advertising platform in perpetuity. There's a disturbing level of asymmetry there.

But I don't spend hours looking at my home page; nor do I gaze at my screensavers. Getting a free KSO is worth having ads on my home page.