Amazon is not as cheap as the culture makes it out to be. Most of the time its actually a ripoff compared to other online shopping when you factor in promo codes or deals.

Walmart.com offers free shipping for orders over $45. Target.com offers free shipping also. And if you are ordering dog/cat food or some niche thing, ordering from Chewy.com or computer parts from Newegg, etc.. will net you better prices.

I'm not sure if its Amazon who's canvasing online forums or the myth just continues to get perpetuated by less than savvy shoppers. But Amazon is hardly cheap unless you really do need the 2-day shipping. Which most of the time, people don't mind waiting 3-5 days to save 10-20%.

Disagree, most of the time it's actually the exact same price as any online site. Go comparison shop RAM or harddrives on Amazon and Newegg. Newegg may have a larger selection but all of the major name-brand items are the same price on both sites. If some sponges are $1 cheaper on Walmart.com, who cares. I'm not going to waste 10 minutes comparison shopping for sponges; Amazon is free to make its margins there if it'd like.

Here's an example -- I found a Kingston SSD drive on Newegg that has a Limited Time Offer "See price in cart" gimmick discount. It's $1.10 more expensive on Amazon. I found another Newegg limited time discount Samsung SSD drive that's actually $0.76 cheaper on Amazon. You are not going to be saving 10-20% by waiting 3-5 days.

Juggling logins and shopping carts across a half dozen different websites isn't convenient. Coupon hunting isn't convenient. Amazon Prime is all about convenience and it delivers.

Actually, common household goods are going to amount to more than luxury items or electronics in terms of cost per year.

So your 10 minute comparison shopping for sponges is moot.

Google Shopping makes it easy to do comparison shopping. And yet Amazon doesn't want to be on Google Shopping -- I wonder why...

Juggling logins and shopping carts? Heh. Nice fallacious argument.

In theory, but they would have ended up with a lot of books they didn't need. My wife taught them that you only buy your textbooks after a few class periods - you never know if the professor will actually use the books they add to the course list and sometimes the list is just plain wrong. There were many instances where a book was on the list but never used - so my kids just never purchased those. You really rely on fast shipping as occasionally the professor will throw you a curve-ball and start referencing a book half-way through a semester.

I see, that makes sense. How much would the shipping cost if you paid for it directly?

Prime also has streaming video, music, etc. In my view, the free same day shipping is just a huge bonus.

Yes, if you want those, I can see how it would be worth it. For me, I wouldn't use them, so that's no benefit.