Friday, August 16, 2013

Amazon Subscribe And Save, My New Addiction

Amazon has this fabulous program called "Subscribe & Save" where you sign up to receive an item every 1-6 months (your choice on how often when you sign up). If you have several subscribe and save items they will all arrive at the same time, and you get to pick the day of the month. The benefit is that Amazon lowers the price 5% when you sign an item up for subscribe and save. BUT the real savings come when you have 5 or more items arriving in the same month-as soon as you sign up for the 5th item, you get 20% off the entire order! Once you have this set up, it easily takes care of itself as long as you have all 5 items on the same schedule (ex: every 3 months). We order so many things this way, that we easily reach the 5 item minimum each month and the savings are better than I was able to do with grocery store sales and coupons combined!

A few side notes on this program:

1. You can change your order at anytime before it ships. Just go to "Your Subscribe & Save Items" and then choose to change the quantity, scheduled month or cancel the order.

2. If the price of an item goes up after you've added it but before it ships, you will pay the price that you originally sign up for. AND if the price goes down after you sign up for it, you will pay the lower price! Amazon has a guarantee, you pay the lowest price from the time you sign up to the time it ships.

3. You are not charged for the subscribe and save items until they ship out. This helps you determine when you want your order to arrive each month.

4. Do go back in each month just before the entire order ships (you'll get a reminder email from amazon that you have only a few days left) and check the prices. You'll only get to see the current price, but if you didn't recently add it for a lower price you may want to skip that month and wait for a lower price.

It's a lot of information at first, but it is so unbelievably easy once you have it all set up! It saves me time, money and trips to the store with the kids in tow which is wonderful!