Never again run out of household items
Amazon Subscribe and Save was mentioned by the Cybernet News website and it sounded that interesting that I decided to take a look at it myself and write a small review of it.
The service offers a way to subscribe to household items and select a delivery schedule for the selected items so that you receive them on that schedule every time without having to order them again first. Shipping is free of charge and buyers do get a 15% discount on purchased items right now.
Even better is that you can cancel the service at anytime so that the sending is stopped. While it should be natural that you can cancel your subscription, it is good to know that you do not need to wait a certain time before you can do so.
It is a bit sad that this service is currently only available on Amazon.com and the United States as a consequence, but it could happen that the localized Amazon portals in other countries will follow the lead if the service turns out to be a success.
What I like is that you do get a 15% discount and that the items are shipped freely to your location. This could be especially useful for household items that you use on a daily basis or regularly, and that you know how much you use in a given time period. Amazon offers five main categories that hold items, those are: Baby & Child Care, Food & Snacks, Health & Wellness, Household Supplies and Personal Care & Beauty.
The benefit of using a service like this is that you do not have to think about buying an item when you are running out of supplies. I'm not saying that you will never again run into a situation where you are running out of toilet paper or coffee because you still have to select a schedule for the delivery, and if the delivery is late, you could still run out. But then again, there is still the option to get supplies locally for the time being.
The danger that I see is that it could happen that you get either too many items delivered or to few. It probably will take some time until you set the right schedule for the household items. Most items seem to come in packages of two or more which explains the pricing. It did look a bit high on first glance but considering that you do sometimes get 2,3 or even 4 items for that price it sounds reasonable again.
The best option here is probably to monitor use of items in a given month or maybe even two so that you know how much is being used before you start to order these items regularly on Amazon.
Kris I suppose this could be dealt with by contacting the Amazon support. It is basically the same thing with subscriptions for example. The contract does not say either what is happening if the subscriber dies suddenly. Relatives or authorities have to take care of that then.
The Amazon site doesn’t say what happens in the event that the recipient becomes deceased and the spouse doesn’t have the account password.. I’m sure that the recipient’s spouse wouldn’t want to keep receiving twice the groceries s/he needs.