Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s)
Welcome to another edition of RCS:
Really Cool Stuff!
Being readers, it makes sense that we are big fans of Amazon.com. (Remember when they just sold books?)
Over the years Amazon has kept improving their amazing collection of books (both sold from their warehouses, and links to seemingly thousands upon thousands of booksellers around the world) and along the way added so many other items. It’s really the first place we look for just about anything we plan to purchase: books, appliances, food, diapers, computer hardware and software, music, videos… really, nearly everything.
About a year ago, Jen discovered Amazon Mom, where she found so many great deals on the things we need for our youngest ones (like diapers, wipes, pull-ups, and more). She then discovered that you could save even more over the already better-than-most-places Amazon price by setting up a Subscription to these items. Since we already purchase these anyway, it was a no-brainer. We subscribed!
As a bonus last year (not sure if they still do it), Subscriptions to these Amazon Mom store products you’d receive one free month of Amazon Prime service. If you haven’t heard of it—and you’re an Amazon user—then you’re missing out! (Plus, you’re either an infrequent user of Amazon, or you really don’t pay attention to anything on their site…) 😉
Well, Jen figured out a way to get that monthly service extended to the maximum 12-month offer. So, we had free shipping on every order for a year! That definitely spoils you!
Once that year expired, we debated whether or not to spend the $79/year to reinstate our Prime membership. We decided to let it slide, and save the $79.
It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to go back!
We love the free shipping option. It’s 2-day shipping, too, not just a super economy shipping option. Also, Prime members can get next-day shipping for $3.99/item. We purchased a fairly large, heavy item when we reinstated our Prime membership and it was shipped to us for free!
Neat! 🙂
Amazon almost sold me on purchasing an Amazon Prime membership and a Kindle when they announced this: the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.
At first glance, I really thought this was the idea I’ve had for a while: a library system with the catalog of (someone like) Amazon.com. Nearly every book, available for purchase or to borrow.
We love our library system. It’s dozens of libraries offering their catalog of books as one joint collection that we can easily browse and borrow—and all from our “home” library! So great! But even with the number of libraries involved, there are frequently books (or videos, audiobooks, and other media) that they do not have. (There are SO many books!)
So what if they had more resources? What if the pool of books and lenders was larger.
What if the books were delivered electronically!??!
Kinda like Netflix meets Amazon, for books.
I really thought they had it, but the fine print convinced me to hold off on my Kindle purchase for a while longer. Unfortunately, for your $79/year you can only borrow one book per month. Bummer. The way I read, I’m usually reading about 10 books in any given month!
That slight disappointment aside, we can still wholeheartedly recommend Amazon Prime membership. We love it! Jen loves the speedy FREE shipping. I’ve been using the free streaming video service. They have quite a large selection of streaming video that is free for Prime members. (We even found Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood! You might find it odd to place an exclamation point at the end of that previous sentence, but we’ve been looking for that everywhere for a long time, and it’s harder to find than you’d think!!)
So if you’ve really not looked into it, we do highly recommend that you do.
Full disclosure: Because I am an Amazon Associate, links to Amazon (with my user ID in them) will generate a commission for me, if you make a purchase at Amazon after clicking the link. (That’s true of any link on this site to Amazon.) BUT, Amazon is in no (other) way compensating me for this glowing review of their awesome Prime membership program. 🙂