General: Amazon UK's business blunder

Today an email was sent to all people registered with Amazon UK's referral program, the "Amazon Associates", which includes me. The associates have received notification of a change to Amazon UK's shipping costs that is valid immediately. Other customers won't notice until they try to make an order. This is the text of the email:

Our Super Saver Delivery service is changing. From 7th January 2014, all UK orders fulfilled by Amazon, with a total value of at least £10, will qualify for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Previously, the £10 threshold applied to all our product categories except Books, Music, Film & TV, Blu-ray, Software or PC & Video Games.

Simple enough. But what does it mean? I'll only apply it to DVD and Blu-ray purchases, since that's what's relevant to this blog. Until yesterday, if a DVD from Amazon UK cost £3.00, that was the exact amount that had to be paid for normal first class delivery. If it is bought today there are shipping costs of £1.49, making the complete price £4.49, a price increase of almost 50%.

To be precise, Amazon UK's shipping price for DVDs is now £1.19 per order plus £0.30 per item. If the total is more than £10 there are no shipping costs. This also leads to the ridiculous situation that any DVD with a price of £9 will cost more than a DVD with a price of £10.

This change makes a big difference to me, because I make a point of buying cheap DVDs, using the excellent Find-DVD web site. I very rarely buy a DVD that costs more than £4. Of course, by buying three or more DVDs at once I could go over the £10 limit, but in my case this is unlikely, because when Find-DVD tells me of a price drop it's often a limited time offer that I have to react to immediately.

Amazon UK is going it alone on this path. Almost all other UK mail order companies, such as Play, Zavvi and Wow, charge no shipping costs. For cheap DVDs the price difference between the cheapest offers is less than a pound. Effectively, Amazon UK is pricing itself out of the market. Unless Amazon UK retracts this monstrous blunder I shall buy a lot less from them in future and a lot more from their competitors.

Please click here for details on pricing.