Amazon Lowers Free Shipping Minimum Back to $25
Amazon.com has lowered its free shipping minimum back down to $25, according to reports. The change seems to have been made sometime last week. This is the second time this year that Amazon has lowered its free shipping minimum. In February, Amazon lowered the minimum to $35 from $49. Now that it’s down to $25, the minimum has returned to the level it sat at for more than a decade, before Amazon started raising it back in 2013.
Total Retail's Take: The shipping wars between Wal-Mart and Amazon continue! Amazon began bumping up the minimum purchase amount for free shipping in part to promote its Prime service (which costs $99 annually), which covers all shipping costs regardless of how much a customer is buying. Prime seemed like a much better deal for consumers when the minimum was $49, enabling Prime subscribers to place much smaller orders and get them delivered for free. However, Wal-Mart announced free two-day shipping starting in January, without a subscription, on orders of at least $35. Amazon took notice. The online retailer's first drop in the shipping minimum came just weeks later (from $49 to $35), and this latest price reduction suggests Amazon is now more concerned with competing with Wal-Mart than using the shipping minimum as a tool to boost Prime subscriptions.
