Amazon policy seems to vary week to week & month to month. Something will say "free shipping" but you need a minimal purchase of $35, or $50, or $60 depending on the month & how Amazon feels like treating you at the time. And the total has to add up to that much before shipping. So half that $60 order may be just shipping charges, so they see the order is only $30.
Shipping is usually grossly overcharged anyway. Like $4.95 shipping for a $4 micro-SD card. The tiny thing is lighter than a post card & easily will fit in any standard mail envelope. That means shipping should be around 40 cents.
The seller can print "free shipping" on the product page, but charge for shipping anyway at checkout in hopes you don't notice it or think it's for something else.
Amazon Prime is a joke. Most of the people I know with Prime didn't get discounts or free shipping on the stuff they buy at Amazon. It seems their stuff they order there usually don't "qualify" for Amazon Prime discounts or free shipping.
It's also dangerous to buy at Amazon. The same shady sellers at ebay & craigslist also sell at Amazon, under a different name. Some of them even use a popular store name, but they're not really from that store. I consider Amazon the most risky place to shop online.
I've had plane tickets for Kenya ordered on my credit card within a day of placing an Amazon order. I've had someone order over $1,000 of stuff from Bed, Bath, & Beyond on my credit card the day after placing an Amazon order. Someone tried to order thousands of dollars of computer stuff from Tiger Direct on my credit card after I placed an order at Amazon.
That was a few years ago. All that horror stopped when I stopped using Amazon, & never had any problems again. My sister's primary email address seems to almost always get hacked & hijacked right after ordering at Amazon.
Even reputable companies & stores, sell their grade "B" products, factory rejects or defects, & returns at Amazon. That trackphone is most likely used, a return, or a factory reject.
You can't even buy a new hard drive from anyone at Amazon anymore. Through Amazon, they only ship out returns, used, or drives with defects. Setting those "new" drives up with diagnostic tools, most of them show they had 10,000-40,000 hours usage on them or are damaged/defective.
Or check the model number, & you see the company hasn't made the hard drive since 2007 or 2013. No, it's not old stock someone had in a back room. Any decent drive 2 or more years old has been sold, & was not sitting in the back gathering dust. They must be sold quickly because the older the model is, the less it would sell for. So nobody is gonna leave older un-used drives in back un-sold for a couple years unless there's something wrong with them. They all must go quick, or they devaluate over time & are worth less.
I see a lot of "New" WD, Hitachi, HGST, Toshiba, & Seagate drives under 500gb for sale. None of those manufacturers made mechanical drives under 500gb since 2013. That means all of those "new" drives for sale at Amazon are really used, returns, or defects. They may work good enough for your uses, or they may arrive DOA or die in a few months, but almost none of them are really new or good drives.
This is why there's so many conflicting reviews for the same drives or products there. WD is the best, most reliable drive you can buy. But the places with the most bad reviews about them are also the places that sell a lot of them used (claiming they're new), or selling returns. Without setting up diagnostics & doing some research, the average user doesn't know they just got a 3-9 year old hard drive, a return, or factory defect from Amazon.
One "new" drive I got from Amazon a few years ago, said it was a WD drive. It was clearly stamped & marked as a WD drive. It looked like a new drive, & almost like most WD drives. It was slow & noisy. Setting it up on diagnostics, showed it was a 7 year old Seagate drive with 26,000 hours on it, & several bad clusters. The Amazon seller actually printed up a WD drive label, & put it on a cheaper, older, worn out, used Seagate drive!
I got 2, USB hard drives from Amazon for Christmas gifts for someone a few years ago. I planned on filling them up with cool stuff for them. They both died after putting around 160gb in them. I crack them open to discover both of them had very old & worn out 2007 drives in them, but I paid for new ones.
Seagate is probably the worst popular brand to get, with an average life expectancy of only 10,000-20,000 hours. WD are 40,000-60,000 hours. But look at all the rave reviews Seagate gets. Wait, these are the same places notoriously noted for lots of fake reviews. The company, store that's selling them, or their friends wrote those reviews.
Many people get free products for writing reviews about them too. Many of them write praising reviews about bad products, just to encourage them to send them more cool free stuff to review. So the reviewer feels compelled to write a good review to keep nice free, sometimes expensive cool stuff coming in. Most of my bedding, high-end router, tablet, cereal, powdered milk, & 2 coffee makers I got for free just by reviewing them.
But unlike my fellow reviewers, they don't like me much, because if a product sucks, I will say so. So they don't send me much, or much cool stuff. Surely if I lied & praised everything, I'd be getting a free tablet, TV, monitor, radio, or lots of free food every month.
The best low-price phone service or pay as you go service currently comes from PureTalk,
https://www.puretalkusa.com/ They even have huge senior discounts if you're over 60.
Buy your own phone or one of theirs, or just get the SIM card to use the service with any non-verizon & non-sprint phone. Smart phones with 4" touch screens can be had for $50-$60, with occasional sales even lower. A 4" touch screen is fine for large stubby fingers.
If you have wifi, you can have phone over wifi with any device with google voice... even on a $29-$36 nice large 7" screen android tablet. A $50 or less battery backup system (UPS system) just for your modem & wireless router, insures your wifi stays on during a power failure. But in most cities, free wifi is usually just a few blocks a way.
Beware "signing up" for a year for phone service. The small print usually says you made a commitment contract for 2 years. Early cancellation is a $300-$500 fee, which they will withdraw from your bank or credit card without your knowledge or permission if you cancel early. Changing your service in any way, even to cut back service or minutes, is considered an automatic contract renewal, so you're automatically committed for another 2 years just by cutting back minutes, messaging, or getting a different phone.
Ordering a phone or anything else in the USA should take only 3-5 days to arrive at your door in the USA... except around a holiday, not over a week unless it had to be back-ordered or something.
Topic: Hooray, The Summer Flickr is here at last! (Read 14758 times)
