live from sublurbia

Shopping online can be a huge time saver for me. If I buy in bulk enough, I can meet or beat local retail big-box store prices, and save myself the extra trips to the store because I forgot and ran out. Or at least minimize; if I’m out of wipes I can’t wait a week for “Free” Super Saver shipping to get me an item. And here in sublurbia, your choices are big-box stores, warehouse stores, or boutiques, each with their own problems.

I use online shopping mostly for purchases I can delay, do in bulk, or return easily if it’s not quite what I want (this is often the case with clothes or shoes when I’m limited by a brick-and-mortar store’s options). Disposable wipes, for example. While most of my daycares never had a problem with cloth diapers, they drew the line at cloth wipes. I tried CostCo and BJs a while, but I never could time my trips right to get the wipes. Or they’d change the brands they were offering, dropping my favored eco-friendly non-scented brand.

I ended up signing up with Amazon.com to buy my wipes in bulk with their (then new) subscribe and save program. Sign up, get a shipment boxed to qualify for both the discount and free shipping, then suspend my subscription until I was ready for more.

The last time I was ready for an order of wipes, I couldn’t find the items as part of their S&S program. I decided to place an order for the next cheapest set of wipes, but at the last moment hit a link that ended up taking me to my old subscribe and save list. Even though new users couldn’t add these items to the S&S program, I could still buy the items at my S&S discount.

I experimented with a few other items, and found if I clicked quickly enough, I could sign up for S&S items, cancel the first shipment, and then “suspend” my subscription. I could hang on to the price, free shipping, and discounts, buying the item(s) whenever I needed them. Or at least until Amazon is hurting enough to suspend their “free” shipping program and the Subscribe and Save program.