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As a shopping writer for Lifehacker, I’ve learned many tricks over the years that have helped me become a savvy Amazon shopper. You do not need to be a Prime member for most of these, but becoming one will make your Amazon experience better. And yes, it’s worth it—we’ve done the math.
If your shipping is delayed, call Amazon to get free money
If your Amazon delivery is late, you can contact customer service and may be eligible for a refund or credit, often proportional to the product’s value—especially if the order had a guaranteed delivery date. The status of an order on Amazon changes during different stages of the shipment. If Amazon said a delivery was going to arrive at a specific date and later sent a message that it’s delayed, get a hold of someone from customer service (this is the quickest way to get someone from Amazon on the phone). Tell them your order is late and you want to be compensated because you needed the delivery on time for whatever reason you can come up with. Customer service is very likely to offer you an Amazon credit. I’ve personally received a $20 credit when a laptop was arriving late.
Knowing an item’s price history tells you if you’re better off waiting a bit; it also ensures you’re getting the best price. There are many tracking tools, but if I were to recommend one for Amazon, it’s Keepa. Keepa automatically displays the price history under the image of the product. It also lets you track specific products and sends you notifications when they go below a specific price that you set. You can download the extension for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, and Safari.
Get the most accurate product reviews from Amazon
Amazon sometimes combines reviews from multiple versions of a particular product. For example, take the review section of this Apple Watch Series 11 GPS. At the time of this writing, it says there are 1,049 customer reviews. But (and here’s the hack): If you click on the “All Variants” dropdown and check the specific variant you’re looking at, you’ll see there are only 194 matching customer reviews (at the time of writing) for this particular model and version. The rest of the reviews are for other sizes, colors, storage size, cellular vs GPS versions, etc.
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Ask Rufus, Amazon’s AI, questions about products
Last year, Amazon released Rufus AI, which scraped the internet, each Amazon product page, and even product manuals to gather information on each product, no matter how specific the question. It’s much faster and sometime more accurate than looking for the answer by reading the manual or the product page. You can find this search bar right on top of the review section or anywhere you see the “Ask Rufus” banner.
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Get credits from Amazon when you don’t need rushed delivery
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
While having two-day delivery is great, it’s not always necessary. Sometimes, Amazon will offer you “digital rewards” (essentially free money you can use on Amazon purchases, among other things) to have the shipping not be “Prime” or two days. While the rewards might be small—usually under $2—they quickly add up. Before you know it, you can have a $20 Amazon credit waiting for you on your next checkout payment.
You can game Amazon’s “subscribe & save” system
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Amazon offers a “subscribe & save” program, which incentivizes you to buy the same product periodically by giving you discounts going up to 15%. It’s a neat tool if you, say, buy your protein powder through Amazon and you know you’ll need it at least every six months. It’s less obvious, though, that you can get that $80 protein powder with the 15% subscribe discount and then cancel the subscription right away, saving you 15% pain-free.
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Take advantage of Amazon’s free payment plans
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Your money makes more interest sitting in a savings account (ideally a high-yield one) than giving it away to Amazon. So when they offer you a free payment plan with 0% APR and no strings attached, it’s a no-brainer. Not all products will have this option, but most big ticket items being shipped directly from Amazon do. Be careful with this, however: It’s all too easy to spend more than you should. Which is why our shopping motto is “Don’t buy anything you weren’t going to buy anyway.“
If you’re a young adult or a student, you can get Prime benefits for less
If you’re between the ages of 18 and 24 or are currently a student, you get all of the Prime benefits at half the price. This is huge for anyone who is at least one of those two categories.
Use Amazon Family instead of having two separate accounts
I still know many people who share their Amazon accounts, like family, spouses, or roommates. This makes it very hard to keep Secret Santa exciting. People who live in the same household can have a single Prime membership payment, though, while keeping their own accounts private by using Amazon Family. This means your cart won’t be full of other people’s orders, notifications will only be for your orders, your order history will be showing only your products, etc.
Get free e-books on your Kindle every month
It’s not easy to fill a Kindle, but I’m well on my way, thanks to the many free e-books I’ve gotten through Amazon. If you’re a Prime Member, you get two to three free e-books every month through a program called Amazon’s First Reads, a curated list of new books handpicked by editors.
