Baby Loves Amazon
Every once in a while, the Crumb Saver household shares a snapshot of a recent crumb-saving (or wasting!) incident on A Random Crumb. This column is proof that, hey, we’re people just like you! Prepare for a little randomness, a little embarrassment, but hopefully mostly encouragement.  You’ll get a sneak peek at what we actually do to save (or NOT save) in real life, which is motivation to us to stay crumby (in the good way) and (hopefully) inspiration for you join in the crumb-saving action too!

After the tragic story in our last post, we thought it would be nice to brighten things up a bit with a couple of recent experiences where things actually went our way and we were able to (unexpectedly!) save a few crumbs.

Bibs for Baby for Less

Lil’ Miss Crumb Saver is growing up fast and we’ve started her on solid foods recently. Due to that fact, it was time to get her some nice bibs. Having been around plenty of babies lately and having seen various bibs in action, we decided that we wanted these BabyBjorn bibs.

In researching at some local brick and mortar retailers, we found that these particular bibs were going for around $11 each. On Amazon (at the time of this writing), the bibs were going for around $15.39 after tax for a 2-pack. The prices vary depending on the color combo, but we were happy for whatever unisex colors were cheapest (in case we need these for a baby boy someday). However, Amazon also had some “open box” discounted product for just $12.67 after tax for the same 2-pack. Needless to say, we didn’t care about it being open-boxed, so we used our Swagbucks-earned Amazon gift cards to buy them.

We also made sure to select the “No-Rush” shipping option where we get a $1 credit for use in the Amazon Music, TV, App stores, and the Kindle bookstore. You see, in my experience even with no-rush shipping, the product frequently still arrives around the same time as when I use the free prime 2-day shipping. Almost never does it take the full 7-days that no-rush shipping guarantees. However, that was not the case for this bib purchase.

A few days after the guaranteed delivery date (it had been over a week by this point), the order still hadn’t come in and the tracking number didn’t show any helpful information. So I called Amazon customer service about this and not only did they get in contact with USPS to inquire about my specific shipment (there was severe weather that delayed things), Amazon offered me a $10 promotional credit toward a future purchase!

That’s right, our original purchase of $12.67 was now effectively $2.67. Or put another way, we got bibs worth $11 each for only $1.34! If you want to factor in the $1 No-Rush Shipping digital media credit, it pushes the cost down to a mere $.84 per bib!  They even called me a few days later to confirm that I received the shipment.

Here’s Baby Crumb Saver savoring her avocado with her new bib.  It is even more delicious knowing how much money her parents saved when they bought it!

Refund Without A Return

On a separate occasion on Amazon, I purchased a foam filter for a vacuum cleaner for $4.35 after tax. I likewise selected the No-Rush shipping option for the $1 bonus credit. However, a few hours later I realized that I didn’t need it and went to cancel the order. It was too late by then as the order was already processed for shipping.

When I received the order a few days later, I went back onto Amazon to try to process a return since I didn’t need it. After going through the whole process, a message popped up stating that they would process the refund immediately and I did not even need to return the filter! Apparently the product was so cheap that it wasn’t worth the cost of return shipping and restocking.

So now, even though I have a filter that I don’t need, I got all of my money back plus, to my knowledge they did not take back the $1 No-Rush shipping credit. I suppose that Amazon has safeguards in place to prevent users from abusing such consumer-friendly policies, but it certainly gives me a great deal of confidence in shopping with them.

Amazon Lessons

So since we’re on the subject of Amazon, let me remind you of a previous post we’ve written on 7 ways to save on Amazon. Some of those tips were utilized in these stories, but there are a couple others that I’ve learned through these experiences:

  • Amazon takes their delivery times seriously, so it’s worth it to call them if something is late to see if they’ll give some remuneration.
  • I already knew that Amazon covers return shipping and restocking fees for products fulfilled by them (meaning it doesn’t work with 3rd party sellers who ship their own products), but for returns of product that isn’t worth the cost of shipment, Amazon will issue a refund even without the product being sent back. So if we don’t need something we bought from Amazon, rather than just keeping it assuming it’s sunk cost, it’s always worth it to try to process a refund.

While the savings from these two anecdotes don’t come close to the huge unexpected expenses in our previous installment of A Random Crumb, it still feels nice to get a few crumbs back in our pockets. So what other tips and tricks have you discovered in your Amazon shopping?