Frugal

I've posted this elsewhere in similar comments. The value of Amazon has shifted from "buy anything" to "buy something that's annoying to find".

Unfortunately local brick and mortar stores are to blame as well.

Say you're looking for a 3-ring binder. You likely know where to go for it at your local Walmart. You aren't tied to a particular brand (or you are) and it doesn't take you long to find it.

But now let's say you're looking for something small like car wax. You're not sure what you need. You'd think it's in the care care section but you're not seeing it. The Walmart app says it's in aisle K44 and your in, what the hell? Z4? Map does you no good. And when you get there there are so many small products that you can't find it.

Amazon has done studies and the majority of shipped products weigh less than something like 5 pounds. People find Amazon search better than the in-store experience.

Walmart, and most B&M stores unfortunately have no incentive to change because they want you to browse. For Walmart, it's basket size (items per cart) whereas Amazon is the speed of checkout.

if you’re forced to make your order $35 to get free shipping, you’re likely buying stuff you don’t want/need just to get to that amount.

Nnnnooo. I'm pretty sure I need toilet paper. My order was $33 for the main stuff I needed to buy and then I threw in toilet paper to push the order over $35. I needed that anyway.

Also, you could ask your spouse if anything else is needed around the house. Also, also, you could just wait until you need something else and batch the orders into 1 order over $35, instead of ordering a bunch of single $5 items.

If you really need something urgently, then it's perfectly fine to pay for shipping. But this probably doesn't happen very often.

It's really not that hard. You should try it. Cancel Prime for 3 months. If you hate living without it after 3 months, then you can resubscribe. There's no penalties.