How to subscribe to toilet paper

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toilet-paper.jpgI recently turned on a friend to Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program and his reaction was so positive that I thought I’d share it with the rest of the world.

Unknown to a lot of people, Amazon sells groceries. Obviously nothing perishable or frozen, but pretty much everything that’s not kept along the four walls of a supermarket. Because they don’t have the sort of overhead a supermarket does, they offer very good, Costco-like prices. Shopping online keeps your meatspace trips to the supermarket short and focused so you don’t succumb to cluttering impulse buys. This is pretty awesome in itself, but it gets better.

For a subset of products—a very large subset from what I can tell—Amazon offers a subscription service. If you subscribe to a product you get an additional 15% off over the already low price. So what’s a subscription? Exactly what it sounds like.

To illustrate I’ll let you know that I’m subscribed to coffee. I drink Café Altura House Blend and I ordered three 12 oz. cans at the subscription rate of $15.99—that’s $5.33 per can. I go through about a can a month, so I set my subscription to recur every three months and then forget it. Automagically from now on, just as I’m nearing the end of my coffee supply the UPS man invariably knocks at the door with a box of coffee. It’s a wonderful thing.

My subscriptions include dishwashing detergent, deodorant, fabric softener, toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, razors, toilet paper, and much more. It’s awesome. I’m never without and I never have to remember to get something.

Some things are available from Amazon but not as a subscription. For example, they offer subscriptions to several Quaker brand granola bars, but not to my favorite: peanut butter chocolate chip. Those items you can add to an Amazon shopping list. These are a bit different than a wish list because the items don’t go away once you purchase them. So, once a week I go through the list and hit the “Buy with 1-Click” button on the items I’m low on.

Now, I know what you’re saying, What about shipping costs? That’s the even more incredible part. For just $79 a year you can subscribe to Amazon Prime and get free two-day shipping on anything you order. So that’s it. Pay $79 once and don’t worry about how much you use the service. It will more than pay for itself with just a few shipments. And believe me, once you get started, you’ll never want to go to the grocery store again.

Mar 6, 2008 | Comment | Tags: , ,

Great deal: Buy a 32 GB iPod Touch from Amazon and get a free iPod Shuffle for the gym or to give away.

France’s high court ruled today that Amazon must stop offering free delivery of books. “Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France.” Not charging for delivery meant that Amazon was offering a discount above the allowed 5 percent. If you’re unclear how this is terrible for consumers and an insane public policy, you can read about price controls here.

Amazon Kindle a private spectrum commons?

I’m updating my spectrum commons paper and came across the suggestion I’ve made that you could have a spectrum commons emerge in a regime of property rights in spectrum. The most obvious way this could happen is if a device manufacturer bought a band of spectrum and let anyone use it so long as they used a device made by the manufacturer. It’s sort of the reverse of the more common approach where you’re given a device for free and you pay for using the spectrum. The key thing about a private commons is that the owner of the spectrum manages its use, what technology is employed, how, etc.

So this is all to say that I think there’s a great new example of this private commons principle at work: the Amazon Kindle. Buy it for the one-time price of $400 and you get anytime anywhere access to its EVDO data network. Of course, there’s always this:

Amazon reserves the right to discontinue wireless connectivity at any time or to otherwise change the terms for wireless connectivity at any time, including, but not limited to, (a) limiting the number and size of data files that may be transferred using wireless connectivity and (b) changing the amount and terms applicable for wireless connectivity charges.

Dec 4, 2007 | Comment | Tags: , ,

In the current edition of This Week in Tech, Jerry Pournelle makes a prediction that I’ve made here several times before. Namely that the iPhone is perfectly positioned to be the book reader that finally catches on. Also noted was Amazon’s Kindle book reader, of which I hadn’t previously heard. (Price at $400? Ha!)

Amazon affiliate etiquette

Over at Unclutterer we recently ran a post announcing the impending release of Leopard and how you could get it the cheapest at Amazon. Of course, we get a cut of every sale we generate from our site. I always assume it’s universal knowledge that when blogs link to Amazon, they’re getting an affiliate commission of sales. But invariably there’s a comment chastising us for not being explicit about it. In this case it was from someone named Al who said, “It’s also probably polite to disclose that you’ll be getting a cut from any sales through your ‘pre-order’ link, too.”

I was heartened to see that just about every other commenter came to our defense. That said, however, I notice that others, such as John Gruber in his post about Leopard, make it a point to disclose their cut. So, I’m trying to understand the etiquette here.

Why exactly is it polite to make the disclosure? It’s not as if a reader will pay more because they use our link. They pay exactly the list price; it’s Amazon who pays us the commission. We’re providing a service by highlighting a good deal, and if someone buys, then it obviously was valuable information to them. So what’s the concern?

Oct 19, 2007 | 3 Comments | Tags: , ,

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