Went to order some cat treats and saw that I could get a 25% discount when I sign up for Amazon’s subscribe feature.
So I clicked on it and the total in my cart didn’t reflect a 25% discount.
When I went back to see what was up, I noticed that the discount went down to 5%.
Unclicking the box will show a 25% discount again…
UPDATE: A commenter mentioned that the text reads “up to 25%”, so I went to a different item, added it to my cart and got:
But clicking on that checkbox also brings it back down to 5%.
I think you need to add a certain number of shipments for it to reach the higher bands of savings. It looks slightly different in the UK, but probably the same mechanism.
It was pretty handy for diapers and such when babies were born. (But then you read about how they killed diaper companies to achieve it 😑)
Yes, they do things in tiers.
However, when I look at all the items available under “subscribe & save”, there are only three tiers that I see: 5%, 10%, and 15% with most being 5% / 15%.
In the pet food section specifically, the discounts range from 0% to 10% with most being 5%.
Why would Amazon even tell me that I’ll “save 25% today” on the item if that’s never even achievable?🫠
You have to have 5 items in a subscribe and save delivery to get the maximum discount listed on each of the items.
If you put your 25% item into a delivery next month and also subscribe to 4 other items in the same monthly delivery that show “up to 10%” discount, you’ll get 25% off the first item and 10% off the other 4.
Remove one item so you only have 4 items in the delivery and you’ll probably (I’m simplifying) get the lowest mentioned discount on each item rather than the highest - e.g. 5% instead of 25%.
What about the item that says “SAVE 25% TODAY”, rather than “up to 25%”? That one also gave me 5% after I clicked on it.
I’ve used subscribe and save in the past, so I know how the program works. But I can’t recall this wording/behaviour before, and it was always clear what discount I would get before clicking on subscribe.
Edit: Ok, the above strangeness only happens when the item is in the shopping cart. When I view the item’s full page listing, it says “subscribe and save 5% now and up to 10% on repeat deliveries”. So where the “25% now and 15% later” thing comes from, I have no clue. But it almost tricked me.
Yeah it’s tricksy. Probably relies on people forgetting to update their subscriptions.
LOL. Probably.
Better than Walmart’s subscription service, though. They don’t even warn you that something is about to ship, they just ship!
Amazon at least asks you to review the next shipment (which they tend to ship WAAAAY too early, 100% of the time).