We’ve been using Amazon Prime for nearly a year now, and still absolutely loving it. For me, as someone who really can’t be arsed to go to the shops every time we need a box of fish food or something, it’s been an absolute godsend. For about £70 a year you get unlimited free next day delivery on eligible items. That means we can often place an order in the evening and it can arrive the next morning. Membership also includes access to Amazon Instant Video, which is like a shittier version of Netflix.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing about it is that not only does Amazon obviously stock loads of baby stuff, but they also have a few pretty useful services which are tailored specifically to parents. The first and most basic is an “Add to Baby Wishlist” button, which appears below the normal “Add to Wishlist Button” when you activate it. We’ve used this loads as it turns out when you’re expecting a baby you need to buy more equipment than if embarking on a winter ascension of Mount Everest. So if you can’t afford it yet, or you’re undecided exactly what you want, you can just shove it on the wishlist for later.
You can also set up a profile for each member of your household with their age etc. and this will send you tailored product recommendations. I haven’t done this yet, but may use it once the little cub has been born. These days it’s hard to avoid having advertising rammed down your throat, so if it’s going to happen anyway it might as well be relevant.
Prime members also benefit from a 20% discount on nappies when you sign up to Subscribe and Save. This means you get a regular order delivered to your house for a really good price. All the major brands are available and I think the price works our even cheaper than supermarkets. 10-11p per nappy for Pampers.
So far we’ve bought the vast majority of our baby stuff from Amazon and it’s great knowing you’re getting the best deal you can, you can compare reviews, and instead of traipsing through shops you can do it all on your phone while taking a shit at work.
I do have one gripe though. It started off as a minor thing, but is steadily getting more annoying. Even though I’ve asked them repeatedly, they still consistently fail to deliver things to my allocated ‘safe place’ when I’m not in, opting instead to leave it with my neighbours. Which doesn’t bother me much really, but after having several items a day for weeks on end I think my neighbours were starting to get a bit annoyed.
Lovely. With this in mind I decided to write a strongly worded e-mail:
Amazon gave us 2 months extra Prime membership by way of an apology. However, despite the above and subsequent e-mails, their delivery drivers still continue to deliver things to our neighbours. Sorry, guys.
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