Comparing Prime and Shipping Pass

I have both Amazon Prime and Walmart Shipping Pass.   I wanted to offer a comparison between the two.  Prime has been around for years now, while Shipping Pass is a new comer to the field.

The main differences are the price, and the perks.

PRIME	SHIPPING PASS
Cost $99	Cost $49
Free, 2 day shipping	Free, 2 day shipping
A myriad of perks	No other perks

Amazon Prime costs twice as much as Walmart Shipping Pass, but if you use the other benefits, like Prime Video, Music and Photos among a LONG list of others, the cost seems reasonable, or at least worth it.

I have Walmart Shipping pass because I like buying groceries online, and right now they are the least expensive option to do this (you can buy other things online at Walmart but primarily I only buy groceries.   You can get free shipping without Shipping Pass by purchasing $50 worth of items at a time – which is what I had been doing, but I find that I like the freedom to buy that single can of soup, or tube of toothpaste when I see I’m running out – and not have to wait until I need a bunch of other items too.   The $49 fee has been worth it for me, I have had to physically visit a store less.   I’m down to going once a month instead of every week.

The downside to Walmart is that you can’t buy certain items online.   Soda pop is one of the big ones.   If you want to buy pop, it’s through a 3rd party vendor and it will cost you an arm and a leg, so much as not to be practical.   There are other items I have wanted to buy but the online price is jacked so high as to make it a joke.  No- I don’t want to pay $91 for a two pack of Nutella.   It’s good, but not that good!   You also can’t purchase perishable goods.  So for instance I like Sunbelt Granola bars, and those are considered perishable so you can’t buy them online.

With Amazon, anything on the website available for shipping.  But groceries on Amazon are overpriced.    You can sign up to have them delivered on a schedule and get a price break, and you can bundle things in a prime pantry box…. but Walmart is much cheaper.   In many cases my local grocery store is cheaper in the long run.    But Amazon beats Walmart for variety and amounts of products for sale.

Shipping speeds are supposed to be 2 day.   This is mostly true.   If you order on a Saturday though you won’t get it Monday, you will get it Tuesday or even Wednesday if you order too late in the day.    Sometimes they are late by a day.  Amazon seems to be doing this more now than they used to at the start.   I’ve had late shipments from both companies though.

Amazon ships most of their items via UPS, Walmart uses primarily FedEx.

The other thing to note is packaging.  Amazon is the winner here, hands down.   Walmart doesn’t pack things in the correct type of packaging, and many times items are broken open or chips are crushed in transit.    They recently shipped me a box of crackers, but they sent it in a bubble wrapped envelope instead of a box.    So half my crackers were crushed.   I recently had to buy furnace filters, and they were cheaper on Walmart for the same brand, but I opted to buy them on Amazon, because I feared they would arrive bent or crushed if I bought them from Walmart.   Amazon packs things well, and in some cases much more well than they needed.   They have to be losing money on packaging!

I will continue to keep both my Prime and my Shipping Pass for now, because each company has their niche of things I like to buy.  But Walmart should watch out, if Amazon ever gets competitive with groceries, I will likely drop my Shipping Pass membership.

 

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