Free shipping with amazon prime

[az93]

I don't  have and have never had an amazon prime account. Yet when i buy on ebay my item is often dropped off at the house in an amazon prime bubble mailer, propped up without using usps. Does this mean anyone with a prime account can send things to other people for free? If so why don't all ebay sellers have prime accounts and mail everything for free. What am i missing? Makes no sense to me. 

[brightlightbookseller]

Those sellers are possibly violating the terms of their Amazon Prime agreement and will probably eventually have their accounts cancelled.  Or they're using FBA to deliver their own stock, in which case they're not supposed to use Amazon Prime packaging (there's a checkbox if they're doing that to use generic packaging), and they may get away with it, but just annoy customers on eBay.  Hard to know for sure.

[orangehound]

Does this mean anyone with a prime account can send things to other people for free?

Yes.

If so why don't all ebay sellers have prime accounts and mail everything for free. What am i missing?

It is against eBay policies (due to customer service problems with this method of selling).  If discovered, eBay will shut down an account.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/posting-items/setting-postage-options/drop-shipping?id=4176

[mordecai8614]

Sure people can do this. But if a seller is doing it then they are obviously charging more to make it worth their while. So why would a buyer pay more on eBay when they can get it cheaper on Amazon? Also, for a seller to do this they still need to keep their price reasonable or no one will buy it. So after they pay eBay fees, how much profit are they really making?

[rosszonebricks]

Sounds like they are buying whatever you bought from them on eBay on Amazon and are using their Prime account to ship it to you as a 'gift'.

This violates Amazon's Prime Terms and Conditions, and they WILL get caught.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Amazon prohibits the use of Prime accounts to ship merchandise being sold by the Prime member.

Ebay prohibits the shipment of merchandise in Amazon or Walmart or Sam's packaging.

Eventually, these sellers will be punished by someone.

Most of the people who buy products which appear in these packages have no clue what they should be paying for an item and deserve to overpay, which they do.

[az93]

The most recent purchase which prompted me to ask this question was under ten dollars with free shipping. I could not get it cheaper on Amazon because i do not have a prime account. I also wonder how much profit anyone would have shipping this way.

[orangehound]

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@az93 wrote:

The most recent purchase which prompted me to ask this question was under ten dollars with free shipping. I could not get it cheaper on Amazon because i do not have a prime account. I also wonder how much profit anyone would have shipping this way.

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In the past, most (successful) retail drop shippers operated on high volume and low margins, because there is a lot of competition, and then supplement sales by purchasing with credit cards that pay rewards sometimes upwards of 5%.

These days, most of what I see are naive people from 3rd world countries trying to do this.  They see bait that promises big money for little work, then pay money to someone for coaching/training, or watch a lot of over-promising YouTube videos.

I've not seen anyone making much with this strategy in ... I dunno ... maybe 5 years.

[luckythewinner]

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@az93 wrote:

I don't  have and have never had an amazon prime account. Yet when i buy on ebay my item is often dropped off at the house in an amazon prime bubble mailer, propped up without using usps. Does this mean anyone with a prime account can send things to other people for free? If so why don't all ebay sellers have prime accounts and mail everything for free. What am i missing? Makes no sense to me. 

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You seem to misunderstand how Amazon and eBay work.

An Amazon buyer gets free shipping for eligible items if he subscribes to Amazon Prime. But those items generally must be stocked by Amazon in an Amazon warehouse to be eligible.

It could be that your eBay seller used his personal Amazon Prime account to buy the item on Amazon, and entered your address as the delivery address so that it would be shipped to you. If this is the case, it generally means that you did not do a very good job of comparison shopping because your eBay seller is simply buying it on Amazon, marking it up, and selling it to you.

It could also be that your eBay seller uses Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) to ship his merchandise for him. This means he delivered his inventory to Amazon and pays Amazon to deliver it for him. FBA may be free to the buyer, but it is not free to the seller.

[chapeau-noir]

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@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

Amazon prohibits the use of Prime accounts to ship merchandise being sold by the Prime member.

Ebay prohibits the shipment of merchandise in Amazon or Walmart or Sam's packaging.

Eventually, these sellers will be punished by someone.

Most of the people who buy products which appear in these packages have no clue what they should be paying for an item and deserve to overpay, which they do.

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I don't think this is true, nor that it is possible to police this. I ship stuff in Amazon boxes all the time because I recycle clean packing.

[epowerbargains]

I also use/reuse Amazon packaging. I mark out the logos on the box or mailer so there is no confusion. So far I have not had a problem as buyers understand I am just re-using clean packaging NOT shipping from an Amazon Prime account. 

[monica-sells]

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@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

Ebay prohibits the shipment of merchandise in Amazon or Walmart or Sam's packaging.

 I have been 'recycling' amazon, walmart and target boxes for years as shipping options for my ebay sales. Sure, I stick that ebay "Recycled" sticker on it, but you certainly can use the packaging.....

[adamcartwright]

I also reuse clean Amazon boxes, but I use clear packing tape so it's apparent that the package did not originage from Amazon, which uses reinforced paper tape.

I'm guessing most of us do it this way?

I'm thinking the problem arises when the package clearly originates from Amazon, using their packing tape.

[eburtonlab]

I also wonder how much profit anyone would have shipping this way.

The profit can be anywhere from zero or even negative (for inexperienced or clueless retail drop shippers that don't know what they are doing) all the way up to 100% (for triangulation scammers that know exactly what they are doing).

[chapeau-noir]

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@adamcartwright wrote:

I also reuse clean Amazon boxes, but I use clear packing tape so it's apparent that the package did not originage from Amazon, which uses reinforced paper tape.

I'm guessing most of us do it this way?

I'm thinking the problem arises when the package clearly originates from Amazon, using their packing tape.

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Right - and my beef is only with those sellers who abuse the Prime program, which isn't all of them. Thing is, I stopped ordering commodities here because so often they would come from Amazon. The non-Prime I just understood to be a seller simply doing multi-channel sales, but why bother with yet another middleman when I can just order the stuff directly off Amazon, which I do now. I stick to eBay and other reseller sites for non-commodities - I don't care if they come in a recycled Amazon or Wally World box/bag.