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Walmart is canning a premium online ordering service and expanding its free shipping on various items instead:
Walmart announced free two-day shipping to home and stores on more than two million items, without a membership fee. The new offer is available starting at 8 a.m. EST today. With this announcement, Walmart has also lowered the minimum purchase required for free shipping to home to $35, from $50. Items being shipped to stores continue to have no price threshold.*
[...] Walmart's free two-day shipping will be available on the items customers shop the most, including household essentials such as baby necessities, pet products, food, like cereal and peanut butter, cleaning supplies and beauty favorites, as well as top electronics and toys.
[...] *Freight and marketplace are not included. Program is available in the contiguous United States.
Walmart recently bought Jet.com, an online e-commerce company with "an attractive brand with proven appeal, especially with Millennials, the first generation of true digital natives".
Meanwhile, Amazon is expanding its digital advertising business (before potential customers realize the scale of online ad fraud) and ordering the production of anime.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:53PM
Selection seems sparse, items are sometimes sold in huge bulk when you don't want that, and the website kinda sucks.
$2/lb garbanzos [walmart.com] ain't gonna cut it. Brown rice [walmart.com] seems cheap enough though. The best ramen flavors [walmart.com] are unavailable. Did a search for tomato [walmart.com]. No fresh food here, but it was worth a try. Fiddling around with the interface, I have to click an extra time to sort prices by low to high [walmart.com]. Pasta prices are not good because they are significantly over $0.75/lb. Maybe pick up this [walmart.com] for novelty value.
Enough about crappy food. They are selling bleach for about $3/gallon. That's good, I guess. And it may be the last item you need. So you want to murder someone or otherwise make a huge mess? They have this 3 pk. of plastic sheeting [walmart.com] for less than a $1 each. Looking for a 5 gallon bucket [walmart.com]? It costs $4, but I'm not sure they sell the lids.
Equate Aspirin Tablet, 500 count $3.64 [walmart.com] (not 2-day) (for reading all this)
One good change is that previously, you had to spend something like $50 to get any kind of free shipping. Now it's $35. So you might be more likely to make casual purchases. However, Amazon is rapidly expanding its "same-day shipping" and even "2 hour shipping" (I think they even do 1 hour). Getting stuff within that timeframe may be attractive to you, although with a little planning ahead, 2 or 3-5 day shipping could be just fine for you. On the other hand, 2 hours may be too long for you if you are in the middle of cooking a recipe and decide to run out to a nearby store to get an ingredient.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @02:29AM
My experience with Amazon is that their free shipping is absurdly slow. It really feels like they just sit on stuff for a week before doing anything in order to push people to sign up for the prime loyalty club. My last few orders didn't even leave the warehouse until a week later.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 01 2017, @02:47AM
It really depends. I have gotten certain no-rush shipping items ahead of the delivery estimates.
Maybe it's a geographical problem. And of course, you are also dealing with UPS, USPS, or FedEx.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @04:38AM
Seconded. I actually called customer service and asked about it the last time I ordered something sold by Amazon and was basically told as much. Such a shame, Amazon used to be so good at shipping. Now I try to buy from other sellers preferentially, even when I buy on Amazon, just to avoid the problem.