The beauty that is Amazon Prime....

I've always been an on and off fan of Amazon - at one point it brought me to tears, and I swore never to buy from the site again, but now I have been re-converted, which is no mean feat.

The reason it brought me to tears, before I go any further, is because a couple of Christmases ago I ordered Husbandio an Xbox360 from Amazon, and I ordered it in October, so felt I had done so in good time. I then, nearer to Christmas, went in to check that the delivery date was still OK, and it was (this was before the console had even been released, so it was a hard to buy gift!). As I did this, I realised I was paying for shipping, and my natural miserly nature meant that I decided to change to the free shipping option which I should have chosen in the first place. Unfortunately, I was unaware that this meant that my order was essentially then reset to that date, rather than my original order date, putting me to the back of the Xbox360 queue, and offering to deliver it in February rather than before Christmas. Not good, to say the least, especially since this meant I was referred to as "the Grinch who stole Christmas" for months afterwards.

Anyway, I've slipped back into the habit of using Amazon for two main reasons. First, I can earn Nectar points, which is always good, and second because I've now been offered a free month's trial of Amazon Prime, which means free next day shipping. After that you pay about £48 for an annual subscription to keep the free shipping option. This will stop me fannying about trying to get lots of purchases into one order, and then realising that one item being hard to get means that all the others will be delayed for weeks. And then taking that one thing out and having to get it somewhere else. It's very clever on Amazon's part: I'm not sure I ordered enough in 2008 to justify that £48 shipping fee, but I will certainly make sure I do in 2009, so from a customer loyalty perspective it's definitely achieving its goal.

So far I've done two orders in two days (oops - perhaps this won't be very good for the bank balance!) and both were delivered today. Very handy, since we have a three year old's birthday party to attend on Sunday and I don't have time before then to buy gifts. Charlie and Lola art kit and CD, via Amazon, to the rescue!