Penny Pincher Note

I received a pack­age from Ama­zon yes­ter­day — a belated birth­day gift from my sis­ter. Included in the pack­age was a flyer for Amazon’s new on-line gro­cery ser­vice. It’s called “sub­scribe and save” and the con­cept is that you sign up for reg­u­lar deliv­ery of prod­ucts and you save an addi­tional 15 % off their gro­cery prices.

Always on the look­out for good deals, I checked the prices on a few prod­ucts that we always have around the house. The first prod­uct I rec­og­nized on the Ama­zon site was Hori­zon choco­late milk. We always keep a sup­ply of these indi­vid­ual serv­ing con­tain­ers in the bot­tom of the fridge — The Hus­band loves these on his cereal. The kids and I like them, too. I buy this milk from Costco for $12.69/case. Amazon’s price: $25.00/case! That means our Costco mem­ber­ship is paid for with our first three cases of choco­late milk.

Obvi­ously not impressed with Amazon’s prices but will­ing to keep an open mind, I con­tin­ued to look around the site for other prod­ucts always kept on hand. The next prod­uct I checked was Tide because Tide is a prob­lem prod­uct for me. Tar­get is the only source I’ve found that car­ries the right prod­uct (Tide Free pow­der) in the right size (big). I use Tide Free because I’m aller­gic to scents and I use the pow­der because The Hus­band is aller­gic to the liq­uid form of the same deter­gent and I pre­fer the big boxes because they’re more eco­nom­i­cal. At first glance, Amazon’s price of $58.38 for a case (4 boxes) appeared to be close in price to Target’s price of $12.89/box ($51.56/case) but then I checked to make sure we were com­par­ing apples to apples and we weren’t. Amazon’s boxes are 60 load boxes whereas my Tar­get boxes are the 80-load size. Again, the Ama­zon prices are way less than impressive.

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