Clicking Your Way to Purchase Paradise
Chapter 10: Clicking Your Way to Purchase Paradise
E- Mail Confirmation
5. Check the Cancel Item box and then click Update Order
The Cancel Item box is to the right of the item title.
When you’re finished, you find yourself at a page that looks like Figure 10-6.
You also receive an e-mail from Amazon.com that confirms your cancellation.
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Chapter 10: Clicking Your Way to Purchase Paradise
Better Buying with 1-Click
After you’ve made your first purchase, assuming you paid with a credit card, you’re set up for 1-Click shopping. 1-Click is the patented Amazon.com tech- nology that lets you make a purchase with just one click of your mouse. After you’ve made that first purchase, the Ready to Buy? box on the detail page changes to include the 1-Click option (as in Figure 10-7).
Unless you change your 1-Click settings, Amazon uses the shipping address and credit-card information you used for that first purchase. As you continue to buy from Amazon, you may buy gifts and have them shipped to other people. Those people become options in the drop-down menu in the Buy box — so you can 1-Click gifts as well.
1-Click is very easy to use. So easy, in fact, that it makes my husband a little bit sad. (But you know what they say . . . how can you really experience joy if you don’t sometimes experience sadness?) But there are a few things you should know about using 1-Click ordering:
Figure 10-7:
The Ready to buy? box is now 1-Click enabled.
Figure 10-6:
Confirmation that your order cancellation was successful.
You can’t use 1-Click to buy products from Amazon merchants.
Remember that often, when you buy atAmazon, you’re not buying from Amazon. So many Amazon merchants, like the ones in the apparel and sporting goods stores, aren’t compatible with 1-Click. Only two excep- tions to this rule: Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us.
1-Click won’t work if you’re using cookie-blocking software.If you think your 1-Click settings are turned on and the 1-Click option isn’t showing up in the Ready to Buy? box (and you’re buying from Amazon itself, rather than from a merchant) it may be that the computer fairy (or a techie-geek spouse?) has decided to protect you by adding this soft- ware without your knowledge. Just a thought . . .
You can change your 1-Click settings to use a different credit card or shipping address.Do this in the Personal Information section of Account Settings on the Your Account page.
You can link specific shipping addresses with specific credit cards.
Again, access the Personal Information section of Account Settings in Your Account. You’ll notice that the 1-Click Settings page is also the Address Book Management page (as in Figure 10-8). Next to each entry in your address book, you have the 1-Click settings associated with that address. Use the Edit button to change the credit-card information asso- ciated with that person or address. This comes in handy if you use dif- ferent credit cards for different purposes — say, work versus pleasure, and so on.
Figure 10-8:
You can change the 1-Click settings for each address in your address book.
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Order Consolidation
If you use 1-Click to buy several items in one visit, Amazon.com does their best to automatically consolidate your order and send things together in one pack- age. There are, however, a few things that affect automatic order consolidation:
Items have to be shipping to the same address. Okay. All right. Duh. But I felt like I had to mention it.
Items have to be bought within a 90-minute period. I don’t know what’s behind this Cinderella-esque rule. But I do know that after 90 minutes, it’s out of the automatic consolidation loop. You can sometimes consoli- date them yourself through Your Account. The window for manual con- solidation is wider — more like a few hours or even a day — though not entirely concrete. In other words, after the 90 minutes is up, nobody is making any promises.
Items bought from Amazon.com can’t be consolidated with items bought from merchants, marketplace sellers, zShops, or Auctions.
Why? Simple: Those people do their own shipping.
Item availability times affect consolidation. You may have noticed availability times listed on the detail page. They usually say something like, “Availability: usually ships within 24 hours.” This little note affects consolidation as follows: Items that ship within 3 days or fewer are con- solidated and items that ship in more than 3 days are consolidated as they become available. In other words, if one items ships in a week and another in 3 weeks, they won’t make you wait 3 weeks so they can ship them together.
Items bought using the shopping cart won’t be consolidated with items bought using 1-Click.Again, not sure why, but those are the rules.
No consolidating with Super Saver. You can’t consolidate any orders that are shipping for free under free Super Saver shipping. In other words, no lumping an ineligible item with a Super Saver to score some free shipping.