Tag Archives: Amazon

Maximizing My Online Shopping Discounts and Savings on the Black Friday Sales

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Although we try to keep our present giving to a reasonable volume, between Christmas and birthdays, we still have lots of things to buy at this time of year. Many things, like clothes, I only like to buy in a real store where I can see the true colour and feel the weight and hand of the fabric. Others, though, like books, Blu-rays, Corelle bowls, Vellux blankets, and even Nikon cameras, I will buy online if the price is right. Recently, I noticed some good discounts online to save me money due to Black Friday sales that start a week before the American Thanksgiving, and luckily I remembered to maximize my cash back by buying through my Great Canadian Rebates account.

(If you’d like to join Great Canadian Rebates, please consider using my referral link. https://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/Register/171462/
It won’t cost you anything but it might earn me a tip!)

What are the Differences Between Using Great Canadian Rebates and Just Shopping at Amazon.ca?

To understand how Great Canadian Rebates works, you have to understand a bit about marketing and internet advertising. Basically, many stores offer a small “commission” to people that bring them business. So if you click on an Amazon ad on my website and then buy something at Amazon, I may get a small cash reward for encouraging you to shop at Amazon. (So far that has never actually happened!)

Similarly, if you start at the Great Canadian Rebates website, and have joined GCR, and then you open the Amazon.ca website from the GCR link on their home page, then GCR will get a small cash reward if you actually buy something at Amazon. To encourage you to do this, Great Canadian Rebates will SHARE the small cash reward with you. They even tell you before you shop what % of your purchase you will get back.

Generally, Amazon.ca does not offer any % back if you are buying books. But if you are buying, say, a Nikon camera, it may offer back a % of your purchase price. The % can change from week to week as there are “specials.”

A few weeks ago, I got 1.3% back on my purchase of several Blu-rays. That doesn’t sound like much but the movies were already on sale. It only took me a few extra seconds to sign in to my Great Canadian Rebates account, then click on their link to amazon.ca then do my shopping as usual. For that I got back as much cash as many cash-back credit cards offer. And over time, it adds up, often getting me $10+ a month.

How Does Great Canadian Rebates Pay Me?

In my case, I’ve signed up for payment in the form of amazon.ca email gift certificates. Once a month, GCR sends me an email with a code to use when I buy something at Amazon. I can wait and use up every month’s gift certificate on one purchase if I want. (In coupon terms, they are “stackable.”)

How Can You Join Great Canadian Rebates

You can just go to their website and sign up.

Or you can be really nice to me, and go to their website from my link, which will pay me money if you ever use GCR to make a purchase. My link is https://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/Register/171462/.

They have a scheme where if you use my referral code to sign up with GCR, then you get your % back on online purchases made after clicking through to online stores like amazon.ca from the GCR website. And I *also* get an even smaller % back just because you did. It doesn’t change your earnings, it just increases mine.

Like I say, you don’t have to use my referral to join but I thank you in advance if you choose to do so. (I will never know that you joined or what you bought. I just might get a few more cents per month if you sign up and then use GCR as the entryway to making a purchase online.)

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to remember to use the GCR website to start my online shopping. If I can save $20 on my shopping, I can take the family out for dim sum!

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Join In
Do you try to maximize your online savings by using a rewards credit card and making your purchases through an online portal like Great Canadian Rebates? Please share your strategies with a comment.

If you’d like to join Great Canadian Rebates, please consider using my referral link. https://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/Register/171462/
It won’t cost you anything but it might earn me a tip!

Did Amazon Inflate Its Cyber Monday Shipping Statistics And How to Return An Item

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Like many Canadians, I’m getting lazier about my Christmas and birthday shopping so I order many gifts from amazon.ca. The prices are usually good and the delivery speed is excellent. So during the week before American Thanksgiving, I put in a few orders each of which qualified for free shipping. What happened next left me curious about whether Amazon is playing games to boost its Cyber Monday statistics and left me making my first return.

Was the Shipping Date Just Coincidence from Amazon or an Attempt to Boost Their Shipping Volume?

I placed four orders the week before Cyber Monday: two on the Wednesday, and two on the Thursday. They all qualified for free shipping. Usually when I place an order, it’s picked and shipped within 24 hours. This time, no ‘pings’, no email telling me my order was on its way.

I shrugged figuring they were just sticking to their own rules which say free shipping will take longer. I thought it might be a deliberate strategy to encourage me to switch to Prime. Since I didn’t need the items for weeks, I wasn’t concerned.

Cyber Monday Surprise from Amazon

Imagine my surprise when Cyber Monday morning when my email pinged 5 times in a row at about 9:30 a.m. One after one, in came messages telling me my orders had shipped—including an item I had pre-ordered in June and forgotten about.

I was pleased they were on their way and didn’t think much about it.

Then on Tuesday, I heard on the business news that Amazon was reporting how many items they had shipped for Cyber Monday. Apparently people compare that number year to year to judge both holiday shopping trends and Amazon profits.

It left me wondering: Did Amazon delay my shipments to boost its Cyber Monday shipping volumes?

I have no way to know, but it is a very interesting coincidence!

I also found it interesting that they shipped items from different orders made on different days in one package. They must somehow amalgamate the picking and packing information.

My First Return to Amazon.ca

Unfortunately, by putting some many items into a very large carton, Amazon didn’t succeed is safe shipping unlike all of my previous orders. One paperback got seriously damaged when some items shifted in transit. Since it was a full-price gift (in fact it was the pre-order item from June) I couldn’t just ignore it. I needed a good copy to give: this one had to go back.

I wasn’t actually sure how returns work with Amazon. With Chapters-Indigo, I knew you could take it to a nearby store. But would I have to pay for shipping to make a return to Amazon?

Luckily, no.

When I clicked the links from my email notifying me that my items had shipped, I found the information about making a return. I reported the damage to the book and requested they send me another copy. I had to agree to pay for the first item if it was lost during its return to Amazon. Then it let me print a mailing label and a return shipping slip on my home printer.

Of course, the box they’d sent the item to me in was huge, since it had held a variety of different items. So what was I going to ship this one paperback back in? The mailing label would have worked with the huge box, but it seemed ridiculous and awkward for me to take to the post office.

So I waited till the replacement book arrived. Then I shipped back the original damaged book in that box. The replacement was shipped on the day I reported the damage, so I didn’t have to wait long. They had given me two (business) weeks to get the damaged item back to them.

How Does Amazon Reduce Shipping Fraud?

One thing I found somewhat annoying but interesting was that I was warned to get “proof” I had mailed back the item for my own protection in case the parcel was lost or stolen in transit. Amazon suggested taking the parcel to the post office and getting a receipt for it to show it had been put in the mail.

Normally, this would be fast and easy—but it’s nearly Christmas! Most post offices around here have long lines of people trying to send money orders, buy gifts, and mail oddly shaped packages overseas. I managed to minimize my wait time by arriving just when the outlet opened. Even then, I was third in line.

As I turned over the parcel, I chatted with the Canada Post worker. She told me that they used to just stamp a receipt for the customer, but Amazon had now arranged an entire form to be printed for the customer confirming that the parcel had been received by Canada Post. So I walked away with a work order verifying I had shipped a package and giving a tracking number.

Luckily, I never needed it: within two days, I received a confirmation email from Amazon that they had received my return.

I guess Amazon may have had problems with people returning expensive goods not just paperback books!

Overall, I was satisfied with how the return process went. Good thing, too, as I plan to make another order today!

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