30 tips and hacks to never paying full price on Amazon again

27. Pre-order items to get free shipping on add-on items

If you do a lot of shopping on Amazon already, you’re quite familiar with what they call add-on items. These are things that are too small and costly to ship by themselves, and can only be ordered along with something bigger. Prime subscribers can get a little order crazy with all of that free 2-day shipping, and the company does this to cut down on having to ship out so many smaller items by themselves. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t ways of getting an add-on item when you don’t want to spend $35 bucks or more on something else.

The cheap way around this is to pre-order a more expensive item that isn’t out yet. One of the easiest things to do this with would be an upcoming video game. Big name releases are advertised well in advance with specific release dates. Pre-orders are not charged until the game actually ships from Amazon, so a game that’s set for a couple months later won’t be charging your account anytime soon.

However, by pre-ordering something, your order still qualifies you for the add-on items. You will only be billed, at first, for these add-on items when they are shipped to you immediately. They will come normally like other Amazon packages right away, so it’s not like you need to wait for the pre-order to actually come out.

Here’s the frugal part. Once you receive the add-on items you wanted, you can simply cancel the pre-order you had placed. You will not be charged.

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