Online shopping from Amazon.com is getting cheaper as the giant online retailer has announced its offer for free shipping to Singapore for orders above S$155 (US$ 125) excluding taxes. For now only the goods (books, music, movies and electronic goods) it sells excluding the third party sellers will be qualified for AmazonGlobal Saver Shipping programme. The products must be tagged under the AmazonGlobal program and sold by Amazon.com. Singapore and India are now the first Asian countries to enjoy new savings programme:[1]
With FREE AmazonGlobal Saver Shipping, you receive free shipping to India and Singapore if your order includes at least $125 of qualifying merchandise, excluding the Import Fees Deposit, gift-wrap charges, duties, and taxes. Most products shipped using the AmazonGlobal Program that are sold by Amazon.com are eligible for AmazonGlobal Saver. Items 20 lb. or more, certain oversize items, e-documents, software downloads, music downloads and gift cards don't qualify.
Canceling items, combining orders, or changing your shipping address, speed or preference might affect your order's AmazonGlobal Saver Shipping eligibility.
If your order doesn't qualify for AmazonGlobal Saver Shipping:
- The order may contain ineligible items.
- A special product, order, or handling fee may still apply.
- An eligible item that was canceled brought the total below $125
Amazon.com offers many products much cheaper than online or physical retailer offers in Singapore. According to The Straits Times, the Beats Solo HD on-Ear headphone and Beats wireless over-ear headphone are sold in Singapore for $310 and $420 respectively while they can be ordered from Amazon.com for only $275 and $346. Lego bricks can cost half of what they cost in Singapore while some items even not on sale in Singapore such as Roku 2 media player can be purchased from Amazon. But do not forget, you'll still need to pay import taxes for goods exceeding a certain amount in Singapore.
The amount of savings for consumers buying directly from Amazon Global will vary depending on the item type. For instance, the MSI GTX 680 graphics card we ordered would have cost us S$680. The same item is listed at S$799 (PDF link) at a Singapore retailer.[2]
Purchases in stock can arrive to Singapore in 11 to 14 business days under savers programme. The items over 9 kg, oversized items and gift cards are excluded from the free shipping.
Will Amazon's free shipping to Singapore hurt retailers here? Well it probably will:
In addition to increasing rental costs courtesy of powerful local real estate investment trusts such as CapitaMalls creating upward pressure for rentals, tightened foreign labor controls and less-than-stellar retail demand, the competition posed by a large international online retailer would push many tech retailers to the brink.
To add to the malaise, the sudden proliferation of product variety--like the sudden emergence of new product classes such as battery bank , capsule speaker, a thousand types of mobile phone and tablet cases and new networking methods like Powerline Network Adapters, just to name a few, and generally much more rapid product obsolescence and introduction cycles--have not met with an expansion of retailers' purchasing departments, causing product introduction delays, missing out on new brands, elimination of interesting second-tier brands and basically, all the bad effects of purchasing department fatigue.
Will Amazon's free shipping to Singapore hurt retailers here? Well it probably will:
In addition to increasing rental costs courtesy of powerful local real estate investment trusts such as CapitaMalls creating upward pressure for rentals, tightened foreign labor controls and less-than-stellar retail demand, the competition posed by a large international online retailer would push many tech retailers to the brink.
To add to the malaise, the sudden proliferation of product variety--like the sudden emergence of new product classes such as battery bank , capsule speaker, a thousand types of mobile phone and tablet cases and new networking methods like Powerline Network Adapters, just to name a few, and generally much more rapid product obsolescence and introduction cycles--have not met with an expansion of retailers' purchasing departments, causing product introduction delays, missing out on new brands, elimination of interesting second-tier brands and basically, all the bad effects of purchasing department fatigue.
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| Amazon.com now offers free shipping to Singapore and India. |
But many consumer electronic items such as Samsung Galaxy S4, Kindle tablets will not be shipped here. These bigger ticket items still need the common buying avenue: order them from US-based Web sites and have the items delivered via freight-forwarders such as comGateway or Borderlinx or Sngapore's postal service's vPost service.
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