For many, the retail behemoth is their go-to one-stop online shop. Our Amazon buying guide has 30+ tips and tricks to help you save, but here are five of our favourites...
1. Quickly uncover the cheapest Amazon Resale (formerly Warehouse) deals with MSE's unique tool. It's the section of Amazon's site that resells 1,000s of returned or slightly-damaged items (often just the box) at knock-down prices. Yet it can prove tricky spotting the best bargains, so to do it we built the Amazon Resale Discount Finder tool. Tell it what you're looking for and it scours Resale items in seconds and displays your deal options clearly.
2. Can you cut the cost of Amazon Prime membership? Prime gives one-day delivery, TV/movie streaming and so on. It costs £95 for an annual subscription or £8.99 monthly, but we've a few ways you can make it cheaper, including £2 a month off Prime for some O2 customers, and share Prime benefits with another person in your household for free.
3. Check Amazon's price history - is that item really cheaper now? Amazon's prices go up and down like a Yo-Yo, and discounted items don't always mean a bargain. A clever site lets you instantly snoop on a product's Amazon price history to see if it's ever sold for less. Prepared to wait? Name a price you're willing to pay and it'll send you price-drop alerts.
4. Amazon's free delivery threshold's increased, but use a cunning tool to beat it and pay less buying more. Delivery's free if you spend £25+ in most cases (was £20+ before April 2023) if you don't have Prime. But if you're just under the threshold, instead of spending up to £5 on standard delivery, use the Amazon free delivery tool to find cheap items (for example for 40p) to take you over, so delivery's nowt.
5. Free tool helps detect fake Amazon (and other sites) reviews. Falsely flattering reviews are a big problem when online shopping, and they aren't easy to spot, but a free fake review spotter tool can help decipher what's genuine and what's bogus. While not definitive, it's still useful.
Amazon offers newbies a free one-month trial* of Prime, its subscription service which gets free one-day delivery on many items, access to TV shows, movies and some tennis and Premier League games, music streaming and more.
Important. After the 30-day free trial, you'll be automatically enrolled into a paid subscription at £95 for a year's Prime (or £8.99 a month if you selected monthly billing), unless you cancel before the end of the trial.
If you only want Prime to stream TV shows and movies, or Premier League games, then there's a cheaper £5.99 a month Prime Video-only option that you can sign up to after you've cancelled your free Prime trial.
If you go via this Amazon* link, you can find totally free comic books and graphic novels to download for your Kindle including Star Wars, The Amazing Spider-Man, Doctor Who, Stranger Things, Avengers, The Walking Dead and many more. The link will take you to the 'Top 100 Free' in the Comic Book & Graphic Novels section, where there are many popular comics and TV show-turned-graphic novels.
If comic books aren't your thing, there are free Kindle books in other genres too – see Top 100 Free Kindle books* . You can also check our 16 tricks to access 1,000s of free e-books & audiobooks.
Students can get six months' free Amazon Prime membership when signing up to Amazon Student*. It gets one-day deliveries plus access to Amazon's video and music streaming services, and photo storage. After the six-month trial ends, if you want to keep it, you can get 50% off full Prime membership, so it'll cost £4.49 a month (or £47.49 for a year), compared with the usual Prime price of £8.99 a month (or £95 for a year).
You must be a UK student aged 18+, with a .ac.uk email address, or if you've not got one of those, send an email from the address that's linked to your Amazon account to amazon-student-verification@amazon.co.uk giving proof of enrolment. Even if you've already had an Amazon Prime or Amazon Family free trial, you can still take up this offer.
Important. While the trial is free, this is a subscription offer, so you'll need to enter card details and diarise to cancel or you'll be charged once the trial ends. There's no obligation to continue with the paid subscription. Once you graduate or after four years (whichever's first), the price for Prime will jump to £8.99 a month. To cancel, go to Your Prime Membership.
Students can get one year of Deliveroo Plus (free delivery on orders of over £15 at restaurants or over £25 at stores) for free with a Prime Student membership. All you need to do is link your Deliveroo and Amazon accounts via Unidays. Deliveroo Plus normally costs £3.49 a month.
The free delivery is available from all 50,000 restaurants Deliveroo works with, including big chains such as Pizza Express and KFC, as well as supermarkets – handy for last-minute groceries. You'll still need to pay Deliveroo's service fee (typically 50p to £1).
Use them
If you answer 'NO' to any of the following questions, don't buy.
Are you
Will I use it?
Is it worth it?
Are you
Do I need it?
Can I afford it?