Amazon Offers Pre-Holiday Benefits for Buy With Prime Shoppers

Amazon is offering added benefits for Prime members using its Buy With Prime service.

The retail giant announced Tuesday (Nov. 14) that customers can now track Buy With Prime orders on their accounts and get round-the-clock live chat customer service on their orders.

In addition, shoppers can return eligible Buy With Prime orders at even more drop-off locations, without needing a shipping box or label.

“We continue to innovate our Buy With Prime offering so that Prime members get access to an expanded selection and a convenient shopping experience, even when shopping beyond Amazon.com,” said Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy With Prime.

Launched last April, Buy With Prime allows merchants to sell listed products directly from their websites, making Amazon’s payments and fulfillment services available at checkout and allowing consumers to use their Prime membership to get benefits like free delivery.

Initially an invitation-only service, Amazon expanded Buy With Prime to all eligible U.S. merchants earlier this year. In August, the company said that merchants using the program were seeing conversion rates increase by 25%.

Amazon isn’t the only tech giant offering customers help with the holiday shopping season. Google last week said it was introducing a “dedicated deals page” that collects “millions of deals from thousands of brands and retailers in one place.”

Beyond that, Google says users — when opening a new tab in Chrome on a desktop — will now see products they’d recently viewed in their “Resume Browsing” card with a notification when an active promotion becomes available. Google is also bringing its price insights feature, already part of search, to the desktop version of Chrome.

“It’s a common dilemma,” the blog entry says. “You’ve found the perfect gift, but there’s a nagging question in the back of your mind: Will the price drop after I buy? More than a quarter of people say they procrastinate holiday gift-giving because the gift may be available at a lower price later.”

With the new feature, consumers will see a “Shopping Insights” label in the Chrome address bar. When they click on it, they’ll see a graph of the item’s 90-day price history and the typical price range for that product.