Probably won't use it much but nothing beats free. Why not?

Originally Posted by chris00cm Probably won't use it much but nothing beats free. Why not?

started a 3 month trial 3 years ago to get some zhu zhu pets for christmas for my daughter shipped free, havent used it since, they keep giving me free renewals, just got the email for 2013. guess it would be good if you liked dominos but didnt like going to get it.

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Originally Posted by TheLongshot Shoprunner must be desperate to keep customers, because they automatically reupped me for free.

Haha, I had "renewed" my membership yesterday by cancelling and resubscribing with the code in the OP, and had it up to an end date of 3/19/2014. Then I got the email from them this morning saying they had extended my membership for another year. Alas, I logged in and checked, and the end date hasn't changed from what it was yesterday, so apparently they have something set to limit the extension to 2013.

I'm assuming that this means they have some other, more profitable way of making money than the actual membership fees, that makes it worthwhile for them to keep even members who don't pay the fees. No clue what that would be, though. (Maybe they make most of their money from the stores who use them, and higher membership numbers help with that?) I know that while I found it nice to have a few times this past year, I certainly didn't get enough out of it that I would have paid $80 for it...

Affiliate fees.

So basically you buy stuff from other stores through Shoprunner and it gives 2 day free shipping?

Originally Posted by BoromirsFan So basically you buy stuff from other stores through Shoprunner and it gives 2 day free shipping?

Yeah but not all items are applicable. Eg video games from tru.

Originally Posted by TheLongshot Shoprunner must be desperate to keep customers, because they automatically reupped me for free.

Same for me as well and I didn't even want to renew because they ship Newegg for me some ridiculous criss country way that actually takes longer most times than shipping straight from Newegg.

Sweet, too bad Toysrus took off Shoprunner on batteries I need

Originally Posted by arcane93 I'm assuming that this means they have some other, more profitable way of making money than the actual membership fees, that makes it worthwhile for them to keep even members who don't pay the fees. No clue what that would be, though. (Maybe they make most of their money from the stores who use them, and higher membership numbers help with that?) I know that while I found it nice to have a few times this past year, I certainly didn't get enough out of it that I would have paid $80 for it...

Paying shoprunner members

• Retailers get sign up bonuses from shoprunner if they help shoprunner get a paying membership.
• Shoprunner will pay retailers a subsidy for purchases made by paying shoprunner members.

Free shoprunner members or nonpaying members

• No subsidy for nonpaying members.
• A small transaction fee will be charged to the retailer for nonpaying members.

So basically they make more money by offering free memberships since the retailer pays them for each transaction. As you can see as more shoprunner members are the free kind, retailers have been very picky on which item are shoprunner eligible. I have been a shoprunner free member since newegg started offering shoprunner in the summer of 2011 I think. Back then lots of items newegg sold were shoprunner eligible but as time went on less of them are shoprunner eligible.

Dominos is probably the one that benefits most from shoprunner, they only lose out a little on delivery charge but on average a shoprunner customer buys from them more than a non-shoprunner member.

Just got an email and shoprunner extended my old account another year

Originally Posted by Yeloazndevil Just got an email and shoprunner extended my old account another year

Same

Forgot to do this and now it's over..oh well

Originally Posted by htz So basically they make more money by offering free memberships since the retailer pays them for each transaction. As you can see as more shoprunner members are the free kind, retailers have been very picky on which item are shoprunner eligible.

I wasn't aware of this, but it explains why so many items on the sites that participate are ineligible for free 2-day shipping. They're going to wind up killing their own business in the long run, because by providing a disincentive for retailers to let consumers use the service on more products, they're providing a disincentive for consumers to pay for the service. I'm not sure what the long-term upside is for them other than, at best, finding a way to survive and continue to limp forward.

A lot of the things I can get on Newegg that let me use Shoprunner already ship free, so SR is shaving a negligible amount off of the transit time, to the extent that it doesn't seem like much of a value to me. If I could use it on everything that Newegg sells (especially the damn games that they ship with that UPS Mail Innovations crap), and they added some other sites like Monoprice, that are further away and don't offer free shipping, I would probably pay for the service like I pay for Prime. As it stands now, I doubt that the company will still be around by the end of my current free period, which expires in March 2015.

great. i just cancelled my membership and now it says the offer is expired. lame.