[codegeek]

You will be surprised that my wife buys items worth $2.99 from amazon at times. Sometimes, it is not possible to bunch orders together because it is all "on demand". Because we have prime, we don't care about whether it is 1 item or 5 items in same shipment. So our orders could look like ($2.99, 1 item )on one day while it could be ($40+$6, 2 items) another day. Other than fixed subscriptions, our buying pattern is very random.

And Prime is not just about free shipping, but it is a lot more about "fast" shipping. I am not sure about non prime but I doubt that free shipping will be 2 day or less like Prime.