Every year, I end up renewing my Amazon Prime membership when I realize that it’s cheaper than shipping all of Santa’s presents in a timely fashion without it.

Until today, the biggest drawback (besides the $80 price tag) was that the service was really only “prime” for half the week. Needing items sooner rather than later from Thursday through Monday kind of felt like a jack. Sunday was understandable, but the omission of Saturday delivery made the service far less convenient. Now Amazon has revamped the shipping options it offers, including Saturdays on the Amazon Prime shipping options and introducing an innovative new same-day shipping options in some major cities. This is a huge value add for Prime members, and I can imagine this Christmas I’ll be marginally less reluctant to pay the fee.

NYC, Philly, Boston, DC, Vegas, Baltimore and Seattle have the option, which costs $5.99 per item for Amazon Prime members. It’s not immediately clear what costs will be for those without Prime membership. Delivery cutoff times range between 10am-11am, but waking up before noon beats the hell out of leaving the house.

Here’s the relevant portion of Amazon’s press release:

Oct. 15, 2009– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the launch of “Local Express Delivery,” a new shipping option giving customers same-day delivery in seven major cities including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle andWashington D.C. The service will be extended to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in the coming months.

Thousands of items are now available for Local Express Delivery. Amazon Prime* members pay just$5.99 per item for the service. Full details, including the rate card for all other customers, are available at www.amazon.com/help/shipping.

Items ordered before the following local cut-off times will be delivered the same day:

• New York City – Order as late as 10 a.m.
• Philadelphia – Order as late as 10 a.m.
• Boston – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Washington D.C. – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Baltimore – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Las Vegas – Order as late as 11 a.m.
• Seattle – Order as late as 1 p.m.

Customers will find delivery cut-off times on each product’s detail page.

“We want to make online shopping as convenient as possible,” said Girish Lakshman, vice president of Transportation at Amazon. “We’re continuously working to speed up delivery times and customers receiving items on the same day as ordered is an exciting step. Now, if a customer needs a last-minute present for a birthday or wants a copy of their book club book before the weekend starts, they can order from Amazon instead of the hassle of a last-minute trip to the mall.”

Amazon has also expanded Saturday Delivery options. Now, items ordered before the cut-off time on Thursday using Two-Day Shipping will be delivered on Saturday instead of Monday. For Prime members, Thursday-to-Saturday delivery is free using Two-Day Shipping. For all other customers, the service is offered at the current Two-Day Shipping rates. Saturday Delivery is also available for orders placed before the cut-off on Fridays for $6.99 per item for Prime members and an additional charge for all other customers. Full details can be found at www.amazon.com/help/shipping.

Saturday, Amazon took on a small segment of the third-party market with a new line of electronics called “Amazon Basics.”

Gadget fans don’t need to get all a-twitter yet- the line is mostly cables, blank CDs and blank DVDs, but they’re offered at a cost lower than most competition on Amazon. Some of the items, like USB cables, are “available for pre-order,” which I found perplexing. I thought a cable was something you ordered in frustration when you stepped on the end of it with your motorcycle boots rendering it unusable, not something you acquired in the vague notion of receiving it someday.

Looked at as a harbinger of things to come, though, the line certainly has promise. Amazon has indicated they don’t plan to branch off into the more exciting stuff- this appears to be more of a True Value Hardware for your computer and other electronics. Even though the pricing isn’t always necessarily the lowest- this 100 pack of blank CDs scoops the new Amazon ones by 49 cents and is Prime Eligible- Amazon’s status as a trusted brand for online shopping means buyers may flock to the new offerings. As someone who ends up renewing my Prime membership grudgingly every Christmas to avoid the high shipping costs and the toy store crush, I’ll certainly look there before I go to a seller with whom I have no experience.

[Amazon Basics]

The end of the month is coming and I’ll have a little bit of money sitting in my PayPal account but it leaves  me in a little bit of a quandary. Like, do I transfer some; or all of it, to my bank account so I can get that Christmas shopping down. If I leave some of it in my PayPal account then I am stuck dealing with the sometimes depressing online shopping experience.

It’s not always depressing; as buying digital goods is fairly simple and painless – at least it isn’t affected by one or more of my following suckage reasons. No – the real pain and agony comes when you head out to shop for non-digital type goodies. You know – those things like hardware, household stuff for the wife or those gaming consoles for the kids. The type of things that need to be paid for and then shipped.

In the spirit of online shopping and the holiday spirit here’s a list of the reasons why I think the whole experience really sucks sometimes.

1. Payment methods

This has to be the biggest bitch point I have with online shopping; but before you get your panties in a bunch let’s make a couple of things clear. Not everyone wants to buy digital goods. Not everyone in the world has a credit card. Not everyone in the world has a VISA debit card. Not everyone lives in the United States. So don’t even bother trying to get me going by bringing those points up in a comment.

There is nothing worse than finding just the right item that you want to buy only to find out that they only accept three major credit cards. What makes it even more maddening though is that you don’t find out until page 5 of their stupid ass payment form. Gee couldn’t you let me know that before you made me enter in all my personal information – guess not.

Then we have the famous VISA style bank debit cards or the virtual credit cards. Whoop-frikken-ee! First with the bank VISA debit cards – chances are if you don’t qualify for a VISA card you won’t for a VISA debit card. You might have a bank debit card but that won’t work. Then there is the fact that even if they accept a straight ordinary bank debit card it had better be one from the U.S. because I have yet to see anyone that accepts a Canadian bank debit card.

Then we have PayPal – but that is another whole separate point.

2. The Big Boys and wanting to pay with PayPal

The short of it is if you want to buy stuff from places like Amazon, the new Microsoft store (for that Xbox deal) or any of the really non-eBay retailers you are screwed unless you have a major credit card. Forget even thinking about paying with PayPal. It ain’t gonna happen.

That is one of the reasons that Amazon will never be an endpoint of online shopping for a lot of people. The other big reason comes later. I can understand to a point why considering that PayPal is owned by eBay that online retailers don’t accept it as a payment option; but it wasn’t always like that. Even before eBay PayPal has never been an option at Amazon and I’m sorry but that is just down right stupid. I can’t count the number of times that I have wanted to buy a book or other goods at Amazon but couldn’t because of this nonsense.

To me this is being exceptionally shortsighted and stupid

3. Geotarding what I can buy

Nothing pisses me off more than finding just the right item and entering all my payment information only to see – No shipping to outside of the U.S.

Screw you. I’m already going to get raped by any shipping costs as it is. If I’m willing to bend over a little further and pay outrageous shipping costs then damn well be willing to take my money and buy those goods.

I see this on Amazon all the time at any point you step beyond the bounds of book buying. If you want to buy that nice little trinket for the wife or maybe a a nice DVD player on sale – forget it if you live anywhere else but in the great United States.

In the Amazon example you can always head to your local geographical version (if there is one) but if that local Amazon site is anything like the Canadian one the pickings are pretty dismal. Where most people seem to make Amazon and other big names a regular stopping point I’m lucky if I remember Amazon even exists outside of any news that shows up about it.

4. Shipping outside of the U.S. – or how FedEx and UPS laugh all the way to the bank

I know everyone touts Amazon’s free shipping horn but here’s a hint. Not everyone buys from Amazon and not everyone lives in the U.S.

The moment there is a border to cross I can just visualize some FedEx or UPS executive eyeing up that new BMW or Mercedes purchase. In-country charges are bad enough but if I get something from the US I pray to all that is holy that it is getting shipped with GIFT splashed across the package. If it doesn’t then I suddenly am having to pay Custom Tariff Fees and then our lovely government gets in the act wanting their share and I have to pay taxes on what they think the item is worth. Suddenly that good deal just cost me an arm and a leg.

Even worse though in some ways is in-country shipping – especially when you are in the same time zone, the same province as where you are buying the goods from. Recently I bought a new mouse from TigerDirect in Canada – great service and I’m very happy with them – but when it came to figuring out how much I had to pay via PayPal I was suddenly faced with a $10.00 shipping fee. For a mouse .. a package that probably didn’t even weight a pound.

Then another time I priced out some RAM memory and again it was a great deal – except for the shipping. Again I was faced with a $10.00 shipping fee for something that fits inside an envelope. Please tell me how this makes sense.

That I think pretty well covers some of the ways that I think online shopping sucks. The things is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Retailers could stop being so myopic about how we can pay for those goods. Retailers like Amazon could easily support us paying by PayPal. In this day and age of the global village and global economy mentality we shouldn’t have to deal with geotarded products. As well we shouldn’t shafted the way we are for the shipping of goods that we buy; after all the more we buy the more that will need to be shipped (DUH!)

Do I think any of the above will change?

Not bloody likely.

Although US consumers are pessimistic about the economy, they remain interested with the web as venue for them to save money. Forty-eight percent of consumers surveyed, compared with 41 percent in 2007, said that they can find the best values and deals online. Additionally, 36 percent of consumers said that they would be more likely to shop online due to high gas prices, compared with 22 percent who expressed the same sentiment last year.

Forrester expects that the majority of holiday online sales will be driven by shoppers who have previously purchased online, rather than first time online buyers.

More than two-thirds of consumers surveyed said that they are planning to spend more or about the same online as they did last year. Core holiday product categories such as clothing will remain top choices for online buyers, as well as books, DVDs/videos, music, gift certificates, and toys.

Respondents also indicated that they will be seeking free shipping offers more often this year than last.

Taobao has created an e-commerce ecosystem consisting of 80 million users, over 1 million sellers, and 200 million items for Chinese consumers to select from. The new funding, spread over five years, will be used to build a more advanced platform for merchants, while continuing to offer its services for free to buyers and individual sellers.

Chinese companies are expected to take advantage of the economic downturn in building up, aside from carefully investing. Reports had it that some companies are even launching plans for recruitment. The Alibaba Group even announced that it is hiring about 4,000 new employees this year.