Shoprunner is a service which offers free shipping and free return shipping at many partner merchants, along with a few other benefits. It’s a paid subscription service, similar to Amazon Prime, but all regular personal and small business AmEx cards come with a card benefit which allows us to get the subscription free. [You don’t need to pay with the Amex card to get the service.]
You can see if your card is eligible and enroll in the free service here. See Amex terms here. List of stores that Shoprunner partners with here.
The news came recently that Staples is partnering soon with Shoprunner to offer free shipping on staples.com purchases. On the Shoprunner site, it advertises Staples as “Coming Soon”. Remember also that Office Depot/Office Max will soon be merging with Staples, so this may end up working for those sites as well.
UPDATE: Thanks to Reader David for letting me know that this is actually available already, though it’s still showing on the Shoprunner site as “coming soon”. If you are logged into your Shoprunner account, you’ll see a little “Shoprunner eligible” note next to the product on staples.com. Here’s what it will look like:
Currently Staples offers free shipping on orders $50 and up, with the Shoprunner service there won’t be any minimum for the free shipping benefit. This would seem to be a nice addition for Shoprunner, since most of their partners are smaller retailers, though there are a few other large ones such as Toys R Us.
The truth, however, is that this new benefit is not all that important since you can sign up for a free Staples Rewards account and get free shipping with no minimum as a Rewards member. You’ll also get 2-5% back in Staples rewards as a member.
The main benefit I see here is the free returns angle. Sounds like a nice benefit to be able to return things for free to Staples.
Special thanks to DoC reader David for letting us know about this. If you have any tips for us, please let us know by contacting us here or will@doctorofcredit.com or chucksithe.DoC@gmail.com.
View Comments (2)
From what I can see on the Staples website, there is still a $49.99 minimum for free shipping with a Staples Reward account unless one upgrades to a premium account
Staples now requires $49.99 for shoprunner to kick in the free 2-day shipping. However, Staples rewards give you free 1-day shipping for the same threshold.