Amazon Family - Baby Shopping Made Easy?

Earlier this month when Amazon launched their new Amazon Family service, I was there, banging on the door to sign up. In my capacity as an Emma's Diary blogger, I was given the chance to be one of the first people to trial the service.

Amazon Family is a new subscription service designed to make the process of buying all the bits and bobs that you need for baby just that little bit easier (and less stressful on the wallet too).

I signed up to Amazon Family using my existing Amazon account and at present you can get a free three-month membership to Amazon Prime which gives you free next day delivery on any item you order that qualifies for Prime. I had been considering joining Amazon Prime for some time as I regularly order through Amazon and the run-up to Christmas seemed like the perfect time to give it a try. At the end of my free trial, if I don't want to continue paying for Prime, then I can opt out with a single button click from inside my account details.

On my very first visit to the Amazon Family Hub I had a good look round all of the special offers. Amazon promise to offer Amazon Family members at least £50 in savings on baby items every month and things which immediately caught my eye were discounts on Plum Baby food of upto 40% right now as well as good offers on children's shoes and nappies.

Unfortunately most of the offers right now don't appeal to me. As a cloth mama, I don't need to put in regular orders of nappies or baby wipes and I only use ready-made baby food as a back-up when we are out and about so a regular subscription to a bulk order of baby food doesn't tick my boxes either. Mind you, I was tempted to subscribe to a regular Subscribe & Save order of Organix Cocoa and Raisin bars as Lara is loving these right now and I find them incredibly hard to source in the supermarkets. I opted instead to buy a bulk box of them (36 in total)... I don't think we will be running out for a while now!


Amazon Family offer you a £10 discount off your first order over £50 in their baby store. Although there are links and menus available to help you locate the baby store, I actually do most of my shopping through the search field - I search for what I want and then when I've found it I add it to my basket. This means that it is quite hard for me to tell when the thing I have bought is officially from their baby store or not and so I didn't seem to qualify for the promotion. I queried this and Amazon responded very quickly to give me my discount but despite re-asking, I have yet to receive an explanation of what I did wrong on my order to not qualify for the discount automatically. If you stay with the full paid-for Amazon Family service (including Prime) beyond the three month trial you also qualify for another hefty discount off your next £50+ order.

I really liked the way that as soon as I had signed up to Amazon Family, my amazon experience changed for the better. All of the products that qualify for free Prime delivery were really clearly marked and when I placed my order I was given a choice of delivery partner (I chose Royal Mail first class because I find it easier to pick up missed parcels at the post office rather than courier delivery offices). I also found the emails that notified me when my purchases had been dispatched to be more informative than normal.

On my first order from Amazon Family I bought a few essentials that we had been needing for a while - a bath mat, booster seat, snack bars, swim nappies (at an amazing price I might add), a food masher and that glamourous essential - 180 breast pads! All of these arrived the very next working day and so I'm looking forward to making the most of my Amazon Family membership over the coming months in the run up to Christmas.