Lowe’s recently launched a new online store feature, Lowe’s Subscriptions, which seems a lot like Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save” service.
Amazon Subscribe & Save lets you subscribe to certain household goods on a set schedule, to ensure you never forget to reorder them.
Lowe’s Subscriptions seems to work in a similar manner.
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Lowe’s says these are the things to get excited about:
- Subscription discount
- Free Shipping (on certain eligible items)
- Flexible terms (skip, pause, cancel at any time)
- No yearly or startup fees
- New additions in the works
In Lowe’s informational page, their featured subscription categories include:
- Air & water filters
- Cleaning supplies, such as Tide laundry detergent pods
- Hardware, such as nails, screws, and removable wall hooks
- Outdoors, such as water softener salt pellets and lawn chemicals
- Electric, such as light bulbs and batteries
- Tools, such as vacuum filters, gas engine fuel, and misc. everyday hand tools and accessories
- Plumbing, specifically firestop caulk and foam sealants
- Glues & tapes, such as spray adhesives, shipping tape, and painter’s tape
- Paint, such as patching and repair products, sandpaper, and drop cloths
It seems that they’re focusing on select brands and offerings at first. The plumbing, glues, and tape categories, for example, exclusively feature various 3M products.
For the Kobalt utility knife, the drop-down lists allows for a shipping frequency of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 months. It seems other products have similar subscription options.
I think the program has potential, and might even give it a try, maybe with air filters to start – assuming individual filters are eligible for free shipping.
The save 5% part seems like a good deal, but I’m more interested in the “skip regular trips to the store” part.
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Lowe’s also recently deployed an Amazon-like strategy where they now display views or sales counts for many tools and supplies in their online product catalog.
Bonnie
Makes sense. PetCo also has a similar setup, with a pretty solid discount IIRC.
Robert
Petsmart too. But Petsmart’s savings is on the initial on-line order, to get you hooked. But, overall in our case it’s worth it because the particular cat litter we need is only at Petsmart, and even there it was hit or miss if the stores had it in stock. The auto-ship serve sends it out regularly like clockwork, eliminates a lot of frustration. I don’t even need Lowes air filters in the lines from the cat’s room.
Scott F
My order from PetSmart yesterday touted 35% off first auto ship and 5% off all future orders (presumably from that auto ship), maybe you actually are getting 5% on them. Regardless of that, have you tried “World’s Best Litter” – our six cat family loves that stuff.
I know subscriptions are very easily controlled by programming, but I still don’t know that I trust Lowe’s online enough to get it right…
Robert
Scott, I’ll have to look at my next receipt about the 5%. We are pretty happy with “Nature’s Miracle” corn cob based litter, but I’ll take a look at “World’s Best Litter” next time I’m in the store for food. Thanks.
Scott F
Didn’t realize nature’s miracle made a corn litter also – probably very similar to the one I recommended (also corn based). We love NM enzymatic sprays, I’m sure their litter is top grade also.
Scott F
@Stuart – comment above intended as a reply to Robert, if able to correct from your end.
Jim Felt
Maybe they woke up when they realized Home Depot bought HD Supply recently for nine figures? Naw. It’s “Lowes”…