I’m ditching Amazon for Walmart’s e-commerce competitor — here’s why

Jet

Jet.com

Amazon announced Wednesday that it was shutting down Quidsi, the subsidiary that runs a bunch of popular e-commerce sites like Soap.com and Diapers.com. 

Amazon will reportedly lay off hundreds of workers and move the inventory on those sites over to Amazon.com.

I was pretty bummed when I read the news. As a city dweller, I’m a big fan of Soap.com, which I use to buy things like toilet paper, paper towel, laundry detergent, and other household items that are difficult to carry home from the store. But I figured the transition would be a good reason to check out Soap’s competitors. Perhaps I could find cheaper prices on other sites, like Jet.com.

Jet.com was actually founded by Marc Lore, who also started Quidsi. After Amazon bought Quisdi in 2010, Lore went on to start Jet, which was bought by Walmart in 2016 for $3 billion. 

A lot of my friends use Jet and rave about its low prices, so I decided to give it a try and see how it stacks up to Amazon’s Soap.com in terms of product availability and prices. 

 

I started by looking at my “Easy Reorder” list on Soap.

When you login to Soap, you can find a convenient list of all the products you’ve ordered in the past. This makes re-stocking very easy. 

I decided I would go through this list and try and find the same products on Jet to compare prices. 

A 24-pack of Charmin double roll toilet paper cost $21.99 on Soap.

I was shocked to see that the same 24-pack of Charmin was only $12.47 on Jet.

Next up: tissues. A box of 75 Kleenex ultra-soft tissues cost $4.61 on Soap. With a 25% coupon, the cost came down to $3.92 per box.

I couldn’t find the same single box of 75 Kleenex tissues on Jet, but I did find a 4-pack of boxes that only cost $6.90, making each box cost only $1.73. Much cheaper than Soap.

Paper towels were next on my list. An 8-pack of Bounty “select-a-size” paper towels was $26.50 on Soap.

That same 8-pack of rolls was only $19.99 on Jet.

Jet also offered discounts for buying in bulk. Buying 2 8-packs would have brought the cost down to $19.67 per pack. Unfortunately, I don’t have the storage space in my Brooklyn apartment to take full advantage of the deal. 

I’m always looking for a good deal on contact solution, which always strikes me as a ripoff. On Soap, a pack of 2 10-ounce bottles of Opti-Free solution cost $21.28.

I couldn’t find the same 10-ounce twin pack of solution on Jet.com. But I did find a twin pack of larger 14-ounce bottles that actually cost less than the twin pack on Soap: $21.09. Sweet.

The final item on my list is laundry detergent. A 50-ounce jug of Tide is on sale on Soap for $11.55, discounted from $15.99.

The same 50-ounce bottle is $10.57 on Jet. Again, cheaper.

My final total on Soap: $101.71

One thing I love about Soap is its extremely fast shipping. If you spend more than $49, you don’t have to pay an extra shipping fee, and orders often come in the next day or two. From the looks of it, my full order will arrive the day after I place this order. 

My total on Jet is $75.38. That’s 25% cheaper than Soap.

One downside of Jet is that it looks like my order will appear in two shipments. The first will arrive the next day. The second shipment could take as long as a week!

Overall, I’m pretty excited about Jet. It had all the same products I normally buy on Soap, and it was much, much cheaper.

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