MOLI VIEW™

It's not a gimmick or a scam. It might be a cool gift idea, too.

I stumbled upon a great way to save 15 percent from Amazon AND get free shipping on orders below the $25 free-shipping threshold. It doesn't work for everything they sell — so books, CDs, and electronics are out — but it does work for groceries, household supplies, health and beauty items, diapers ... that sort of thing.

It's a subscription. Sounds bizarre, but I just subscribed to some steel-cut Irish oatmeal and wound up paying a little more than half ($2.23) of what it costs in my supermarket ($3.99) for a 16-oz. box ... or six of them, to be precise.

I won't bore you with the math (unless you actually wanna see my work, like on a sixth grade math test — if so, e-mail me), but I'm sure you can score similar savings, too.

Here's the link to the Amazon site explaining how it works. And here's a video overview.

In addition to the savings, there's no obligation. So, though I stipulated a six-month period for my next batch of oatmeal to arrive, I can always change my mind and cancel the order. You can set your subscription for one, two, three, or six months, and change the interval, if you like.

There's no minimum purchase as far as I can tell, and the program covers a lot of things that may not be of interest to everyone — especially if you don't want to have six pounds of steel-cut Irish oatmeal, or a case of diapers, shaving cream, lip gloss, vitamins, etc. on hand. (It's a beta program, by the way, but they're testing it "live" and say that they may be adding additional products down the road.)

If you have the space, you can save some bucks and have your order delivered, too, saving even more time and energy.

Works for me. Let me know if it works for you, too.

Richard Pachter is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Business.

» Read Richard's blog