So me and my three roommates are finally moving into our place in Chicago next Tuesday and we have a massive list of stuff to buy for the kitchen like a toaster, air fryer, and a bunch of cleaning supplies. We wanted to just do one big Amazon order to hit the free shipping and keep track of everything in one place but its proving to be a total headache.
I looked into Amazon Household but apparently thats only for two adults and there are four of us so thats a no go. Then I saw some articles about split payments but when I actually tried it on the site it looks like you can only split it if you use a gift card for part of it and one credit card for the rest. That doesnt help us at all since we all want to use our own debit cards so we dont have to venmo each other back and forth for months.
Is there actually a way to just assign different items in one cart to different cards at checkout? Or do we really have to just have one person buy everything and then do the math manually? I feel like there has to be a better way than just using a spreadsheet and waiting for everyone to pay me back...
Coming back to this and honestly everyone is right... Amazon just isnt built for the roommate economy yet. Over the years I've tried many ways to manage this without losing my mind or my money. Basically, you have two real choices:
Honestly, Amazon is pretty rigid with their payment gateway architecture. They basically force a single-payer model for security and processing efficiency. I would suggest you be careful about trying to find a native setting for this because it just isnt there for four separate debit cards. You might want to consider the risk of using one person's account for everyone's data since it can clutter up order history and tax records. I have a few questions to narrow down the best technical solution for you guys:
Commenting to find later
Helpful thread 👍
Adding my two cents here because I went through this exact headache when I lived with three guys a few years back. We thought we were being smart by all logging into one account, but I would suggest being very careful with that.