Okay so I am in the middle of a major crunch for our local Science Olympiad team here in Chicago and I am hitting a wall with something that should be simple. I've spent the last three hours picking out about 45 different items-lots of tiny components like breadboards, specific resistors, and some Arduino kits-and the total is sitting right around 800 bucks. Our treasurer needs to approve the final list before I can use the club card, but I need them to see the exact cart so they can just hit checkout.
Normally I would just make a public wish list, but the problem is that half these items have specific quantities and coupons applied that dont always carry over right when you add to list from the cart. Plus, some are from third-party sellers where I picked the one with the fastest shipping for our Friday deadline. I've been an Amazon power user for years and I swear there used to be a way to just generate a temporary link or a cart ID to send someone, but I am clicking around and seeing nothing but the standard social share buttons that just link to individual products.
If I send the URL from my browser bar, it just opens their own empty cart. Is there a workaround or some specific setting I'm missing to generate a direct link to my live cart contents?
I feel your pain. I had this exact nightmare last year when I was coordinating a robotics build for a summer camp. I spent hours getting the quantities and specific vendors right for about 60 different sensors, only to realize Amazon doesn't have a native send cart button. It is super annoying because sharing your login is a huge security risk. Honestly, your best bet is using a tool because Amazon just wont give us that feature. Here is what I usually do:
To add to the point above: I have been wrestling with this exact same issue for my lab's quarterly procurement and honestly it's exhausting. I'm trying to bundle about 35 SKUs including specific microcontroller variants where the tolerance specs are super critical. Every time I try to find a workaround for the empty cart URL issue, I hit a dead end. I've been trying to solve this for weeks because we need to track the exact unit costs and shipping lead times for our grant reporting, but the platform just doesn't seem to support session-based cart sharing. I have to disagree with the idea that there's some hidden button we're just missing; I've audited the entire UI and checked the dev console for persistent cart IDs. It's frustrating that such a basic B2B requirement is so difficult to manage. Im still stuck in the same loop, basically just hopin for a fix.
OMG I totally agree with the first reply, it is such a massive headache when you are on a deadline!! I have been through this exact thing with my own projects and it is just the worst feeling when you think you are done and then realize the link is dead. The technical reason it fails is basically that Amazon stores your cart in your specific browser cookies and session data, so that URL is only local to your login. It is honestly so annoying but there is a fantastic way around it! You should check out a browser extension called Share-A-Cart because it is actually amazing for this. It generates a little code that the treasurer can plug in on their end to pull in every single item you picked, quantities and all! It is such a lifesaver. Just to be safe tho, since you are dealing with club funds, maybe send a PDF printout of the cart too? That way there is zero confusion on the final price and you have a backup. Good luck to the team in Chicago, I love seeing people get into Science Olympiad!!