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Amazon Hikes Prime Membership Fee
An anonymous reader writes with official news that, as expected, "Amazon officially announced that it is increasing Prime Membership fees from $79 to $99. Amazon Students will pay $49, and participants of Amazon Fresh (the grocery shopping service) will continue to have a $299 fee. The price hike in Prime Membership is attributed to rising shipping costs, but some wonder if the 'real question around Prime is whether it's sustainable at all, even at a higher price.'"
The 2 day part is just a perk, but honestly even if I were paying for the normal 7-10 day shipping it'd come out to more than $100 a year just from the textbooks and general things I order.
I got the email today, just like everyone else that has Amazon prime.
First thing I did was go try to turn off auto-renew. It turns out that they've hidden that feature, and you actually have to attempt to cancel your membership to do it. Then it gives you an option to end immediately if you qualify for a rebate or end at the normal time (6 months from now in my case).
Well, one would think that the new fee would be $97 to keep in line of being "prime". Maybe I'm being too literal here. :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
When I can place a single order and get each item in its own huge box with lots of padding and empty space, maybe they can work on that too
The book borrowing feature alone is worth it twice over.
They have a horde of loyal customers who are willing to pay a FEE just to have "exclusive" access to free shipping and some media streaming. What about that needs to be "sustainable", the goal is merely to make people feel compelled to prefer to shop where they have a vested interest (also known as the human nature to "send good money after bad"). Are they collecting as much from the prime fee as it costs them to ship all that crap? Probably not, but that's hardly the point. The question to ask is: would they make more money if prime didn't exist? Meaning, would all those customers who bought with prime have just shopped elsewhere instead? The answer is probably yes, otherwise Amazon would be pulling the plug instead of doubling down and increasing the rate. The last thing they want to do is drive away customers.
Just noticed today.
That happened back in October:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on...
Until Amazon can build out their warehouse network to support same-day and next-day shipping using local, low-cost couriers. Also why Amazon gave up their fight against internet taxation - with warehouses in every state they'll have to collect sales tax anyway.
If you are using the prime video, books, free shipping, then 99$ is completely reasonable, an exceptional deal actually. If you just use one or the other probably not. (isn't netflix alone like 90$ a year?)
I can see them scaring off the people they want (infrequent shippers) and keeping who they don't (low value, frequent shippers).
Also, I don't know why they stick with the yearly subscription. I can't imagine most people wouldn't shrug off a monthly increase from 6.50 to 8.25. 79$-99$ *seems* like a lot more. Actually at a monthly rate I think most people are bad enough at math they could get away with a much higher yearly rate in monthly payements.
I dunno, I'm not a marketing guy.
Drones are expensive
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The "standard 5-8 day shipping" is crap, it is more like two weeks. I actually cancled my last two orders, when the items hadn't shipped, after ordering in stock, at around the 10 day mark. I won't be an amazon customer anymore.
So are we no griping about Amazon Prime costs? Not me.
It's still a GREAT deal if you use their streaming video service. Netflix streaming only is about the same cost (a few bucks more for DVD's by mail) and they have a lot less stuff than Amazon, at least stuff I want to watch. The free shipping thing is of dubious value, at least for me, because most items are more expensive if they have prime shipping available. Some other Prime benefits help make my kindles more usable (Free books, downloadable video streams for off line viewing). But all these extras are over and above the video streaming.
Where $79 would be preferable $99 is still cheap so I'm not complaining. We are still under $10/month here.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
on your computer because of their drm schema if you have one monitor connected via DVI.
A lot of new products aren't shipped by them and don't qualify for free (79 now 99$ a year shipping price).
I don't have a kindle.
That only explains why they arrive in multiple boxes. It doesn't explain the need to use huge boxes.
I read an article a while back that actually looked at this in depth. They said every time amazon cut the cost of shipping for customers their sales volume went up anywhere from 10% to 20% with each cut to shipping costs for customers.
If anyone feels like they are trying to squeeze extra money out of Prime with this $22 increase they really need to pull their head out of the hole its currently in and realize that after the 8 or 10 years Amazon Prime has been $79 its finally going up a little bit. I wish gas prices would follow the Amazon Prime model and stay the same for 8 to 10 years.
What happened was that Amazon expected more people to take advantage of the other Prime features besides free shipping. Instead, free shipping was by far the only thing people really used it for. Their streaming services don't have any of the things I want to watch, unfortunately, since the streaming rights to those shows were all gobbled up by the competitors.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I can't speak for anyone but myself (and my facebook posting about this has generated quite a bit of discussion about this amongst my friends), but this will result in me spending less at Amazon, as well as not renewing Prime next year. Prime is great for things I don't need today, but would love by the end of the week (2-day shipping). It's great for the one time every couple years I need something tomorrow with $3.99 overnight. The video services I don't use (hulu + netflix), and I don't do the kindle sharing thing. The Kindle itself has replaced almost all of my book buying habits, with the exception of technical books, which I still prefer in dead-tree edition. This has reduced the need to actually ship things to me. Over the last year or so, I've begun exploring stuff like buying toiletries via Prime, just to make it semi-worthwhile. I still don't use Prime to order computer parts, or giant TVs and the like as I'd rather have a local return point vs. packing and shipping defective items, etc, but I could be convinced if the value was there. Basically, at $79 a year, I felt that was fair enough that I didn't even bother to create a new account with my educational email address to pay the student rate. At $99/year, that value proposition no longer holds true for me. Your mileage may vary, of course.
So, after my Prime runs out, I'll be shopping more locally and maybe paying a little more, to get the things I normally would have ordered from Amazon. Oh well, such is life.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
...but we'll continue paying for it here I suspect. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm the exact opposite. For me, the streaming is what I want and the 2-day shipping is just a bonus.
Why bundle and force everyone to pay for things they don't use? Some people want the streaming,
some people want the free expedited shipping and some people want the kindle sharing.
It would be better to sell them individually and then maybe offer a discount for people that bundle.
$80/year was not a bad deal for streaming as it was slightly cheaper than netflix with slightly
better (for me) selection. $99 is a deal breaker for me as I only ever used the streaming and
now netflix is cheaper and doesn't charge me a full year at a time.
Copied from Slickdeals.net forums:
INSTRUCTIONS TO LOCK IN $79 RATE
Quote from orick:
If your current Prime membership is scheduled to expire on or after April 17th, and therefore would auto-renew at the $99 price, you can effectively lock in the $79 price by taking the following steps:
(1) Look up your Prime expiration date. (Let's say yours is June 11th.)
(2) Purchase a Prime Gift Membership here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/prim...
Set the delivery date as the date after your membership expires (in this case, June 12, 2014).
Enter your own e-mail address as the gift recipient. It is okay if this is the exact e-mail address already associated with your Amazon Prime account.
Place order (total will be $79).
(3) Turn off your Prime auto-renew. (End membership - at expiration)
(4) On the day after your membership expires, you will receive an e-mail from Amazon with the gift membership. Follow the instructions to apply it to your account.
This is a pretty straightforward way to save $20.
HOW TO CANCEL AMAZON PRIME AUTO RENEW:
Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...
Quote :
Go to Manage Prime Membership https://www.amazon.com/gp/subs...
Review the renewal date listed on the left-hand side of the page.
If you currently have an Amazon Prime free trial, click Do Not Continue .
If you currently have a paid Amazon Prime membership, click End Membership .
Turn off your renewal using the link below the renewal date.
Note: Your membership will expire at the end of the current period. It will NOT end before your current paid subscription is over, nor can you cancel it early for a refund.
Here is why i originally bought Amazon Prime: because it was taking a week to get an order. Not because shipping took a week, but because packing often took a few days. Prime forces Amazon to prioritize my orders. That means costs beyond what they would be paying if they could ship 5-8 days. I can imagine these costs to be increasing over time, not paying the shipper mind you, but paying enough staff to pack so that my order leaves the warehouse in time for the shipper to get it to me in two days. All for $100.
If I order a $20 widget a week, that is around $2 per package shipping, around $1000 revenue, and probably zero profit. Yes, amazon is shaking in it's boots because people who only use shipping are going to cancel.
OTOH, if I didn't have amazon prime I would be more likely to shop elsewhere.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Let me know when any phone other than Apple's supports Amazon video.
I've noticed that too. My theory is that when the shipment comes from multiple warehouses their software (or their packers) pull a box for the whole order, even though they are only shipping part of the order. I'm guessing that they will work out this fine detail eventually, but because they pay their shippers by weight and not volume it's not high on the priority list.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
...that has recently moved to the USA, I am stunned by Amazon - I mean, I always knew it looked awesome but until I got here I didn't fully understand how much stuff was on there and how amazing it is to order basically anything.
Prime simply adds to my amazement - I can order (almost) anything and it will arrive (almost always) 2 days later. My shopping behaviour has changed significantly, to the point where I'll not buy something while it's right in front of me in a store because I can just have Amazon bring it to my house a few days later, saving me the effort of carrying it around or trying to get it home (I don't own a car yet).
Even at the new price it seems like a fantastic deal, and that's before I add the streaming video service, which I've also gotten a lot of use out of, despite having Netflix and Hulu.
I guess I am surprised by the people complaining about the price hike. I'm back in Australia right now for a couple weeks and from the wistful look everyone here gets when I explain how great it is, I know they'd happily pay twice the new fee just to never have to deal with the local retailers ever again.
Anyway, my 2c: this price raise would in no way dissuade me from renewing next year (if I'm still living in the usa).
You can't stream Amazon video to a tablet unless it's a Kindle Fire or iPad, and you can't stream to a phone unless it's an iPhone.
I truly feel I get my money's worth out of this. The same can not said of my overpriced ISP and my overpriced cell phone service.
The only reason I considered prime was for the lending library which is advertised as having 500k books to borrow. Turns out you have buy a Kindle device to use the library. You cannot use the Kindle app on your phone or non-Amazon tablet for it. So, I bought a Kindle and then realized they only let you borrow one book a month. So, the whole 500k books to borrow ad is a little misleading. Cancelled my trial of Prime and returned the Kindle. Netflix has better content for online videos and we don't need the free 2-day shipping enough to justify even $79 per year.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
It looks like there's going to be a flamewar over which shitty proprietary video streaming service, for which it's illegal for anyone to write a compatible player, sucks the least.
Flamewar ground rule #1: Pirates (i.e. people who never have any interoperability problems, because they use standardized file formats) are not allowed to participate. Your comments can only warp and derail the conversation, with irrelevant frivolities like "just works" and "what problems?" or "buffering several seconds from hard disk? why?" or "of course it works with all my machines" or "I just transcode on the fly" which the modern media luddite wouldn't understand.
"I warned you that if you increased the price for prime that this would happen, and I would cancel my account. I was not joking. It's also going to cost you my next tablet purchase. I was looking at a kindle fire hdx but without prime it's not as good of a deal as it would have been otherwise. I am looking at alternative tablets from other manufacturers now. I hope your 20$ price increase was worth the loss of my business."
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I'm not trying to be a dick.
What do you nerds do with all your money?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Newegg's is $49.99. Free ground shipping for a year and 50% off faster shipping methods. It's also been my experience that every single item on amazon that has ever been sold, is being sold, or ever will be sold just so happens to be cheaper on ebay which has a better "bad seller" flagging system. Considering I can't stand Amazon's UI and never could, I can't figure out why anyone in their right mind uses Amazon to buy anything. Even their search function is crap.
I'd love to try the streaming service more, but they seem to go out of their way to make it hard to use. Besides the limited library, the list of supported devices is tiny.
They've recently made some changes that (deliberately?) broke support on xbmc, so we don't stream from Amazon at home anymore. For some reason, there is no way to stream to Android phones, even though their Kindle Fire is Android based. They're deliberately limiting their streaming customer base and acting confused that nobody uses it?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
But I found Rubicon on Amazon prime. It's a smart, but subdued spy thriller a la Tinker Tailor. It got cancelled after a season. But I enjoyed it nevertheless. And it reached a pretty good partial conclusion. I missed it when it ran (I miss most stuff since I live and work here and there.) Anyway, there it is for what it's worth. But generally Netflix is indeed better.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I have been a prime member since the start and I would pay even more than that for it. However, I think they are making a mistake by thinking about cases like mine. The increase in cost of shipping is a terrible excuse. No doubt that the cost has gone up but I suspect the prime membership cannot even come close to breaking even. Those who do NOT sign up for it are the ones who are making that exact calculation. I did too at first because I used to shop for books and other stuff almost on most major sites. Once you have prime, you just keep using Amazon because of free and FAST shipping. Sure other sites have sometimes free shipping but the cheapest and slowest ones. Everyone who has prime in my experience buys more from Amazon. The more you buy the more they "lose" on shipping but they win in the end. I would have lowered it to get more people hooked...
I'm not bummed about the $20, but I am bummed about the letter.
I get that costs are going up. But the letter cited three things:
1) cost of fuel
2) prime video
3) prime kindle books
The cost of fuel has not gone up year-over-year. If anything, motor vehicle fuel costs are down a little bit, and anything that's fungible for natural gas has gone down.
So, Prime Video. It's a "free perk" but now you've got to pay for it.
3) Kindle books. I use the Kindle app, but I don't own an Amazon device so I don't even get this. Amazon even knows there's not a hardware kindle linked to my account - they could have tailored the letter.
So, that leaves me with the apparent idea that I need to pay $20 a year for Prime Video, which ain't much to write home about. If I had the imaginary choice, I'd gladly lose access to it for the $20.
But, since I'm smart enough to realize that Prime only appears to be paid for by unicorn farts, I would have appreciated an more forthright letter. I'm not gonna cancel, but the operation seems like it's getting a few cracks.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I had to knock off "Accused" or the subject line was too large.
Makes sense they would be raising their membership charges; they are going to have to start eating the shipping cost.
Below is a copy and paste of selected sections of an article on a potential class action lawsuit over it's annual membership for Amazon Prime.
"Amazon claims that a $79 annual membership for Amazon Prime provides free two-day shipping on "millions" of items, but for some products, the company is accused of encouraging sellers to inflate shipping prices, according to two recent lawsuits."
"For example, if the price of an item is advertised for $10 with $3.99 shipping and the [vendor] wishes to match or top their price, the [vendor] would charge $13.99 or higher," Burke alleges in the suit.
These sellers raise their prices to match or top their competitor’s total price, as items are sorted by price on Amazon's site, Burke alleges in the lawsuit.
"“The bottom line is the free shipping that Amazon offered to its Prime members wasn’t free,”"
http://abcnews.go.com/Business...
It's not just that. Most of their content is SD if you stream to a PC. They'll only give you the HD version if you stream to a Kindle or a DVD/Blu-ray player. They are really shooting themselves in the foot with these limitations.
Tried watching stuff before on my Samsung Galaxy S4, display was horrid. I honestly have no desire to watch a movie on anything smaller than my Kindle Fire's 7" Display. Call me a snob but...
...in bed
If you live 15 minutes from Newegg, just pick your stuff up in person to avoid shipping fees and to get your stuff in as little as four hours.
Probably a reason for it. I imagine they don't want people endlessly scanning and scrolling around a video. Massive files. Thrashing around them and serving random chunks not something they want to do endlessly.
YouTube does something similar, in that if you pause your video for too long you then have to refresh the tab to resume it later. Maybe they assign a machine to deliver the 'tube. You walk away and they reassign the machine. Firing off the cryptic "Error processing this directive", or running the endless buffering ruse, are just the kind of things that will make people stop doing what the big streaming companies don't want them to do.
I come here for the love
I'm on the fence over whether shopping locally weakens the economy or not.
In general, spending more money for the same value is wealth destroying: money trickles up by nature, through a process I'd rather not outline--it involves specialization of services such that a certain portion of money moving through a business always goes to a very small subset of businesses, the most notable examples being energy (oil) and steel. More spending extracts more money from the consumer base in general, and concentrates it in a smaller consumer base.
Based on these assertions, it's reasonable to assume that shopping locally and buying the same kabocha for $15 would make a community more poor than shipping in kabocha from elsewhere for $5. This is a good example: Kabocha needs to be harvested ripe and stored for 3 months to develop flavor; it's no good right off the vine. That means there's no compromises such as harvesting green bananas and ripening them on truck, versus a local supplier harvesting ripe bananas. So what you get is a bunch of people who spend $15 and get 1 kabocha instead of 3 kabocha, as well as a local farmer or retailer who is either a rich feudal lord or beholden to his lords (oil...).
If it's easier for the local farmer to grow apples, but difficult due to soil and climate to grow kabocha, then the most wealth-generating solution here is for the local farmer to grow apples and export them, and the local community buy some of those apples because they're cheaper than growing apples elsewhere and shipping them in. Elsewhere, where a Kabocha can be grown for $2, a farmer will grow a Kabocha and sell it for $2.50 to a distributor who spends hundreds on bulk shipping that comes down to $1.00 per kabocha, and then puts a mark-up of $1.00 on it and sells it to you for $5. Since it would cost your local farmer $14.50 to grow the same kabocha and you'd pay him $15 for it, you should buy imported Kabocha and get your farmer to grow apples.
Books, electronics, and a lot of other stuff have become more of an import item, ordered online and shipped in. Consequentially, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City have failed. Your community would be served best by then changing tactic: close down those defunct electronic stores, open up something else. MicroCenter is attacking the problem by coming close to, meeting, or beating most online retailers in electronics prices; if you come close enough, the ability to engage in tactile shopping with no shipping delays is a value-add worth several dollars. Many people will go to Barnes & Noble and find a $35 book they like, then order it for $11 on Amazon; but if the book is $35 and the Amazon book is $33.76 with free 5 day super saver shipping, they'll probably pay the extra $1.24 and buy the book immediately.
I've taken to ordering personal care items from Amazon. Liquid starch, $500 ironing boards (with built-in vacuum--the polymer bonds in organic fibers de-link when you get them hot and wet, and then rotate freely until you get them cool and dry, so vacuum lets you rapidly set sharp creases like at the dry cleaner), laundry detergent, shave soap, and so on. Even a $500 serger, although I get the thread locally, and then I order decent clothing online and tailor it to get that final fit. Some of these things are hard to find locally, or cost $300 more.
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Amazon lets you share the 2 day shipping benefit with up to 4 other accounts. You then just have each other account split the cost with you and bam, you only have to pay $20 a year instead of $99. This can be done on the "manage prime membership" page at the bottom where is says "Invite a Household Member".
The principle I think you are trying to describe here is called comparative advantage and is fundamental to any understanding of economics. That people do not understand it, is why the powerful (politicians and those who own them) are able to manipulate the public into doing what serves the interests of the powerful rather than their own.
Nonaggression works!
Thanks. One day I need to actually study economics; most of my economic theory comes from inappropriately abusing the part of my brain that handles absolutely perfect rendering of physics. Essentially I can track full, completely known systems by rapid abstraction. So I can't predict how a basketball is going to bounce off a surface when thrown, but I can predict exactly how a basketball would bounce off a complex surface with specific abstract amounts of air density and theoretical material defects if thrown a certain way. Sometimes (ESPECIALLY with complex leverage simulations) I get results I don't understand and can't account for until someone else explains WHY THAT IS HAPPENING to me.
Economics is roughly similar. For example, the "trickle up" theory above is a gross simplification. Here's another gross simplification of the same: a front-line employee (retail, cashier, burger flipper) is also a consumer for the same business they work for. That consumer gets paid $100. Ten of these such consumers from other businesses (an abstract pool) spend $100 each at the store, bringing in $1000 of revenue. From that $1000, $100 goes to the employee and $900 goes up. It looks from this blunt analysis that money trickles down, since some of that $900 is spent elsewhere at the front line.
The trick is that $10 from each of these people goes to that employee, and $90 goes up--that employee gets paid $100, then spends $100 and gets $10 back. Another 9 $10 come back to give him $100. When you expand this out, then abstract it, you get an obvious fact: A business brings in a chunk of revenue, shears off part of that, and pays wages. Expand this: the entire consumer economy moves revenue exclusively to businesses, and that entire mass of monetary movement shears off a chunk that goes back to the consumer.
The remaining chunk moves up into the hands of upper-level management (shear more off to the consumer), who spend the same way. If you continue this out, you find that all money is spent, and again arrive at trickle-down economics.
However, as I pointed out, it concentrates. Rich people--the executives--buy yachts and jets, specialty things. This means some of that money gets concentrated into specialty businesses, not spent in general. Further, businesses spend for business services and supplies--especially energy, which eventually comes down to fuel (silicone and doping chemicals for solar panels) and steel (which *is* fuel for windmills--steel, copper, aluminum) (I told you I abstract the model).
Eventually all that money goes back into the economy; but it trickles down in bulk to the oil, coal, and basic materials companies. Because lending and debt are so integral to our economy, a lot of that trickles down in bulk to the bankers as well. Since these are the big job creators--"the rich", and yeah "the rich" aren't people--that money is trickling *up*, not *down*. Bankers, same model: a portion of the business' expenses go to paying debt, which goes *directly* to bankers. Even the people the banks buy services from are operating with some debt, so the banks get a discount because part of the money they spend is returned to them when it comes time to pay your loans.
It moves up faster than it moves out. The simulation starts as discrete movements, actions, specifications; it becomes blobs that are sheared and cut and manipulated, representing those actions. But economics is huge: it factors in human motivation, it factors in the real creation of wealth--itself a complex topic--it factors in scarcity and imaginary concepts. What seems so simple in my head, even when 100% correct, requires endless amounts of discussion with thousands of caveats and explanations tacked on. I mean it takes hours to explain healthcare as a vehicle to explain wealth, and it's not as simple as "PRIVATE BAD PUBLIC GOOD" or "PUBLIC BAD PRIVATE GOOD". Each discrete action, each particular facet of a public healthcare plan has an impact on wealth--two impacts: a negative (incr
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I just checked my account. 85 orders in 2013. Comes to $.92 shipping per order for me. Heck, even at $99/year, I'd have paid $1.13 shipping per order. The free videos are a cherry on top of that sweet savings sundae. If you are a prime member who didn't wring that savings sponge dry, then I thank you for participating in this little wealth-shifting scheme.
What?! Third-party sellers charging more because their actual costs are higher!? SCANDAL! How can this be?
Idiots and lawyers, but I repeat myself...
I did leave out the best part:
"Kim Stephens, attorney for one of the plaintiffs, adding that he was “shocked” by Amazon’s alleged pricing practices"
Yeah, but you're just buying time. What happens when Slashdot shuts down the current live site and beta is all that's left?
I'd kindof like a scraper tool that scrapes an entire story and puts it into classic-slashdot, but I'm pretty sure that would never work in reality..