Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Cuts Down On Prime Sharing
An anonymous reader writes: Tech Crunch reports that Amazon quietly rolled out changes to how their Prime subscriptions can be shared. The good news is that existing members aren't immediately losing their current sharing setups. It used to be that Amazon would let Prime subscribers share free shipping and a few other benefits with up to four other "household" members, with little restriction on what counted as a "household." The bad news: as of last weekend, Amazon now limits sharing to one other adult and four "child" profiles. The adults will need to authorize each other to use credit/debit cards associated with the account. Amazon didn't make any announcement about this, so it's unknown how long existing Prime shares will stay in effect. They could disappear when the subscription is up for renewal, or earlier if Amazon decides to crack down on it.
Sky's the limit.
I wanted to use one account for ebooks and another for everything else. Works fine on ios but android has single sign on that can't be disabled.
So.....Now i have two $99 amazon prime subs.
Can anyone please tell me how to break single sign on on android?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Our household spends a lot of money on Amazon, but we are not going to renew Prime this year. I ahve been rodering thing from Amazon since the 90s but my satisfaction level with the company peaked a couple years ago adn has been sliding down since. The reasons we are cancelling are varied:
- Items listed as having Prime often do not arrive for 5-6 business days. This is typical for larger items. It annoys me that Amazon lists tham as prime (to me this means item will arrive 2-3 business days), and their practice of having fine print about extra handling time for some prime items is abrasive. Just don't list it as Prime if it won't be shipped for 3-4 days!
- The streaming video options are weak and I don't like the picture quality
- "Prime day" is a joke
- They raised the annual price of Prime 3x since I signed up
- Items shipped prime from Amazon have shown up obivously used or broken multiple many times over the past year (much more often than before)
- Amazon's support people were really hard to deal with when things in the above bullet point happened
- As far as I can tell "super saver" shipping usually only takes one additional day (and sometimes none) to arrive compared to prime
- I have been finding better prices on many things from retailers like Costco and Walmart compared to what Amazon offers
- Amazon uses a variety of tactics to make the camelcamlcamel plugin not work relably to show price history on an item.
Maybe I will regret the decision and we will sign back up, but we are definitely going to try living without it.
For me this is better because now I can share amazon prime videos and kindle books with my household without having to share accounts.
Prime sharing?
I came here thinking that this was a crypto problem.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I'm not renewing my Prime membership either this year, but curiously my reasons are completely different to yours. In my case I won't renew because:
So no, after 1 year it's bye bye Prime. It's a very poor video service.
Argh - I just set up my Household on Amazon... there are some issues with sharing Prime within a household, and nobody in Customer Service understands what's going on. After an hour wasted with an idiot and a supervisor I finally figured it out on my own (you have to enable Content sharing or Prime doesn't share). Most of the documentation appears to be wrong. Apparently Amazon has never heard of this whole UX testing thing... but at least I get a pun out of it.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I didn't realize that anyone signed up for Prime for their streaming video, their catalog is subpar to Netflix
That depends on the viewers age. Since 2013 when Nickelodeon moved off Netflix and onto Amazon Prime Video, their catalog became quite good for the under-5 crowd.
If Amazon breaks my sharing setup, then I will cancel my Prime mebership and take my approximately $7,000 a year worth of business with them to another retailer and drop Kindle in favor of a competing eBook service. I hear there is a competing thing called ShopRunner.... sounds interesting.
You should see what you get with the Canadian Amazon prime. Prime items ship *one* day earlier than the free shipping offered. That's it. That was my experience using it several times for a month. There's no other benefits at all. No streaming. No better pricing. Just one day earlier shipping. Typically 2 days instead of 3.
Yup. That's it. All for $79. And it's only available to certain postal codes. Amazon prime is the biggest joke I've ever seen in my life.
It's not. Shoprunner it pretty useless. Its free if you have an Amex card, but very few stores participate, and those that do have a very small selection of elligible items.
Their competition is on the mark and ready to go. Much cleaner site and everything on jet.com is cheaper.
You are all USDA Prime cows. USDA Prime cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOO! Moo USDA Prime cows MOOOOOOO! Moo say the USDA Prime cows. YOU PRIME COWS!!
This is awesome because:
To the Hindu, the cow symbolizes all other creatures. The cow is a symbol of the Earth, the nourisher, the ever-giving, undemanding provider. The cow represents life and the sustenance of life. The cow is so generous, taking nothing but water, grass and grain. It gives and gives and gives of its milk, as does the liberated soul give of his spiritual knowledge. The cow is so vital to life, the virtual sustainer of life, for many humans. The cow is a symbol of grace and abundance. Veneration of the cow instils in Hindus the virtues of gentleness, receptivity and connectedness with nature.
Yeah when amazon bumped the price from $79 to $99 shoprunner ran a special all you had to do was send them your amazon prime receipt and they would give you a free year of shoprunner.
Shoprunner only covers 3 stores I have ever bought online from newegg, tiger direct and staples.
I did not even bother to sign up since then ive bought 5 ink ribbons from staples (that was enough to qualify for free ship) because I haven't found anywhere else that can keep fresh dot matrix ink ribbons.
But that's about it I just don't need the things they sell all that often.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I'm not seeing the issue with this. I read through all the replies up to now, and it appears to me that people are complaining about services they're taking for granted.
I live next to a major us city. Chicago to be specific. I order lots of things, and they get delivered very quickly. I do not have problems with prime shipments taking 4 or 5 days like a couple peoe complained about, but didn't say where they live. I purchased prime solely for the shipping bonuses.
People are complaining about shipping and comparing it to super saver, but the last time I looked there is a minimum purchase price for free super saver. With prime I can buy a single item that costs $4 and have it shipped, and I get it in a couple days. I do not have to store my purchases in a shopping cart until I have enough to qualify. The immediate shipping is the single biggest benefit.
I also cut the TV cable cord last year. I now do Netflix and prime plus plex and that's it. I use roku, and it works great! Many of the movies I could watch on amazon are also available on Netflix which is my primary TV platform, so I rarely watch stream from amazon. But comparing Netflix to amazon is not relevant. Compare amazon prime streaming to not having any streaming, and you'll see that this is a pretty huge benefit that is thrown in with the faster shipping I paid for.
I have three kindles, but I have never used their kindle book services. Maybe some of the books I read are available there, but they're also available in other places including my public library which has a method to check out kindle books.
I get no benefit from amazon music, but its fairly new and I can't hold that against them.
The original article makes it sound like people that were sharing amazon prime membership with friends are getting screwed. So what? It can be shared within a household, meaning whatever your definition of family is. If you cannot share a credit card, you're probably not family. You're basically abusing amazon prime services, and shouldn't be sharing an account.
I don't see an issue with amazon clamping down on people that are unrelated and shouldn't have been sharing a single account, and I think they provide a pretty decent value for the money. Maybe it's not a fantastic value if you only buy big ticket items that get free shipping anyway and don't use any of their streaming services, but it is a pretty good value for those of us that only buy one or two small things at a time, whenever we think about it night or day multiple times a week. We get prompt, free (prepaid) shipping on our small purchases and its awesome!
There are items on Amazon now that say "Exclusively for Prime Members". So if you don't have Prime, they won't even let you order it. Unless you pay that $99 surcharge. What a business Amazon is running, they don't even want to take your money.
Amazon decides to crack down on it
Maybe at the time of renewing, but it is highly unlikely that existing prime sharing would stop working one fine day.
more than they miss you. As sad as it may sound a $7K/yr customer is essentially small potatoes (while certainly more valuable than that dude who only shows up twice a year to buy something at a rare loss-leader type price, uses multiple accounts in order to exceed quantity limits, and uses the free shipping combined with gift option as a way to "drop ship" the items to third parties when reselling, and then whines to customer service that the item was missing from the box and they need it reshipped, let alone they used to use the "pay by check" option which used to allow the order to be held awaiting payment, until their sale completed on the auction site, then they'd switch to credit card and pay so it would ship when they wanted, etc).
Further, if you are using sharing in a way that would actually be significantly broken in any meaningful way by the (alleged, I haven't heard anything) changes, then you're probably already violating their policies, in which case you're even less attractive to them as a customer than you otherwise would be.
I didn't like them discontinuing the price protection/match policy, but my credit card has one anyway. I didn't love the price increase for Prime, but it's still a very good deal for me since I both order a lot and also use the streaming. I wasn't thrilled when the first subscribe and save order stopped being 2-day delivery for Prime members, but it just takes a bit more planning. I wasn't crazy about items getting excluded from Prime 2-day or the price increase for overnight or weekend delivery on many items, but it's still a fraction of what the shipment would actually cost an individual, even including the cost of Prime itself spread across even a moderate number of shipments.
I can see why they've been making these various policy changes and price increases over the years. Some people have been gaming the system, and that's not fair to anyone who plays by the rules. It's why we can't have nice things. Some asshat "extreme couponers/slickdealers" always have to screw it up for everyone else.
In short, Amazon and Prime is still good value for the money. I've consistently had excellent results with customer service, and pricing is as good or better than anywhere else on the items I buy most if I use a little care and timing. If something costs significantly less elsewhere, I need it right away, and getting it there isn't extremely inconvenient or risky, then I just buy it there instead, but for me that's the exception and not the rule. Most of my (non-perishable) purchases these days come from Amazon. If I cancelled Prime, I'd buy a lot less in general rather than shifting the purchases elsewhere, because it's _that_ much better (for me at least). That's actually the only reason I might one day cancel. It's so dang convenient and attractively priced and pleasant to deal with that I simply buy too much; sometimes more than I need. As such, it could start to become very problematic if my disposable income unexpectedly decreased.
lol good luck with your pointless self flagellation.