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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.
Huh?
Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 for $79. The price has gone up once, in 2014, to $99. So I'm not sure how you could have seen three price increases. Even if you were a student and are counting the loss of the student discount once you left school, that's only two increases.
Unfortunately Prime doesn't guarantee the quality of an item, just that it ships quickly. More and more third party sellers are using Amazon, including Amazon's fulfillment system, which means their goods can be shipped out by Amazon and qualify for Prime. As has been the case with Amazon for some time now, if it's not being sold by Amazon directly then it's a crap-shoot; you're basically buying eBay style and hoping for the best. Prime shipping doesn't change that.