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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.
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.
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.
Ever thought about sharing the parts of amazon prime you don't use?
I don't use prime music the selection sucks but my sister likes it and she has a lot of expensive ebooks for school on her amazon account.
Lucky for her one of those ebooks was so expensive it came with a free one year prime sub.
SSO is a rarther moot point for the next 8 months or so.
Also amazon likes to remind you of the prime benefits you aren't using or can't use.
For instance the kindle owners lending library is a prime benefit I have a kindle app on my ipad but since it is not a "kindle" I am not allowed to use the library despite having paid for it.
What RDW said about stripping the drm from the books and having them saved on the device is the best idea I have heard so far.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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'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!
If Prime Instant Video were free then a poor service might be justifiable, although even then it couldn't be considered an asset if it's poor. But Amazon actually increased the cost of Prime membership when they added Prime Instant Video so in no way can it be considered free.
Prime Instant Video was announced in Feb, 2011, but they didn't increase the cost of Prime membership until March 2014.
When they announced the price increase, one analyst said: he was surprised that no additional services were announced as part of the price hike, but noted that Prime’s “value to consumers has risen greatly over the past nine years, as the price has been held flat.