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Amazon is Raising the Price of Prime Monthly Memberships by Nearly 20 Percent (recode.net)
Amazon is boosting the price of its monthly Prime membership fees for new and existing members by nearly 20%. The online retailer said Friday its annual membership fee of $99 will not change. From a report: The increase comes less than two years after Amazon first introduced the monthly payment option as a way to attract new Prime members who either couldn't afford the annual membership of $99, which is not increasing, or didn't want to commit to using the service continuously. Prime is the engine at the center of the Amazon commerce machine -- Prime members buy from Amazon more frequently than non-Prime members and also spend more, hence why Amazon introduced the monthly option to lure new members. So if the company is raising the fee, you can bet that it discovered the current $10.99 was just not sustainable.
of course it's sustainable, otherwise they would have raised the $99 yearly fee. The price hike is just to make some people to switch to the full year price, thinking they will get the better deal. It will work for some, and savvy people will only subscribe for november (black friday) and july (prime day)
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Back when I was on a free trial of Prime, I switched all of my preorders to the free two-day shipping option. After the free trial was up, all of my preorders (some of which would not ship for several months) retained the free two-day shipping. So yeah, I can totally see people signing up for a month of prime in order to place a bunch of orders.
It seems more to prevent people from paying $10 and binge-watching all of Amazon's exclusives in a single month.
THIS. Or, at the very least, this is probably part of the decision making process. I doubt there's any one issue.
* greed/wanting more money... this doesn't make sense as a reason, because it relies on the chance that people will still get the monthly sub, which is more expensive than the yearly sub.
* seasonal shipping.. this is probably part of the reason.
* binge watching amazon exclusives (or other vids)... prime video alone, IMO, isn't worth the full prime price. If someone isn't reaping many of the other benefits, then a periodic binge on a one month sub is the only way it'd make sense.... and then, who cares if it's a few bucks more?
* possibly a buffer in prep for the lack of Net Neutrality... if they need to start shelling out cash for fast lanes to ISP's, that has to come from somewhere
If they had had a monthly option when I signed up, and it was close to the same price, I would have gone monthly only when needed/wanted.