PSA: Amazon Will Increase Price of Prime To $119 (cnbc.com)

EzInKy writes: Effective on May 11, Jeff Bezos says the price of Prime membership will increase to $119 from $99. Now, as much as I have enjoyed the free shipping over these many years, I just don't believe that benefit outweighs the increased cost of membership. Existing Prime members will have until June 16 to renew their membership at the current $99 price-point, notes CNBC. In its first quarter earnings call, Amazon attributed the price increase to the service's rising costs, noting that this was its first price hike since March 2014.

Comments

$10/month

[indytx]

So, $10/month for unlimited, free 2-day delivery which often includes Sunday delivery along with streaming video is too much for the poster?

Re:$10/month

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want is a version of Amazon prime that is just for fast shipping. I really don't need the music or streaming service which is what I suspect most people don't want either.

Re:$10/month

[Desprez]

Is this surprising? That different people have different needs? If you don't order that often, it's a net loss.

I tried prime a while back when it cost even less, and it wasn't worth it for me. Their streaming content was mostly available elsewhere, and their interface was much worse than others, while constantly trying to shove additional-cost content in my face.

Re: $10/month

[AmiMoJo]

Prime is one of those services that relies on most people not getting their money's worth from it. It basically amortises the cost of two day shipping over everyone using it. Some will win, some will lose.

In the UK it's worse than that though, because most items eligible for Prime cost more anyway. It usually costs the same to buy the non-Prime version and just pay for next day shipping on top.

I get the impression that the selection of stuff available in the US is much better too, especially since they bought that grocery chain.

Re: $10/month

[SunTzuWarmaster]

See my above post. I am about the following value from Prime:
  - ~5 trips to the store
  - $94 in discounts/savings
  - a streaming video service

Given that I'm now paying $120 for this benefit, it actually is pretty close to the margin. The alternative is $120 in Netflix (which is better), making 5 trips to the store, and hunting around for WalMart coupons of equivalent value.

Re:$10/month

[Mitreya]

All I want is a version of Amazon prime that is just for fast shipping. I really don't need the music or streaming service

Ok. Instead of $10/month, you can have a $9.93/month service with just the shipping.
Shipping is the only one that costs money per-customer. Digital items are a fixed cost that is amortized among many millions of existing subscribers.

Re:$10/month

[registrations_suck]

Amazon says the +$20 is due to the increased budgets for content creation, acquisition and delivery. Seems reasonable that if that is the case, then only the people who want those services pay the +$20.

Personally, I watch the "free" Prime Video because it is there anyway. I don't give a shit about it. If Amazon offered Prime without it, at a savings of $20 or $30 or more, fuck yeah, I'd sign up for that "Prime Lite".

Re:$10/month

[GuB-42]

$10 is about how much it costs extra to get 2-day delivery without prime. If you order from Amazon once a month, then $10/month is too much, simple maths.

Now, for the other services (ex: video streaming), it is only worth it if you actually use them. If the shows you watch aren't on Amazon platform, even $0.01 is too much.

Going from $100 to $120 may just be the tipping point for some people. And my gut feeling is that it is not by chance. Like any company, Amazon seeks to maximize profit. The $99 price was already chosen with that in mind: make it cheaper means less profit, and more expensive means less subscriptions. With the new price, they know they are going to lose some subscriptions, but for them, the $100-$120 demographic they probably identified long ago isn't worth losing $20 per subscriber.

Re:$10/month

[CastrTroy]

Seems like they are trying to give too much under a single service. They are trying to be Netflix, Spotify, a library, and a shipping service, all for a very similar price to what Netflix and Spotify charge for their sevices.

Re: $10/month

[link-error]

I also buy a ton of stuff from Amazon. I'm afraid to tally the order history!
      Even with prime, I often let a few things build up in the cart for a single order, but they frequently still end up shipping multiple deliveries.

        However, that approach works well for non-prime members, since $35+ orders are free anyway. Sure, they'll sit on the order for 3-4 days before actually initiating the delivery, but if I'm not in a hurry, who cares. Every now and then, paying for 2 day delivery or running to a store is still a good option saving money overall.

        We'll probably drop prime now. Amazon just shattered profit estimates, so they aren't hurting for money. It's be interesting to see if they lose more than 20% of their prime members.

Re: $10/month

[Junta]

While it is true that slashdot not supporting unicode is silly, to say that " requires unicode is bizarre. Just because Apple devices think they *must* use unicode to render " doesn't mean you need unicode to do "

Re: $10/month

[Anonymous Coward]

If 2 day delivery is free, why is it the same item with prime always costs more than without it. You're paying twice for that 2 day shipping.

Re: $10/month

[rhazz]

This is why I only get the free 30 day trial prime membership. When I have it, I make more orders, and I make them as soon as I think of them. Otherwise I just queue items in my cart until I have enough for free normal shipping. I think it takes a certain level of consumerism to make the full cost of membership even theoretically worthwhile, and I assume that level is more common in the US. I may also just be cheap.

Re: $10/month

[goombah99]

it's the iphone's smart quotes

Re: $10/month

[goombah99]

I've wondered the same. I think it's because to make 2 day shipping useful it has to be paired with quick handling times which also cost money.

Re:$10/month

[be951]

So, $10/month for unlimited, free 2-day delivery

Depending on where you are, they also include one-day or same day delivery (not even counting 2-4 hour delivery of selected products, plus grocery and restaurant delivery in places "Prime Now" has been rolled out). Plus all the other stuff --video, music, kindle books and magazines, etc... -- which, to be fair, may or may not have value for you.

And you can share (at least some benefits) of membership with family members, roommates, whatever. So you can split the cost. For people who use the benefits even only on a regular-ish basis, it's still a pretty good deal. Especially if you're splitting it 2 or 3 ways.

Re:$10/month

[Anubis IV]

Even with ordering regularly, I never got my money’s worth at the $50 student pricing level that I tried when I was in grad school. If I’m ordering online, I’m doing so because I care more about price than getting the item into my hands as quickly as possible, so whether it arrives in two days or ten days rarely matters to me. There isn’t much of a value-add there.

Likewise, because I’m content to wait, I nearly always order more than $25/$35/whatever at a time, meaning I qualify for free shipping anyway. Amazon once tried to sell me on Prime by misleadingly claiming I would have saved $70 in the prior year had I been a Prime member. When I checked the numbers, however, I had only spent $7 on shipping that entire year. Their “savings” were apparently based on a fictional scenario in which I paid full price for two day shipping on every single order: something I had no interest in doing.

The only time I am confident I hit break-even with Prime was about a decade after grad school when I bought an item that was available to Prime members for $50 less than anywhere else I could find. Amazon renewed me at the $50 price for some reason, despite the multi-year lapse in between, and then I got the item for $50 less than MSRP. I got my money’s worth that day, but I let the subscription lapse at the end of the term when they tried to renew me at $100, because for the remainder of the year the only value my wife and I got from the service were the $1 credits towards Prime Video rentals that we got with each order when we turned down free two-day shipping. We tried using other features (e.g. linking family accounts, free Prime videos, etc.), but ran into so many technical failures and headaches that it merely pushed us away faster.

Prime may be a great value to some people, but as a patient person who’s price conscious, I’m clearly not their target audience.

Re: $10/month

[91degrees]

True, but it doesn't handle left double quotation marks or right double quotation marks, which I think can be categorised as types of quotation mark, even if not the unicode "quotation mark" symbol (which I'd expect to be put in quotation marks to prevent ambiguity).

And ultimately, the byte sequence "e2 80 9c" should probably not be rendered as ISO-8859-1.

Re:$10/month

[arth1]

All I want is a version of Amazon prime that is just for fast shipping. I really don't need the music or streaming service which is what I suspect most people don't want either.

I suspect people have different needs and wants.
Personally, I would rather pay for delivery the few times I use it, and only get the video streaming service. Not shipping, not music. For a subset of video only, $120 per year does not compare favourable to Netflix and Hulu+.
When I buy something online, I prefer to not buy from Amazon, but directly from the producer if possible (it makes warranty a heck of a lot easier), or from someone who has a brick-and-mortar store or local warehouse where I can pick up the purchase within a couple of hours. Even express delivery is slow compared to that.

I'd love to see this bundle be broken, so people can choose which parts they want out of the three, and perhaps get a discount for picking more than one. I'm pretty sure that this bundling of unrelated products would even be illegal in some countries, so Amazon likely has a system in place for split services anyhow.

Re:$10/month

[lexman098]

If Amazon offered Prime without it, at a savings of $20 or $30 or more, fuck yeah, I'd sign up for that "Prime Lite".

Which is exactly why they don't. They sign you up for something you want and then try to get you hooked on things you didn't think you wanted.

Re: $10/month

[SlaveToTheGrind]

In the UK it's worse than that though, because most items eligible for Prime cost more anyway. It usually costs the same to buy the non-Prime version and just pay for next day shipping on top.

The math may be mildly better than that in the US, but not by much. I call it the "Prime tax."

Re: $10/month

[ArmoredDragon]

About that -- Amazon doesn't do quick handling anymore. These days, it's pretty rate that Amazon ships my stuff on the same day, sometimes waiting as long as 3 days to ship it, thus making my 2 day shipping more like 5 day shipping. The last eight or so orders I've made have taken no less than 4 days. Their excuse is that they give you two day free shipping, but that doesn't mean they have to actually ship it the same day. Holidays are understandable, but we're well outside of the busy shipping season.

Meanwhile, they keep adding these gimmicks, like a streaming video service that is basically a pay per view service with an attached monthly fee while much of their content is offered at a flat rate on netflix, hbo, hulu, and others.

Re:$10/month

[WaffleMonster]

The $99 price was already chosen with that in mind: make it cheaper means less profit, and more expensive means less subscriptions. With the new price, they know they are going to lose some subscriptions, but for them, the $100-$120 demographic they probably identified long ago isn't worth losing $20 per subscriber.

This isn't just about losing subscriptions it is also about losing sales as competitors full in the vacuum.

Re: $10/month

[Holi]

Interesting you say that. Since Amazon has been relying on their own logistics in my area I have found that their delivery has gotten far worse.
Overnight orders delayed by several days(FBA not SFP so no blaming 3rd parties) .
Prime orders not making the 2 day delivery time
Orders of Prime listed items defaulting to non prime sellers , often with no warning.

I make no claim how it is in your neck of the woods but around here, even with a warehouse in spitting distance, Prime seems to be losing its luster.

Re: $10/month

[Miamicanes]

The UK has one advantage compared to ~80% of the continental US... it's big enough to merit at least one full-size distribution center, but compact enough to allow next-day delivery to the most urban 80-90% of the UK (plus the most urban 70-90% of Ireland) without needing to rely on expensive air cargo.

Even back in the Victorian era, cities in the UK had INSANELY fast mail delivery (compared to all but the most major of big cities in the US, like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco)... I think London had 6-12 deliveries per day (other big cities had 3-6), with 6-12 additional collections in between deliveries, so you could do insane things like post a lunch invitation to someone before bed & receive their reply by 11am (as long as you were both in the same city, or one was in London & the other was in a major city). From what I read, Victorian-era small package delivery was same-day (within a city, or to/from London) or (worst-case) next day (say, Southhampton to Edinburgh). Apparently, package delivery times took a MAJOR hit in the 20th century, though (phones rendered hourly mail service increasingly unnecessary, and packages no longer had the benefit of the staffing & infrastructure necessary for around-the-clock collection, sorting, transport, and delivery).

Re:$10/month

[swillden]

If Amazon offered Prime without it, at a savings of $20 or $30 or more, fuck yeah, I'd sign up for that "Prime Lite".

Which is exactly why they don't. They sign you up for something you want and then try to get you hooked on things you didn't think you wanted.

I suppose. $99 or $119, or even more, is worth it to me for the shipping. I'll bet my house averages three Amazon package deliveries per day, six days per week. We absolutely get our money's worth out of it. But I really have no interest in their video services. I've looked a handful of times and never found anything interesting. And even if it were interesting, it doesn't work very well on Chromecast, which means I would only use it on computer or mobile device screens. Meh.

Re: $10/month

[ArmoredDragon]

An annoying thing with Amazon's free shipping, is that they'll just sit on it for up to 3 weeks before shipping it. They're starting to do this with prime as well, though not quite as long. I honestly can't recall the last time that my prime order was shipped the same day or at least the day after. Occasionally, in the past, I would get my two day order the very next day, especially if I ordered on a Sunday, but they only delayed it if the item was back-ordered, which is fine. The most recent items they shipped me (two certificate frames, which by the way came in two separate packages, one taking an extra day) I had to wait 5 days before getting it. Amazon says their service only guarantees two day shipping, but that doesn't mean they have to ship it within two days. Meanwhile, newegg, jet, walmart, target, and a few others I've ordered from, all ship within 24 hours still, even with their free shipping options.

Re: $10/month

[Miamicanes]

Power & Water is a bit of a reach, as is healthcare SERVICE. Prescription drugs, however, are ripe territory for poaching. Amazon has the capital resources to do things like find foreign suppliers for semi-commodity drugs sold in the US whose supply has tightened due to mergers & acquisitions, then pay to get those foreign suppliers FDA-approved in return for making them beholden to Amazon thereafter. Walgreens & CVS have lots of market power, but Amazon can out-spend them on capital investments with barely a blip on their balance sheet beyond the next quarter.

Re: $10/month

[Wycliffe]

Prime is one of those services that relies on most people not getting their money's worth from it. It basically amortises the cost of two day shipping over everyone using it. Some will win, some will lose.

They probably have a few people who don't get their money's worth but that's not their main business plan. By having an upfront sunk cost, they are actually hoping that once you have a membership that you order everything from them. That's exactly what most people I know who have prime do. That are ordering almost everything from amazon so amazon breaks even on the shipping and makes it up with the increased volume.

Re:$10/month

[cayenne8]

I just saw this..and well, ok, I'll go with $120/yr I guess, but any more than that, and I think I"ll drop too.

I do most of my shopping with Amazon and like the 2 day shipping.

I don't find their video offerings all that attractive, but then again, I don't find as much on Netflix as I used to, I miss the "real" movies they used to have.

I have come to start using the free Prime Amazon music in my car a lot when driving and enjoy that....and this summer by the pool, I hope to enjoy the prime books they offer as part of the program too....

Prime gives a lot, but I think $120/yr is my ceiling. I remember the $79 days too.

Re: $10/month

[Wycliffe]

Meanwhile, they keep adding these gimmicks, like a streaming video service that is basically a pay per view service with an attached monthly fee while much of their content is offered at a flat rate on netflix, hbo, hulu, and others.

You don't need to be a prime member for their pay-per-view content. Prime Video works the same as netflix. You have a bunch of videos you can watch for free. The difference is that unlike netflix not everything available to stream is free. Their free selection is very comparable to netflix The problem I have is that especially with kids, having it mixed together tempts you to pay for the non-free stuff and their non-free stuff is way too expensive.

Re:$10/month

[cyberchondriac]

Depends on how much or often you shop online.
It is worth bearing in mind that the shipping isn't truly totally free, or at least not completely mitigated by the membership fee, most times. I have increasingly noticed products on Amazon that are notably more expensive when bought via Prime than if, for the exact same product, the shipping cost is separate and extra; so in truth Amazon is wrapping a certain amount of the shipping charges into the upfront price of the product and just presenting it as a single price. This doesn't apply to all Prime available products because not all are available w/o Prime or from 3rd party sellers, but for those items that are, you can see there's clearly a price difference. And you're paying a membership fee on top of that.
It seems more like you're actually paying normal shipping charges, but the upgrade to 2 day is what's free, not shipping in total.

However, if you also make use of the Prime Video and Music regularly, and like Sunday deliveries, then this is probably still a good deal. It's just not as fantastic a deal as first impressions tend to lead one to believe.

Re: $10/month

[AmiMoJo]

This is true, same day delivery used to be a thing in parts of the UK.

You can get same day delivery in Tokyo now. On the other hand, Yamato Transport, the biggest delivery firm in Japan, just raised prices because they said the workload was too high for their staff and they needed to cut back.

Re:$10/month

[sdinfoserv]

Perspective.... the company doubled it's profit... as it has crushed competitors, it's using that market dominance to extract even more profit from already loyal users. The question is, just how much profit does one company or one individual need?

Re: $10/month

[AmiMoJo]

I use the free 30 days now and then. They offer it to be regularly for some reason.

Re: $10/month

[I4ko]

I have also seen this. I've lived in areas with amazon warehouses, and unless I pay for the same day shipping, where I will have the order arrive next day, the two-day delivery on prime will take 5 days at least, because amazon will sit on their hands for 3 days before doing the picking of the order.

Re: $10/month

[FatdogHaiku]

If you say something they usually give you a credit towards digital merch or add an extra month of (lackluster?) service to your Prime account. They have missed the mark a few times, but if you call they will make some kind of amends... and it's hard to beat the return policy on FBA.

Re:$10/month

[adosch]

Thanks not only being the first poster, but also for the math refresher to figure out a monthly cost. All of our heads were spinning trying to break that down. Anyway...

Yes depending on where you live, it's still phenominal, but let's not oversell this and what Amazon Prime has become: not as advertised anymore.

I'll say Amazon Prime is a bloaty service and no where near the '2-day shipping' it used to be (when it was just exclusively a membership for S&H discounts). I live but 3 hours from a distribution 'hub' in the Midwest. Up until 2-3 years ago, I could consistently order anything marked prime worthy, even if I ordered in the evening past 5:00pm in my timezone, I would get it two days after. And yes, like others have said, even Sunday deliveries.Now? Shit, if I order Monday with 2-day Prime, I'm lucky to get it Thursday. If I order any time past Wednesday evening, I'm lucky to get it Saturday night, or it's out until Monday. Any more, I've paid extra for the '1-day shipping' just to get to my residence in 2-days like it's advertised.

I'm not going to pretend I know a single lick of putting together a successful Big Machine we call 'Amazon Prime' for product shipping together. I have no idea. I just know from a pure consumerism point of view, it's not close to what it used to. It's more expensive, so even harder to justify. And all the shit I still don't use (Amazon Prime Streaming for instance) and all the media shit that's now 'a part' of Prime when it was just a really nice quasi-membership for discounted shipping is now a squeeze.

Re: $10/month

[Asgard]

Also useful for summing your sales-tax paid for use in taxes.

Re: $10/month

[apoc.famine]

I think that's a logical conclusion, but it might not be the correct one.

Prime could be a loss leader, but Prime members could buy substantially more products because of the benefits it provides. I don't know enough about Amazon's finances to know whether or not that's true, but I also don't know anyone with Prime who doesn't use it heavily.

It's entirely possible that it doesn't directly make Amazon money, but instead ups their sales volume.

Re: $10/month

[cayenne8]

An annoying thing with Amazon's free shipping, is that they'll just sit on it for up to 3 weeks before shipping it. They're starting to do this with prime as well, though not quite as long. I honestly can't recall the last time that my prime order was shipped the same day or at least the day after.

Wow..where do you live?

I live in New Orleans....and I'd say that almost everything I order that is available for Prime shipment, gets shipped that day.

I seem to almost always get an email saying something I ordered a few hours ago is now being shipped.

3rd party items sometimes take a bit more than a day to ship, but even with those, I find MOST of them from 3rd parties with Prime listed ship and arrive within the 2 days.

And, the exceptions to this, are usually quite plainly marked when ordering as to when it will arrive.

Where do you live, I wonder if this is regional?

Re: $10/month

[cayenne8]

The math may be mildly better than that in the US, but not by much. I call it the "Prime tax."

Whenever I'm shopping and find an item, I see what is offered, and then click the link to see other sellers, etc.

Ever since Amazon sold items started charging sales tax on items shipped to me (about a year now)...I often look to see if same item is available by 3rd party on Prime.. Often I see those at same price, but no sales tax and I order from them.

Other times, I see 3rd party prices and then I compare if they would be a better deal or now than Amazon with tax added.

It takes a couple of extra steps, but I find it is worth it to get the best deal.

Re: $10/month

[cayenne8]

About that -- Amazon doesn't do quick handling anymore. These days, it's pretty rate that Amazon ships my stuff on the same day, sometimes waiting as long as 3 days to ship it, thus making my 2 day shipping more like 5 day shipping. The last eight or so orders I've made have taken no less than 4 days. Their excuse is that they give you two day free shipping, but that doesn't mean they have to actually ship it the same day. Holidays are understandable, but we're well outside of the busy shipping season.

Where do you live?

I live in New Orleans, and I'd say that 99% of the time, if it says Prime 2 day shipping, it ships the day I buy it and is generally here in 2 days, sometimes delivered at no extra charge on Saturday or Sunday.

If nothing else, they seem on my orders to be quite accurate on shipping per the messages they give at checkout when items will arrive.

Re: $10/month

[sexconker]

Amazon says their service only guarantees two day shipping, but that doesn't mean they have to ship it within two days.

And this is why I screenshot the order page before I click the final confirmation button.
There's a line that says "Guaranteed Delivery By ...". It's a lie about half the time.

Re: $10/month

[sexconker]

We all know that. We're pointing out how absurd it is to use "smart quotes", which require a different encoding, just to render a fucking " or '.

OH, but's it's CURLY!!!

WHO GIVES A SHIT?

Re: $10/month

[sexconker]

left double quotation marks

"

right double quotation marks

"

"Bam."

A slight angling and 2 different glyphs doesn't make them easier to read or remove ambiguity in parsing. Are you the kind of person who argues for the double pipe || as a single glyph?

Re:$10/month

[sexconker]

Digital items are a fixed cost that is amortized among many millions of existing subscribers.

Nope. For content they license they have to pay per subscriber or viewer. They may negotiate a flat fee for a limited duration license available to all, but the price negotiation includes such things as "How many subscribers do you have?" and "How many people watched our show last year?".

And for the content they produce, well, Jeremy Clarkson doesn't come cheap.

Re:$10/month

[MBGMorden]

$10 is about how much it costs extra to get 2-day delivery without prime. If you order from Amazon once a month, then $10/month is too much, simple maths.

I think you seriously underestimate how often a lot of people order from Amazon. For myself I don't even shop locally for almost anything anymore. I probably order from amazon at least twice per week - sometimes a lot more than that.

Re:$10/month

[mschuyler]

No, but it is not necessary. I don't pay shipping at all because I accumulate to the minimum and change to "free delivery" for everything. Sure, it takes a few more days. I am capable of anticipating need and do not need anything immediately. Needing to use Prime just shows a lack of planning on your part. To me it is a complete waste of money. .

Re: $10/month

[cayenne8]

Please explain to me why the exact same item listed on amazon with and without prime always costs more with prime?

I've never seen that.

Can you provide some examples?

Re: $10/month

[AmiMoJo]

The one way it does make sense is if you care more about your time than getting the best deal. Again, Amazon UK's selection isn't great, but at least for most stuff you could save yourself some time looking for a good deal and going through checkout systems etc. just by buying more from Amazon.

Re:$10/month

[Solandri]

Prime is a lot more than free shipping and streaming music, video, and ebooks. The two biggest Prime benefits IMHO which most people don't know about are

• the Amazon Prime Visa card which gives 5% back on all purchases from Amazon. It's rewarded as credits you can apply to new purchases on Amazon, so has an effective 4.75% cash back rate. So if you spend more than about $2100/yr on Amazon (going up to $2500/yr @ $120 for Prime), it's actually more expensive not to get Prime.
• Prime Photos which gives you unlimited cloud storage of photos of any size. Photos are the most common "irreplaceable" data that people lose when their single backup (e.g. external HDD) dies. I highly recommend a second backup to a cloud service (where the hosting company takes care of hardware failures for you). And if you're a photographer with a huge library that needs backing up, this is the only unlimited storage I've found at a reasonable price. Google's unlimited photo storage requires downsizing everything to 2048x2048 or smaller.

Re: $10/month

[The Grim Reefer]

ree only when compared to non-prime buyers, and Amazon insists on $35 or more for 'free' ship.

Actually Amazon dropped that back to $25 some time ago. They just didn't make a big deal about it.

Re: $10/month

[CrashNBrn]

Roku promotes the "included with Prime" video content, and provides an option to filter out non-free content. As an added plus, "Roku Search" finds media across all the various streaming services.

Re:$10/month

[Darinbob]

Well, I buy maybe $50/year from Amazon... So all those Amazon cultists trying to convert me by claiming I'll save money should go find another sucker.

Re: $10/month

[Wycliffe]

Roku is what I use and at least the amazon app I have mixes them all together and I haven't been able to figure out how to hide the paid content from my kids.
There is also a ton of overlap between prime/netflix/hulu so it seems like a waste of money to subscribe to more than one at a time.

Re: $10/month

[Night Goat]

Where do you live?

I've got the same problem and I live in Minneapolis. I canceled my Prime membership because maybe 30-50% of the time, the shipping was not actually two-day shipping. I don't use the other features, so the shipping was pretty crucial for them to get right. Now, as a non-Prime customer, they usually take a few days to ship my order. My wife had something take a week before it left the warehouse! We've got an Amazon warehouse about 30 minutes from us, too, so one would expect better service.

Re: $10/month

[CrashNBrn]

Press the [*] asterisk on the remote, you get a filter context menu.

Re: $10/month

[Darinbob]

Of course you'd have to use it heavily. If you spend $100 to get free shipping, then common sense means you need to be enough stuff so that the $100 breaks even. It's not for the casual customers. The problem is making sure that you don't spend so much on stuff you don't need or can get more cheaply elsewhere that you lose money in the end.

I do see prime members that aren't just heavy users, they're also making it a lifestyle and proselytizing. Afterall, if you've sunk in so much money then you have to justify it to yourself and your friends. "OMG, these are the best paper towels ever, and it was free shipping!"

Re: $10/month

[CrashNBrn]

Netlifx has lost so much content over the last couple years, that I don't notice much overlap these days. At least some of it has gone to Hulu or Amazon, but most of the movies have been put behind another paywall.

Re: $10/month

[Darinbob]

If the local stores don't have a good deal, then I won't buy the item. The problem with buying everything you ever need in life from Amazon means you don't have that little nudge that says "you don't need a turnip twaddler". Especially when you feel you need over $35 in order to qualify for free shipping, you have internal pressure to buy something you didn't thnk you needed 10 minutes earlier.

Re:$10/month

[Darinbob]

It's not even as good, though they have improved a bit. Origiinally you had to pay the $99 up front to get their streaming service, which effectively limited their customers to existing prime members ("omg, it's free because I already paid!"). Though later I heard they made it month to month. My brother stopped using their video because everything he wanted to see required an additional payment. So now I the only advantage they have left is that they have some exclusives that you can't get on other services. If this service hadn't been tied to Prime, I don't think it would have gotten off the ground.

Re: $10/month

[pr0fessor]

I live in the rural midwest it's nice I can go outside and enjoy without a bunch of people, traffic, pollution, crime, etc... unfortunately that also means either I settle for what is local or order things on-line. Free two day shipping to the middle of nowhere and streaming service for $119/year sounds like a good deal to me.

Re: $10/month

[Osgeld]

yea ya lazy bums go out, use your own gas, go to the walmart, which is the only store that has what you are looking for, pay 10+ % more + tax, lug it out to the car yourself, use more gas to drive it back, and drag it to your own front porch

WHY THE FUCK WOULDNT EVERYONE WANT THIS?

Re: $10/month

[Rakarra]

Stand up, walk outside, and make use of the local stores.

Also often closed on Sunday.

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

I'm in Vancouver area and their warehouse seems to have their shit together. Same day delivery is available at my friends place 20 minutes away. Order by noon, guaranteed by 9pm, but so far always delivered by 6:30pm. Saturday and Sunday delivery available. I've ordered stuff late Friday night and was delivered by Canada Post on Monday. No one else can shave off a business day with Canada post. The only company that impresses me as much is Digikey and FedEx. Placed order at 5:48pm. On FedEx truck at 6:08pm, delivered to another Country by noon next day, for $8 Canadian.

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

The numbers I was told by a person who owned a warehouse and moved his product to Amazon, had square footage from Amazon a fraction of what it would cost himself to warehouse it. He's cutting out two full time employees. I imagine that would offset fees quite a bit.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

When I read comments like this, I thank $DEITY that your generation isn't long for this world.
If you aren't an old fuck, then your parents damaged you beyond repair.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

Haven't had this problem. Not even anything close, and I am a very heavy use of both Prime free shipping (delivered to my local 7-11 Amazon Locker) and Prime Now. I'd say me or my girlfriend have a few things shipped per month (not including the recurring shipments, like filters), and Prime Now a couple times a week.
I'm in Seattle, so I don't know if that makes any difference. But the average time between me ordering something, and driving down the street to 7-11 to pick it up, is about 2 days.

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

It's counterfeit sold by third party. Next question?

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

Complain each time. You'll get a credit and possibly they'll make sure USPS takes responsibility and it stops.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

My boss often fucks up our billing software by using smart mac dashes, which are a slightly longer unicode dash. Messes up SQL procedures and reports all over the place. It's bad enough that I have daily jobs that go through the database and replace them with ASCII dashes.

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

Unlimited is the qualifier. It's $3.99 for each shipment below $35 in Canada. That's not a limit on Prime.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

Left and right quotation marks? Christ.
Do you know why your keyboard doesn't have left and right quotation marks? Because it's a stupid fucking idea. God knows how many things they fuck up beyond simple rendering of the glyphs.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

I'm confused. Is the first quotation mark in "Bam" a starting quotation mark, or an ending quotation mark?

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

Same in Seattle.

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

Holy shit, 5%! Chase pulled the Amazon Canada Visa which was only 2% back on Amazon and 1% everywhere else. It was my favourite card because no additional exchange fees. Don't expect that to last.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

Please explain to me why you are spreading falsehoods as an AC?

Re: $10/month

[Brockmire]

FREE hamburger* *with purchase of another hamburger and two drinks. That is scummy. And I hate that. But do you consider buying season passes to amusement parks or skiing? That's not the same in any way.

Re:$10/month

[bill_mcgonigle]

Same. I have a few decent TV's and audio setups with six Chromecasts for Internet content.

I'm sure as hell not going to buy six Amazon Fire sticks at $35 a pop for their shitty content selection. Everything else I do works fine with Chromecast.

I was just looking into what the Amazon shipping costs are if I cancel Prime. I don't need to fund Bezo's Oscar aspirations and they don't care about their stuff working with my setup. This is the kind of shit the FTC gets its panties in a wedge about, and that's before Bezos started taunting Trump. Maybe they're both looking to get into a fight.

Re: $10/month

[lsllll]

I just checked my order history and it looks like I order between 160-200 orders per year from Amazon, and most of those are one or two items, and I agree that it's a lifestyle. Not only am I getting great prices (albeit to the detriment of working conditions of Amazon workers, see next paragraph), but I also avoid paying sales tax on most of them, I can comparative shop for the exact product I want from the seller with the best price, I get a GREAT return policy, and I don't have to waste my time going from store to store to find a good price or the exact price I want. I do ALL my shopping on Amazon, with the exception of pantry items, but I may switch to that, too, at some point.

Talking about the working conditions at Amazon, I haven't purchased anything from Walmart in the past 15 years. I boycotted them because of their treatment of workers and suppliers. I am having a real hard time with my conscience making purchases from Amazon, though. If the working conditions are truly as bad as they say they are (workers pissing in bottles, afraid that a bathroom break might dip their productivity), then I'd be a hypocrite if I continued to purchase from Amazon.

The issue is that I don't really see an alternative for my lifestyle. There has to be a reasonableness to when I can expect items arriving at my door. I also run a business and order a lot of computer parts. Some of the items I can wait on and may actually end up ordering them from Newegg and they arrive whenever, but some I really need to know that it'll be here two days from now. There's NO service out there that can compete with Amazon on the shipping and delivery AND compare with Amazon's prices. When Amazon says I'll receive an item on Sunday, I WILL receive it on Sunday, period. That guarantee is worth everything.

Re: $10/month

[Darinbob]

You don't technically avoid paying sales taxes, the majority of states still require you to pay sales tax. Sure, you may be avoiding this by not adding it on your tax forms, but don't confuse that with there being no legal requirement to pay the sales tax.

Re: $10/month

[ArmoredDragon]

Interesting. I've spent a total of 13,772.01, and received a total of 3,122.69 in refunds.

Re: $10/month

[91degrees]

Which is completely not my point! My point is the difference between quotation marks and "quotation marks" as descriptive terms; not the difference between the characters.

A quotation mark is any form of quotation mark. It could mean any unicode characters that represents any form of quotation mark, including 0022, 201C, 201D, or others. Slashdot is crap if you want to use certain quotation marks because most systems assume unicode; It is a pretty well established standard after all, and Slashdot is meant to be a site that appeals to techies.

If you are referring specifically to unicode character 0022, referred to by unicode simply as "Quotation mark", then I would urge you to actually make it clear that you are referring to this specific character, by using the name in quotes. If you are using the term without quotes then most people would assume you are describing any of the quotation mark characters.

The symbols you used both look like the regular "Quotation mark" character, rather than the left double quotation mark.

Are you the kind of person who argues for the double pipe || as a single glyph?

It is a single glyph. Unicode #2016. Why would I need to argue for it? Is there a proposal to remove it from the spec?

Re: $10/month

[91degrees]

I imagine it's because of limited space on the keyboard.

But if an input device has the ability to send characters using a recognised standard, then there's no reason that Slashdot should fuck up when trying to display them. I mean sticking to a character set that doesn't even support the Euro symbol is idiotic. If, as a side effect, it also ends up supporting slightly prettier looking quotes, then all the better.

Re:$10/month

[Hognoxious]

I'll bet my house averages three Amazon package deliveries per day, six days per week.

Do you buy bread - by the individual slice?

You do more per week than I can even remember. You must do more in a month than I've done in total.

Re: $10/month

[Cederic]

Thing is, by having Prime I'm avoiding spending the same amount on Netflix.

It's basically free.

Re: $10/month

[Cederic]

it's pretty rate that Amazon ships my stuff on the same day

It's pretty rare that Amazon deliver my stuff on the same day. Probably only one in ten orders.

Next day for half of the rest, and the day after for most of what's left.

gimmicks, like a streaming video service that is basically a pay per view service

Strange. I pay Amazon no money at all beyond Prime to view films on their streaming service. Maybe it's different in the US.

much of their content is offered at a flat rate on netflix, hbo, hulu, and others.

Others including Amazon Prime, which I already pay for, so I don't need to pay for the ones you've named.

Re: $10/month

[easyTree]

The part where the seller increases the item cost by the amount of the delivery charge if you opt for Prime delivery?

Re: $10/month

[easyTree]

Amazon should make a web based tool which allows disgruntled customers to whip their employees over the internet.

Re: $10/month

[easyTree]

Even car insurance here costs up to 15% less if you need it starting in 20days time verses next day. - which is a piss take.

Pro Tip, business will exploit any opportunity to increase costs to consumers without delivering additional value.

I'm particularly fond of the "persuade government to create legislation to make your product mandatory; collude with the rest of the market to ensure there's no real choice then continually increase prices" approach.

Re:$10/month

[swillden]

I'll bet my house averages three Amazon package deliveries per day, six days per week.

Do you buy bread - by the individual slice?

You do more per week than I can even remember. You must do more in a month than I've done in total.

There are five working adults living in my house, all using my Prime account. And, yes, we buy lots of groceries on Amazon, as well as clothing, electronics, sporting goods, auto parts... you name it. Other than perishables, we buy pretty much everything online, and most of it from Amazon, because of the combination of decent prices, good service and fast/cheap shipping.

Re:$10/month

[renegade600]

that free delivery is not that free. next time you are on amazon and see a prime price, look at the third party prices for the same item. Not all but a few are actually cheaper than amazon and when you add in the shipping it is about the same.

what I found interesting, a few months ago, I was looking for a tablet. I found one where the manufacturer's retail price was 399 but on amazon, the prime price was 429. well above the manufacturers retail price. And this was an amazon sale, not fulfilling for another or third party price.

From where I stand, you are paying for shipping twice if you have prime. Most items I get are over 35 bucks so I still get free shipping, and I can wait an extra day or two for the shipment.

Re: $10/month

[cthulhu11]

Not having to schlep a cart load of tp every month alone is worth the cost.

Re: $10/month

[DamnOregonian]

I imagine it's because of limited space on the keyboard.

While I can't argue that space on a keyboard isn't limited, you can't really argue limited space is why a key encoding that glyph isn't included.
More keys, functions, and oddities are added to keyboards all the time.
I'm not justifying slashdot's lack of unicode support, only the idiocy behind replacement of standard ASCII code points with unicode semi-equivalents.
How much code must be changed to match anything that could be considered a quotation mark, instead of... just a quotation mark, for the purpose of interpreting input?
Will we get start and end back-ticks next? Start and end single quotes? Can I get a distinction between floating points/commas and periods/commas?
This discussion almost makes me think slashdot *shouldn't* support unicode.

Re: $10/month

[91degrees]

True. Unicode should be limited to text representation and nothing else. I have no problems with a programming language parser considering any non-ASCII character an error (with the exception of characters within strings and comments). But this does still mean slashdot comments should handle unicode.

Not sure how I feel about the iPhone's behaviour in this case. It's really not a device that people will generally use to type code after all.

Re: $10/month

[kaatochacha]

So what you're saying is "I'm moral when it's convenient."

Re: $10/month

[kaatochacha]

If you use a cart of TP every month, you've got bigger problems than figuring out if prime is worth it.

Re: $10/month

[cthulhu11]

It's easy when one works from home.

Boiling frogs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ribbit

Re:Boiling frogs

[pincorrect]

I assume you mean the parable where a frog sitting in water that is slowly heated won't notice it until it is too late, but one thrown in the hot water will immediately jump out. Someone in the Harvard Biology Department actually tested this, and it works the exact opposite way. If you throw a frog in boiling water, it will die instantly. If you put them in cold water and heat it, they will get uncomfortable and jump out.

IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't stream

[Salgak1]

. . . probably not worth it.

On the other hand, if you're like **our** household, buy quite a bit, and quite often, from Amazon, and stream their Included-in-Prime video content, 10 bucks a month is dirt cheap.

So the question is, does Prime meet your needs for the price charged? IF so, get it. IF not, don't. It's THAT simple.

Blue Origin has become more expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh-oh, Jeff's hobby hiking in price?

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[RobinH]

I don't use the video service - it didn't seem to have much that interested me. On the other hand, I regularly find stuff to buy that's less expensive than the store (even basic household items) that I regularly just order it from my phone when I realize I'm almost out. It arrives 2 days later. Even if it were the same price it'd be more convenient that I don't have to go to the store for one item, but it's almost always cheaper!

Also, many things that are $10 or $20 on Amazon or e-bay are $3.25 from AliExpress, free shipping, if you're willing to wait 6-8 weeks.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[Malenx]

There's more to it. I love Prime and have had it since it'd debut. We still order goods of amazon weekly, if not more. However, when I first got Prime, the landscape for competition was much different than today. Amazon's success has driven competitors to follow suit and offer free / expedited shipping, reducing the value of Prime. Now they are increasing the cost and justifying it by tacking on extra services.

That's great if you use those services, but consumers that don't are seeing an increase in price and a reduction in value.

I'm personally not sure if I'll renew given I'm on of those in the middle.

Yet another reason to drop Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the hellish conditions in which they make their employees work and the fact that they're monopoly racing the market to the bottom, this is yet another reason to drop Amazon. Maybe with the prime hike they can afford to treat their warehouse employees like human beings.

Also Twitch Prime

[Smidge204]

There's also Twitch Prime, which links your Amazon Prime account with Twitch streaming service, removes ads, includes one free channel subscription and a few other perks. Not everyone's thing but it's value-add if you watch Twitch streams on a regular basis.

Is it too much to hope that the extra money goes towards paying their workers better? :/
=Smidge=

Re:Also Twitch Prime

[freeze128]

Probably to compensate for rising gas prices.

Elasticity

[spinitch]

Amazon will lose some subscribers but their models guesses more will accept to offset. So far Amazon guess write often. Still some folks may wake up and realize they donâ(TM)t use enough.

The devil in the details

[jmd]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-earnings-more-than-double-sending-stock-toward-record-highs-2018-04-26

From the article: "Amazon.com Inc.’s massive growth just grew even more massive in the first quarter, as the e-commerce giant reported Thursday that profit more than doubled and sales continued to accelerate, and the company announced an increase in Prime subscription prices that should add even more."

Profits double and Amazon raises Prime membership fees. Why? Because they can.

Re:The devil in the details

[mjwx]

Profits double and Amazon raises Prime membership fees. Why? Because they can.

That and there still isn't anything quite like it.

If I want to order something from Tesco or Wilkes, I have to pay £3 or more for delivery... and there's no guarantee that is next day. With Amazon prime I pay £79 a year (probably £99 now) which means I just need to order 2.5 things a month to get my money's worth. That doesn't include Amazon Prime video.

Re:The devil in the details

[WankerWeasel]

Bezos just announced last week that they have over 110 million Prime subscribers. So an extra $20 a year means potentially another $2.2 billion in their pockets. Sure, they'll lose a few but the number that drop the service over the increase but the vast majority won't. I'd be surprised if even 5% didn't renew because of it.

Re:The devil in the details

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Just to be clear, the number of profit dollars more than doubled, not the profit margin . Revenue went up significantly as well, as you can imagine.

Net profit went from ~2% last year to ~3% this year. Unexpected oopsies can soak that up real quick.

Another fun way to think about it is that $1.6B net profit was about two tenths of one percent of Amazon's $738B market cap. Increase that by another 10-20x and they can actually start thinking about paying a dividend.

Re:The devil in the details

[JD-1027]

Profits double and Amazon raises Prime membership fees. Why? Because they can.

Thank you, this is a good point to remember.

Do they really need a reason to raise the prices other than "people will pay more"?

So they didn't raise the prices previously because they were just being nice?

Re:The devil in the details

[DontBeAMoran]

Tell me about it. I've seen things in my local grocery store selling at $1.19 per item that somehow magically cost $20 per item and only sold in boxes of 12 on Amazon.ca, shipping not included.

Re:The devil in the details

[larryjoe]

Bezos just announced last week that they have over 110 million Prime subscribers. So an extra $20 a year means potentially another $2.2 billion in their pockets. Sure, they'll lose a few but the number that drop the service over the increase but the vast majority won't. I'd be surprised if even 5% didn't renew because of it.

Amazon has learned the Costco lesson. Membership fees = profit. 100 million Prime members * $99 = $9.9 billion > $1.6 billion/quarter * 4 quarters = $6.4 billion. The membership fees alone account for all of Amazon's profit. OK, not all members pay $99, but it's still a huge number that is likely more than the total profit. So, the retail part of the business only exists to justify the Prime profit center, and that retail operation doesn't need to be profitable or even break even.

Re:The devil in the details

[mjwx]

Tell me about it. I've seen things in my local grocery store selling at $1.19 per item that somehow magically cost $20 per item and only sold in boxes of 12 on Amazon.ca, shipping not included.

Here in the UK we have the opposite, there are so many things sold on Amazon that I couldn't buy in a 50 mile radius. I wanted vacuum cleaner bags for my vacuum... Not a single store in 20 miles had one. Amazon had them for £5 with next day delivery. I ordered them on Saturday, lo and behold they were delivered on a Sunday.

How to solve it

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - wait until the day before the next quarterly earnings call

2 - buy 1 share of AMZN

3 - sell it the next day

The profit will pay for one year of prime.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[turp182]

My wife stumbled upon our order history in Amazon recently, we place a Prime order about every 3 days (for at least the past 2 years).

Prime is worth every penny for us.

We do watch more Netflix than Amazon streaming, but Amazon is where we purchase things rather than our crappy cable provider - AT&T.

Re:Heads-up, not a PSA

[White Yeti]

Granted. It's still very useful for all those users who wouldn't notice the change when it appears once a year on their credit card statement.

Bummer

[kelemvor4]

My prime just renewed in March. Unless I change my mind I think that will be it for me. Prime streaming is useless in my opinion on account of the poor content library and mediocre interface, so it's just a matter of the sometimes free shipping.

Re:Bummer

[Hodr]

They have a couple of good shows (I like Bosh and Sneaky Pete), but more importantly they are investing in a good deal of scifi-fantasy that doesn't typically get a good shake on network TV.

Worth the entire price of Prime? Not really, but where I paid $99 for prime shipping only (and I use it more than ever) the prime video may be worth $20 to me.

Re:Bummer

[rahvin112]

Checkout Lost in Space on Netflix. Very good remake.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[gravewax]

Also, many things that are $10 or $20 on Amazon or e-bay are $3.25 from AliExpress, free shipping, if you're willing to wait 6-8 weeks.

Aliexpress we generally find takes about 2 weeks in Australia. Not bad for saving between 70%+ on amazon prices.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[Junta]

Besides that, for me the difference between 2-day and 5-day isn't that significant to me. Either way it's not instant gratification and I have to order in advance of my need.

poor little amazon

[bonedonut]

i guess profits weren't obscene enough already.

free shipping without prime

[anyaristow]

Shipping is free on any order over $25. Put some low-dollar stuff you want but don't need right away in your cart or on your wishlist, and add one of those items to your cart when you need to get it over $25.

The only reason to have prime is if you are always in a hurry to receive things, and if you instead only pay for that when you need it, you may be better off without prime.

I've learned to plan ahead, and I've become comfortable with ebay and other sources, and not only do I not have to pay for prime, I usually find a better price than Amazon. Particularly on small things and on grocery items, Amazon prices are kinda crap.

The downside of canceling prime is that Bezos is a vindictive SOB. They will hold your orders for up to eight days before shipping. Sometimes they do that, sometimes they ship almost as fast as prime. You just don't know how long an Amazon order will take without prime, so learn to plan ahead. Order stuff before you absolutely need it. If you're in a hurry, get it elsewhere, or pay for shipping.

Re:free shipping without prime

[EdwardFurlong]

I used the trial, at the end of 30 days they gave another 30 days, then I used 6 months free for students.

Two day shipping was nice, there were also some discounts "for prime members only".

I doubt most people really "need" two day shipping,.

Now we know why

[goombah99]

SpaceX had to raise prices for NASA,

Think it would be wiser to split Prime up

[ansizfark]

I feel like it would look better if they just announced that a couple of services would be forked off of the regular Prime level. Fork Prime into a couple of service levels, give them fancy names to make people feel good, like "Prime One" or "Prime Alpha" etc. and INTRODUCE those levels are higher levels. Such as, they could potentially experiment with removing Streaming from the base Prime membership, but you could get it for only $5 a month. And they could use this time to also introduce a Prime level that comes with Audible membership, or a Prime level that comes with a credit card that gives you extra rewards, or a Prime level aimed at businesses that comes with a higher tier of AWS.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[Registered Coward v2]

. . . probably not worth it.

On the other hand, if you're like **our** household, buy quite a bit, and quite often, from Amazon, and stream their Included-in-Prime video content, 10 bucks a month is dirt cheap.

So the question is, does Prime meet your needs for the price charged? IF so, get it. IF not, don't. It's THAT simple.

This is /. Please stop trying to bring logic and reason into an argument.

I am in the same situation. I enjoy a number of the Amazon originals plus the some of the back catalogue. Music is OK as well but not as much of some artists I like is available. I find the shipping to be useful as I can buy any Prime item without worrying about shipping costs or getting enough to get free shipping. That makes it useful for smaller items that I can't easily find locally or simply don't want to spend the tase to drive to a store miles away to pick up. The avoided cost of tase probably saves me half or more of the Prime costs; plus I can get heavy items such as go food shipped free as well.

Now back to our regularly schedule Amazon Hate Fest...

Maybe if Prime hadn't been failing so much lately.

[Holi]

The fact that many orders I have ordered in the recent past have failed to be delivered or even shipped on time makes me believe Amazon can no longer live up to the Prime requirements.

When you overnight a Prime product on a Wednesday you should not receive a ship date of the following Monday.
Things like that have already happened to me several times this year and all items were FBA so no third party can be blamed for shipping delays.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[avandesande]

You seem to buy a lot of stuff.

NFL does it again

[bugs2squash]

Yeah, now I'm paying more for NFL content I don't want.

Re:Maybe if Prime hadn't been failing so much late

[avandesande]

Anything you see on amazon just find it on ebay you can get it cheaper and free shipping.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[houghi]

If it is yours, it is stuff. If it belongs to other people, it is shit. So: "You seem to buy a lot of shit."

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[JD-1027]

Like you I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon as well. But I'm never in a hurry for it so standard free shipping has always worked for us. If we don't quite hit the $25 minimum order for free shipping, stuff sits in our cart until it does hit $25. $25 is a pretty low amount, which we seem to hit pretty easily.

Re:Maybe if Prime hadn't been failing so much late

[houghi]

Disclaimer: I live in Belgium.
I would never let something deliver to my home as I am not at home most of the time. They can nit just put it in front of the door, as I would never get it. I might find some package in front of my door, but that does not mean I received anything.
That means I need to have it delivered at my work. That is inconvenient for me, as I then have to take it on the train. SO I have to pick it up. That would be either the post office, a locker (They are available at the train station) if the item is smaller or somewhere at a store.

So unless it is a smaller item that can fit in a locker, I would need to have time to pick it up at the post office or at a store. That would then be on a Saturday. Fast delivery suddenly is not an issue.

I could then just go shopping and buy it in a store.

The price difference is not that much for most things. The few EUR I might save I rather spend on seeing what I buy first. And if speeds is an issue, then I will need it NOW, not tomorrow.

This is ridiculous

[Wolfrider]

--They could have raised it from $99 to $105 and made MILLIONS. $120 feels like extortion, and should be pushed back against. How do we get the massive public outcry started?

Re:This is ridiculous

[PhoenixFlare]

These days? Better get in line - there's so much stuff that deserves massive public outcry, I doubt this even makes the top 10.

Some news stories, a smattering of angry people say they'll cancel their subscriptions, life goes on and Amazon gets more money.

It sucks, but personally it's still worth it to my household, another $20/year is way below my threshold for going on the warpath.

Re:This is ridiculous

[geekmux]

These days? Better get in line...

These days? Good luck finding enough people to actually form a line on any topic. Sure, quite a few people might complain in an "outcry" of sorts, but companies already know that less than 1% of their customers would ever actually get off their ass and DO anything other than rant. This is why they'll continue to do whatever the hell they want to customers; statistics have already proven you won't do a damn thing about it.

It sucks, but personally it's still worth it to my household, another $20/year is way below my threshold for going on the warpath.

Death by 1,000 cuts is the preferred tactic because it always seems to work. And now we return to As the Frog Boils...

PSA?

[ebcdic]

What does PSA in the headline mean?

A 20% increase but still not that bad

[BlueCoder]

I use to wait til I had the 50-60 minimum to qualify for free shipping. They would sit on it almost two weeks and then ship it in 2 days anyway. Overall the prices are good on amazon. I tried it during the an xmas season one year and did the same the next and I was hooked. I had a bunch of bigger items I wanted to buy and it really was cheaper so I just let it continue. It is really convenient to not have to think about shipping costs. I buy more online because of it. I don't have to do shopping lists, buy multiple items or shop around and with prime it's there in a few days. The "2 day shipping" use to be true; but it's more like 4 days now.

Now I do have wish lists on amazon, but they are more for things I don't necessarily need. When I need something I buy it and then throw in a couple items from my wish lists.

$120 is totally worth it.

Re:PSA?

[Chrisq]

I wish I knew. Wiki gives a lot of unlikely options, but none seem to fit.

Maybe they can fund employees toilet breaks

[xack]

Amazon employees are currently forced to pee into bottles due to the lack of toilet breaks. Or maybe they should use some of Bezos hundreds of billions to fund it.

Re: Maybe they can fund employees toilet breaks

[Brockmire]

Only shitty employees who should be fired would do that. Or blame your government for having shitty labour laws. But really, this is incompetent employees hiding their incompetency.

Re: Maybe they can fund employees toilet breaks

[kaatochacha]

You argument holds no water.

Re:PSA?

[Dusthead Jr.]

Pretty Standard Article

Re:Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping

[cascadingstylesheet]

Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping [f]or free without any membership dues. There is a $35/min order amount to qualify.

Well, Amazon has free shipping too if you meet the minimum order. No membership dues.

That's the whole point of Prime (the shipping portion, anyway), you get the free shipping without needing the minimum purchase.

Re:PSA?

[cascadingstylesheet]

What does PSA in the headline mean?

Public Service Announcement

Re:PSA?

[TheGratefulNet]

public service announcement

(more typing to fill in the 'min chars quota')

News for nerds? Stuff that matters?

[david_thornley]

There are two things in TFS. One is that a company is raising the price on a service. Another is that one individual person doesn't consider the increased price worth it. In what way is this significant?

Time to break Amazon up

[bogie]

They have way too much market share and are acting just like cable monopolies by bundling services and increasing prices. Considering how many billions they brought in last year this is pigging out at the expense of the consumer.

Re:Time to break Amazon up

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense! You don't need to subscribe to prime. Pay for your own shipping, like you do with every other online trader. Their streaming is nothing compared to other far larger players, and shipping discount is an option, not a requirement like STBs and bundled channels in your cable company comparison. You don't even need to have amazon fulfilment when purchasing from their site, which you don't actually have to use.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[RobinH]

Maybe, but I also bought a made-in-the-USA shovel on Amazon, with prime two-day shipping. It was a specialty kind of shovel (wanted a trenching shovel with a long handle) and I couldn't find it in any local big-box stores (they only had short-handle variants). I never thought I'd buy a shovel online.

Gotta fund establishing the Amazon Delivery Servic

[bwanagary]

Let's not forget that Amazon is soon to roll out their own delivery service that competes directly with FedEx and UPS, delivering not only their own products, but those of the same shippers currently using FedEx and UPS. The cost of using their own delivery service has to be funded with the funds redirected from the existing delivery services - ie. FedEx and UPS.  Their "free delivery" with Amazon Prime is funded with Prime dollars, regardless of who the actual shipper is.  By increasing the Prime member fees, they will be "over-funding" their own delivery service, effectively "subsidizing" the delivery service and giving them an unfair competitive cost edge over both FedEx and UPS.  It's how you take over a(nother) market.  By their own admission, they have over 100,000,000 Prime subscribers.  At $119 each that is almost $12B dollars a year subsidy.  To put that in some perspective, FedEx's gross annual income in 2017 was $13.77B.

Cheaper in Canada

[Kernel Kurtz]

I remember is was $79

Still is here in Canada. In $CDN too.

I'm almost expecting an increase here too, I find that so cheap for the use I get out of it.

Re:Amazon will go the way of AmericaOnline

[supremebob]

AOL also had horrible customer service, and didn't really seem to care that they were way oversubscribed for the infrastructure they had. Basically, their user base was so annoyed with them that they jumped ship the second a better option was available.

Amazon doesn't seem to be making those mistakes.

Re:Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping

[supremebob]

The big difference is that Amazon's free shipping usually takes a week to deliver products. Walmart's "2 day" shipping usually sends to take 4 days, but it's still faster than FedEx Smartpost.

EzInKy?

[Threni]

>EzInKy writes:
>Effective on May 11, Jeff Bezos says the price of Prime membership will increase to $119 from $99. Now, as
>much as I have enjoyed the free shipping over these many years, I just don't believe that benefit outweighs the
>increased cost of membership.

Who the fuck is "EzInKy" and why would anyone else care whether they use Prime or not? The benefit outweighs the cost if the cost is less than you'd spend, or you can afford it, or prefer the convenience. There's no right or wrong answer.

Easy solution: Complain

[SvnLyrBrto]

No, I don't mean complain to Amazon about the price increase. I mean just go ahead and 1) Subscribe to Prime. Then, 2) Whenever a package is late or the contents are damaged, call in and complain. The email route will sometimes work too; but you'll have better results calling in and talking to a human. A few words to the rep, especially about how "this has become a pattern lately" or in November and December "this is very troubling during holiday shopping time", will net you a free month of Prime, and sometimes even a $5 or $10 credit to your account.

About three years ago, the reliability of Prime shipping dropped dramatically. I don't know exactly what happened. My guess would be that they're saving money by routing more shipping away from FedEx and UPS towards OnTrac and USPS. But I've had more late packages in the last three years than I think I had in the previous ten. So, taking my free months and account credits for late or damaged packaged into account; I think I've been paying more like $30-$40 per year for Prime. And even with the issues it's suffered as late; it's totally worth it at this price.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[thegarbz]

Depends on what is being bought. A lot of people go shopping every day but don't actually buy very much.

I went to the shops today just to buy a kitchen roll. That will come up as a statistic that I went shopping today (I typically go every day since it's on the way from work). I know people who go shopping once a week who buy a shitload more than I do.

Hidden Costs

[schematix]

Amazon prime is significantly more expensive than the advertised price of $99/$119. It can easily run into the thousands. Its amazing when you you can order anything, even trivial things you'd normally go to the store for, and KNOW you'll have it delivered in a couple days. So i let it lapse and now i just have a cart with a grand of worth of stuff just sitting there waiting for me to decide i want it in 2 weeks (because free shipping is the lowest of the low priority for them now it takes 2 weeks to get anything that's not prime).

Re:Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping

[WaffleMonster]

Well, Amazon has free shipping too if you meet the minimum order. No membership dues.

That's the whole point of Prime (the shipping portion, anyway), you get the free shipping without needing the minimum purchase.

The point is not free shipping in a vacuum. It's that Wal-Mart offers 2-DAY FREE SHIPPING. The same deal as Amazon except without prime membership requirement.

Amazon's idea of free shipping without prime means they'll sit on your order for a week before contemplating shipping it ground.

The minimum purchase threshold is not something I find valuable so I don't care and strongly disagree with assertion it's the whole point of prime. The whole point of prime in my view is 2-DAY FREE SHIPPING not circumvention of minimum order requirement. At least I've never heard anyone say they got prime because of minimum orders. They always talk about shipping speed. I'm sure for some this is a valuable consideration yet probably not for the majority of prime subs.

Re: Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping

[Brockmire]

$50 for Walmart Canada. $5.97 shipping below that. Amazon Canada is still better. Plus, I always have problems loading Walmart sites due to script and ad blockers.

Re:IF you don't buy a lot at Amazon, and don't str

[gravewax]

considering most of what you find on Amazon is Aliexpress goods resold then that would means Amazon has the same problem.

factor 119

[TeknoHog]

For a brief moment I wondered if this move was intended to restore primality, for 99 surely isn't prime. But 119 = 7*17, so nope.

I'm keeping Prime

[reboot246]

I'll renew before the price goes up, so I'll get this next year for $99. And then next year about this same time I'll pay the increased price. I've been a Prime member since the beginning of Prime, and always felt it was a good value.

Amazon has been more than worth it for me. I have averaged 10 orders per month for the past several years. I check prices locally and online. Sometimes I'm willing to pay a little bit more at Amazon simply to keep from driving to the store. Other times Amazon has the best price even though the item is a Prime item. I recently bought 8 cans of sliced black olives cheaper than Dollar General had them. I've found that on a ton of items I'd usually buy from Lowe's or Home Depot that Amazon's price works out to be the same or only off by a dollar or two.

I do wish they'd just drop USPS delivery or at least give Prime members a choice of shippers. Around here UPS is the most reliable. I'd be willing to wait another day to get UPS all the time. My regular UPS guy knows me, knows my boss, knows where I used to live, etc.. He's always here about the same time every day, so I know when to expect deliveries.

We watch quite a bit of Prime Video. I don't care about the other Prime benefits much at all. They could drop everything except delivery and streaming, and lower the price a bit and I'd be a happy camper.

Re:You know what you Brits should order next?

[Cederic]

Where do you live? America?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re:Walmart.com has 2-day free shipping

[kaatochacha]

This i don't get. If you're the kind of person who buys a lot from amazon, you can easily make the minimum number on your purchases. And if you're not , then the prime price doesn't make sense.
I guess it's people buying one toothbrush every day...