A year or two back, I bought a Kindle for Typo Knig. He enjoyed it a lot, and I was able to set us up with a household library (so he could read books I bought, and vice versa).
As I had Amazon Prime, he and the kids already had access to free shipping.
Fast forward to last week. He misplaced his Kindle when we were in the Chicago area. He called the hotel, and the car rental place, and neither one found it. I said “Oh well, probably a cleaning person at the hotel now thinks they have a new Kindle for free!” (he knows he had it there before we left, so it’s almost certainly where it was found).
Late last week the device was deregistered from his account. Yep, someone found it and decided to keep it.
This ALSO removed him from my Prime Household account. Whoops.
Only it turns out, Amazon has now changed the rules on sharing Prime membership. Used to be, you could share the shipping with up to 4 household members. OK, I’m sure some people shared it with friends, but the bottom line was you could only share it with up to 4 people.
Now, you can share with one other adult in your household (and they have to have access to your payment method). AND, you can only share it with your kids until they turn 18.
You’re grandfathered in unless you make other changes - i.e. my kids were on my account as being able to use shipping.
Until someone stole my husband’s Kindle, initiating a change in my Amazon Prime account.
Thus removing the shared shipping.
Just spent an hour online with Amazon help staff - and was told basically “sorry, you were supposed to have lost this ages ago, fuck you”.
All because some jackass stole a Kindle versus turning it in to their employer.
Way to go, Amazon: Between jacking up the price, and reducing benefits I care about, you’ve made it not worthwhile. I have two more purchases I need to make, then Prime goes bye-bye here.