Prime is a good deal if you buy enough to justify the annual fee.
I wouldn’t want to get into Prime right now. Amazon will soon be charging sales tax. That’s almost a 10% rate where I live. It’ll be cheaper to shop locally. A lot of stuff at Amazon costs the same or even more than Walmart. The sales tax savings made Amazon cheaper and thats being taken away.
I spend considerably more than $79 a year at Amazon, but I’ve resisted buying into the Prime thing for one reason: I’m afraid that in their enthusiasm to ship something to me out here in BFE in 2 days they’ll start using FedEx, and I just can’t stand for that. Right now I order using standard shipping or free shipping and my stuff is delivered via USPS. If we don’t answer the door, our carrier leaves the package on the deck as Nature intended. If they start shipping it FedEx, it will spend several days riding around on the FedEx truck while the little weasel pretends he drove out here and nobody answered the door.
If they add the ability to choose my shipper to Prime it might be an option in the future.
Totally worth it IMHO - I get a lot of household goods through Subscribe and Save, so I never run out of toilet paper and don’t have to deal with bulky TP packages, either.
Amazon Prime?
Does everyone there wear a goatee? Could be trouble…
That seems pretty dealbreaking to me.
If you buy a lot from Amazon, you shouldn’t really be paying anything for shipping anyway. Just don’t submit orders until the total of each is enough to get free standard shipping–which in my experience is reasonably quick anyway.
The only other downside that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that they re-up your Prime subscription automatically each year. So if you want to cancel it, you have to remember to make the first move.
Also, I totally didn’t know you get a free Kindle book to borrow each month. I’m going to check that out right now.
Sorry, I mean “FREE Super Saver Shipping.” Whatever. IME it’s plenty fast for all circumstances except emergency last-minute gifts.
The other stuff–streaming video, Kindle-reading loans–are what you really are paying for, ISTM. None of it is free–they just like you to think of it that way, because you’re “making up” the annual fee in “free” shipping. But I don’t plan on paying for Amazon shipping anyway.
The choices for the free monthly book are terrible. Absolutely awful.
Also, there is no way for me to play the movies on my television.
Free shipping has been the only decent benefit for me.
It is mostly tripe but usually there’s some marquee titles. Right now it’s the entire Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series. As the Neal Stepheson, Greg Bear, et. al series “The Mongoliad” comes out, they are Kindle prime titles too. (and IMHO so very mediocre you could totally guess they were written by committee).
Just to confirm what someone else already said, they don’t do take-backs on borrowed books - you just can’t get a new one until you hand in the previous. The month is measured by calendar month not by “30 days from download” and there are no credits for unusued months. So if you download a book on April 23 and finish it, you can get a new book on May 1. BUT, if you download a title on May 2, and it takes you until July 2 to read it, you don’t get a book for June.
It’s a ridiculously trifling benefit for me (since I can read a Harry Potter novel in 3-4 days, even the 800 pages ones and The Hunger Games books just took me a few hours), but I use it from time to time.
Yeah, the first 3 I checked out were the Hunger Games series. Thought it was a great deal. When it came time to check out book #4, I realized I’d been had.
I’m guessing that what the others here mean by “share your membership with the household” is “your spouse and kids log into your account,” rather than “Amazon lets them piggyback their accounts onto your Amazon Prime membership, no extra charge.”
But I, too, would like clarification on this, because if people actually mean the latter, I’ll be including my account in my wife’s Amazon Prime membership, like, tonight, so I can use her Prime membership without having to bother her.
Quoted 'cause, well, that made me snicker. Amazon is a fucking perv, innit?
Like many of these things, what is your basecase. If you compare to the free shipping at $25 it is a different result than if you compare to the cost for two-day shipping. I have food allergies and order a lot of specialty foods from Amazon and I like that I get it in two days.
I can watch Amazon instant on my TV via my Blu-ray player. Roku boxes also allow this. If you have an apple device you can play thru Apple TV. If you have to buy any of those extra it probably isn’t worth it but some people might have options they aren’t aware of.
Not always but a lot of the items that are listed as available for same day deliver come in one day for free with my Prime.
The free books is only available if you have a Kindle device, a Kindle app doesn’t qualify. So far I’ve used it for books I’m curious about but not willing to pay for (Hunger Games for me also).
I just signed up for Prime a few weeks ago, shortly after they released the iPad video app. My main motivation was the TV: as limited as the selection is, there’s a ton of stuff there that I’ve wanted to watch for a while but wasn’t 100% sure that I would like, so I didn’t want to make the DVD/BR investment. I have a DVR for current TV, so the BBC shows and shows that finished their run already are actually more valuable to me. I can see where Prime would be a lot more disappointing if you were looking to it as part of a cable TV replacement package.
I figure for $80, I will be able to get through an amount of TV over the next year that would have cost me $200+ if I was buying the DVD sets. As a bonus, there are half a dozen movies I’d like to re-watch and, of course, free 2-day shipping. (Though the Super Saver shipping was effectively 2 or 3 days, anyways.) The real question will be… next August, do they get me for another $80? Probably, but hopefully by then they’ll have added more content, as well.
Don’t underestimate the value of getting things in 2 days automatically. I was always happy using Super Saver shipping, but there is a difference between ordering something and thinking, “Well, I’ll get it eventually” and ordering something and knowing that you’ll have it in 2 days.
The only downside I have found to my Prime membership is that sometimes the video player just stops working for me. I’ll be able to watch fine for several days or weeks, and then one day, nothing will play. That usually lasts for a few days, and then it’s fine again. I think it’s a problem with player/flash upgrades that aren’t being installed, but I haven’t been able to figure out a way to go somewhere to manually install whatever upgrade I need. I watch all my videos on my PC.
Watching streaming movies on an iPad is awesome. You can lay in bed with headphones and watch a movie! Whatacountry!:D:D
I tried Prime on a free offfer, but dropped it.
I got a lot of items damaged, badly packed, and even some items that were just not whjat I ordered.
Around 30%-35% of my total orders.
I didn’t do the download thing, as I am too poor for much in electronics.
They had a deal for a free year of Prime for students, so I had it then, but it didn’t do much for me. The shipping is hardly faster than FSSS, in my experience, and $25 for free shipping is a very low threshold that is easy to meet (I’d feel guilty placing a bunch of $5 orders even with Prime because I hate being wasteful and it’s so easy to combine a few things). Now they offer me another year for $40 instead of $80, but no thanks.
The free videos are definitely a perk for people who care about that kind of thing.
Anyway, anyone who has an .edu email address can probably still get the $40 student deal, just so ya know.
It’s worth it just for gift shopping. I’m a procrastinator, so knowing I can order something a couple of days before a birthday or Xmas and it will still get there in time - for no extra cost - is huge.
The only sorta down side is that I now order more from Amazon than I ever did before I went Prime. But that’s not to say that I’m buying more stuff, I am just more likely to buy it from there than from somewhere else, since the shipping is “free” (or, really, “paid for in advance”). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since I have never had anything but exceptional service from Amazon, and their prices are at least competitive if not better than most (depending on what you’re buying).
In a way it might be saving me money. I’m sure I’ve never spent $80/year on shipping in my life, but I know I have “padded” orders with some cheap item so I could hit the $25 FSSS threshold. Now if I just want the little $5 thing I can buy the $5 thing. And I know it will get there in a couple of days.
Yeah, nope. No down side. 
Well, OK, the automatic renewal can be inconvenient if you don’t remember your re-up date. An $80 charge isn’t the fun kind of surprise. But once a year, you deal with it.