Just got a notice that my Amazon Prime membership would go from $79 to $99 when it renewed in May. I like the 2-day shipping and Prime video occasionally has some stuff that Netflix doesn’t, but $99 just seems like a lot of money.
I’m thinking I could live with free supersaver shipping and Netflix.
Though remember, Free SuperSaver shipping is $35 now.
Also, if you control for inflation, $79 in 2005 (when originally offered) is like $95 (ok, more like $94.62) today.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=79&year1=2005&year2=2014
$8.25 per month for prime video alone is equivalent to Netflix subscription, plus you get 2 day shipping that Netflix can’t offer you.
I’ll stick with Amazon prime.
I agree with you. It really depends on how much you order and how important 2 day shipping is to you. For me it seems I either need items immediately (and thus shop at a brick and mortar store) or a week is fast enough. If slower shipping is satisfactory the Supersaver Shipping (over $35) and Subscribe and Save are still available. Usually there is a third party merchant whose price plus shipping is close to the Amazon Prime price. Or the item may be available cheaply elsewhere. And a lot of 2 day shipping doesn’t make it in two business days and a lot is only available as an Add-On item.
It’s quite clear Netflix has a substantially bigger library, while Amazon has relatively few unique items.
I’ll stick with Amazon Prime…for now. $99 isn’t too bad and the streaming videos and free ebooks offset the cost. If it keeps increasing however and doesn’t provide greater levels of service, I’ll probably drop it
I wish I could buy another year in advance right now. That way I could have a year and however many months left at the old price. A hundred bucks a year is still good.
And FTR, Netflix will probably be going up soon too.
To me, Amazon Prime was like the guy you aren’t interested in that begs you to give him a chance, you finally relent give him a chance and you still aren’t crazy about him, but you eventually fall in love with him.
The free books were what I found appealing conceptually but Amazon just doesn’t get people who really read ( which is a rant for another day )…being able to borrow ONE book a month is nothing and the word PRIME next to a book is usually code for SUCKS ( or at least mediocre ). So I almost cancelled.
Then I got the Roku box and the free streaming videos which I pretty much love, they have a good selection of yoga/workout routines as well as TV shows and movies.
But the two day shipping has been transformative. One-- it’s truly 2 day shipping – if I order something on Friday I get it Sunday. I use it a lot for small items that are a pain to pick up in stores and inexpensive enough that they are prohibitive to ship. In past month I’ve used prime to buy ( 1 item per order )
An $11 computer power adaptor
a $8 yoga strap
a $14 dollar screwdriver
a $10 flash drive
a $15 bottle of vitamins
a $10 3pack of scissors
It has totally changed the way I shop. I can’t imagine giving it up over 20 bucks a year.
They’ve got to pass on the transmission fees they are now paying Comcast for dedicated broadband capacity.
Actually I heard the deal with Comcast cuts out some middle men in the content delivery, so it may not actually cost them more.
I don’t watch but maybe one video a year from Amazon, but I order a metric buttload of stuff from them and I know that I save more than $400 a year in shipping fees. So the extra fee knocks me down to “more than $380 a year in shipping fees” saved; meh.
I think I could wait longer than 2 days for most stuff. And it used to always be UPS that brought the Prime packages, now it can be UPS, USPS, or FedEx. FedEx service here isn’t very consistent.
I’ve already been questioning the expense. I was set to cancel the auto-renewal of Prime, but I didn’t see a way to do that. They did have an End Membership link, but I wasn’t sure if that ended the membership immediately or at the expiration date. They also had a link to remind me 3 days before renewal, so I picked that.
How do you get deliveries on Sunday?
And how do you do this? If my item costs less than $25, they won’t ship it to me via Prime.
From what thissays, clicking the End Membership link will then give you an option to cancel the renewal, after which the membership will remain active until the expiration date.
I’ve ordered a LOT of shit over the years from Amazon. I’m so far up on saved shipping costs, they’ll never catch me. Ninety-nine bucks? Piffle.
Depends on what it is. I buy things for less than $25 all the time and get free shipping. Some cheap items are considered ‘add-on’ items and won’t ship for free, however.
Huh? There are tons of items under $25 that ship with Prime.
For example, I looked up scissors (it was on the list) and found these:
Amazon is being accused of scamming everybody. The shipping cost is included in the retail price. Plus they charge $75 for this little perk. Two lawsuits so far. May become a class action suit.
Huh. So they do. Not sure how they decide what is and isn’t an add-on item.
It’s worth it to us just for the streaming video. The free shipping is just a bonus.
No idea but the most petty purchase I’ve made on Amazon was a package of light bulbs for $5 with Prime shipping because I was too lazy to stop at the store. I remember laughing at how I was having them pulled from a warehouse, boxed and labeled, loaded onto a truck, flown across the country to Chicago, taken to a distribution center, loaded onto another truck and then driven to my house for the base five dollars cost of the bulbs (they were the new halogen incandescent)… just so I didn’t have to get up off the couch.
Deliveries on Sunday seem to be via USPS. I do live in NYC, maybe this isn’t available everywhere.
I just look for items marked “Prime”. Some items, such as drugstore stuff, shampoo and soap are only prime as “add-on items”( or prime in 3 packs) but lots of other stuff under $25 is prime eligible. Just this morning I realized I was running low on printer paper so I purchased 3 reams for $15. I’ll get it Saturday.
And I do realize that they are adding on something for shipping, there are similar items for less that don’t get the “prime” delivery. But still, the bottom line prices are WAY less than they would be for these small items with shipping anywhere else. I used to spend a lot of my weekend time doing errand shopping and I now have that time for other things. The errand shopping can be a pain when living in the city - 3 reams of paper is heavy if your lugging it on the subway and while I do have a car, driving and finding parking is a big deal too,