A lot of Amazon Prime Video’s content is NOT actually included - to the point where I don’t even look there any more.
If you do not have a Prime subscription, can you pay to rent videos?
Yes…
In more detail, if you have an amazon account, but not the Prime sub, you just lose the ‘included in prime’ banner stuff.
Ah - then that gets rid of one incentive to keep the service. The “free” videos are in the minority, and if you can rent the others anyway, then you’re still OK in terms of entertainment.
I wind up getting the free trial Prime account every year or so, if only for free shipping on Christmas presents. Usually I remember to cancel before the deadline. Have a week to go on the current free trial and I also noticed the hollowing out of the free-with-Prime video catalog; it’s pretty significant. Prime definitely isn’t worth $100 a year to me, let alone $140.
You guys got me thinking that maybe I need to cancel Prime too. I don’t need fast shipping - 90% of the time I make an order and the package sits in my entryway for days or WEEKS until I open it. And I still go old-school and fill up my cart with items to eventually buy, in hopes that they send me less packaging (which they rarely do).
How about Echo and echo-related services like telling Alexa to turn my lights on and off? And what about the music I already purchased on Amazon, and play through Echo?
I’m almost positive any purchased e-media (movies, books, music) are available without Prime. I’ll find out in a month or so when our current Prime subscription is up.
If someone uses it for free shipping, which I do, it’s worth it. There it no way that it’s worth it for the media content with the possible exception of really wanting the Thursday football.
All 25 of the Bond franchise films just dropped for free, so there is that.
I have no clue how amazon handles this in the US, but in Germany being a prime member gives you free shipping, and if you don’t have prime, the shipping is discounted in the bill: shipping = 5 Euros, discount = minus 5 Euros. So it is free as well. You don’t see this until you place the order, but the shipping is still free. Amazon makes it hard not to click by mistake on “become a prime member”, but it offers no benefits as far as I can tell. It probably varies from country to country, but hat what it is like here.
I think I must be misunderstanding somehow , but let me see if I have this straight. In Germany, Amazon charges non-prime customers for shipping and then basically removes the shipping charges by deducting the price of the shipping as a discount regardless of the size of the order ( it’s not some “Spend 25 Euros on products shipped by Amazon and get free shipping” sort of deal) Nobody actually pays shipping, and the only difference is that Prime customers don’t have the charge and then discount on the bill, there is just no shipping charge.
Why would they do that - go through the charade of putting a charge for shipping on the bill and then an equal discount? If it’s going to be on every order and no one is going to pay the shipping, why bother putting it on the bill to begin with?
That is what I wrote, that is my experience. They put shipping costs on the bill, then give you a discount that matches the shipping costs. It always happens to me, but perhaps I have always ordered more than the 25 Euros you mention. I doubt it, but I am not looking up my bills now, too lazy, but I must have bought something under 25 € for sure. Why they do it? No idea. In Germany, for instance, there is a thing called Buchpreisbindung. Sounds impressive, it means that it is forbidden by law to sell books at a discount, i.e., cheaper than the cover price. I know it sounds absurd to you in the US, but there are good reasons for that (not going into them now, too convoluted - and there are exceptions, like damaged books and second hand books). So amazon, who likes to bait customers with the cheapest price, cannot do that: all prices are the same. But other sellers charged shipping. Amazon did not. That was the price advantage they found they could apply, and it is legal. Perhaps that custom is a legacy from the time when amazon was mostly books? Perhaps “go through the charade of putting a charge for shipping on the bill and then an equal discount?” avoids some unfair practice charges? No idea, IANAL, but I have never paid shipping with amazon.
Back before Prime…my then girlfriend and I split up and I broke her Swiffer mop when I was packing up her stuff. I told her that I would buy her a new one and have it shipped to her new place.
I think it was $25 worth of stuff to get free shipping and the mop was like $27 so I was good to go but the mop was on sale for $24.59 or something so the sale actually fucked me since it was $6 for shipping. I found a web page where some guy listed items that cost anywhere from $0.01 to $0.99 just for people in my situation. One of the items for 41 cents was a purple pen and purple was her favorite color so I picked that.
To add to the absurdity, they shipped the two items separately and the pen came a day before the mop. The ex was confused as hell at first as to why I would buy her a cheapie pen and have it shipped.
Agreed. I got Prime for shipping convenience and I do order enough (especially since the pandemic) to make it roughly worthwhile, as I am one of those people who happily pays extra for convenience. For me the video stuff is just a bonus, though in fact there are some bits of Amazon original content I have enjoyed.
But if it was just a streaming service I’d probably just drop it. Maybe sign up occasionally to binge The Boys or what have you and then drop it again.
I qualify for one of their half-priced Prime options since I’m on Medicaid. (Other options include being a student and being on food stamps/Social Security.) I did not find it to be worth it at full price.
I had thought it was necessary for “Subscribe and Save,” as that was pushed as a “Prime benefit.” But that doesn’t seem to be the case. The issue is just that you’ll have to pay shipping on the first item. That warrants extra thought.
SSI, not Social Security.
I agree, and remember, as a kid, when all The Big Games were on a local network channel.
We hate the cable companies, so we only have an antenna (rabbit ears). But, damn, SO many games (NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, FIFA, UEFA, etc) aren’t on “regular” TV.
So I’ve taken to running down to the local sports pub. Figured it out, if I have a beer and a burger (or fries), it’s still cheaper than cable!
(And on Sundays, I can watch eight NFL games at once! Woo-hoo, it’s like an ADHD-festival!)
I think I could live without the Prime shipping, which isn’t as good as it was. But between the free Amazon Gaming games and streaming content like The Boys, Paper Girls, Clarkson’s Farm, and The Grand Tour I still hang on to Prime.
Exactly. I live 9 miles from the nearest stores and even then often can’t get things “locally”, so I do a ton of online shopping. I occasionally use the other prime benefits but they don’t factor into my decision to keep prime