Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

techcrunch.com

41 pointsczstrong63 comments

For a heavy amazon user such as myself, not much difference. Still very happy to continue using amazon. The math is simple. We probably have 5-10 shipments on average a month coming in. Most of it is for our kids (newborn/1 year) and includes subscriptions for milk, diapers etc. Just recently, my wife added another subscription for stuff like toilet paper, napkins. Without amazon prime, you might end up paying $3-5 on average. So that's almost $30-50 per month. So over a year, you might pay almost $500 in shipping if you use amazon like we do. So really a no-brainer. Not to mention the super fast shipping (many times next day) and hassle free returns for the most part.

I hate driving to a store just to buy household items that require no brain or thought process. Actually wait, I lied. I have even bought my TV, computer desk on amazon recently. So our visit to the "stores" is now pretty much limited to grocery. If I could, would buy everything online. Thanks Amazon Prime, you have a long term member. Please continue to do the great things that you do. Really waiting for the amazon grocery delivery service /fanboy

EDIT: I got curious and checked my last 6 months order history [0]. We had 73 orders in just last 6 months. For entire 2013, we had 85 orders.

[0] http://imgur.com/5IvQtQG

I'm considering whether it's worth it. I thought that, for orders over $25, shipping was free anyway. With the amount of ordering you do, wouldn't there be little advantage to having Prime, especially if you tried to aggregate your items?

The free shipping isn't 2 day I don't think

You will be surprised that my wife buys items worth $2.99 from amazon at times. Sometimes, it is not possible to bunch orders together because it is all "on demand". Because we have prime, we don't care about whether it is 1 item or 5 items in same shipment. So our orders could look like ($2.99, 1 item )on one day while it could be ($40+$6, 2 items) another day. Other than fixed subscriptions, our buying pattern is very random.

And Prime is not just about free shipping, but it is a lot more about "fast" shipping. I am not sure about non prime but I doubt that free shipping will be 2 day or less like Prime.

It's nice to not aggregate your items. I looked at my prime history, and it's a combination of books, music, and household items that don't always meet the $35 free shipping (used to be $25 until Q4 last year). For example, my most recent purchase was a $15 book that I got on 2 day shipping.

Also the way free supersaver shipping works is that you wait 3 days or until the warehouse is low on work, whichever comes first, before they pick your order. You then have to wait for 3-5 day ground shipping. You can pay for shipping at any speed to avoid the product picking delay.

Just as a side note, the over $25 shipping is the slowest they can find. So if it is all books, it is media mail (which is _really_ slow), and otherwise it is whatever the slowest that UPS does (3-5 days), vs two day shipping on everything.

And if the slowest they can find is not slow enough, they will insert a delay.

It used to be that when you ordered something with free shipping, they shipped it fairly quickly, so how long it took you to get it mostly depended on the speed of the carrier. I would often get free shipped items in one or two days if they came from the Amazon warehouse in my city.

Then they changed that. If I ordered something with free shipping that was going to ship from the warehouse in my city, they would wait several days before shipping it, and then the carrier would deliver it in one or two days, just ensuring that the item would not arrive earlier than the advertised arrival window.

Many times next day is right. Amazon has no reservations with speed. Even if you say 2-day, it might be there the next day.

You get free shipping with orders over $35. After I heard they were going to increase the price I did a quick check on last year and found that I buy more than I thought on Amazon and if I just let stuff accumulate in the cart for on average less than a week I would have a cart that had free shipping. The vast majority of orders did not need to get to my door in two days. (A common example was sure it was nice to get a book quickly, but I wasn't able to read it until the weekend anyway.) So I won't renew my subscription and just let things accumulate for a few days at a time. The other thing I have noticed is that the last year I have been finding things cheaper on other sites, but continued to buy from Amazon only because of prime, now that reason goes away and I can support other on-line purchasing options. The most amusing thing about this was that it was only because of the price increase that I looked into my purchasing history. If they hadn't said anything I most likely would have let it continue auto renewing.

*The other two benefits both don't benefit me: video (I have netflix which last when I compared last fall is better) and the cheap upgrade for overnight (both times I have used this and really needed something it failed to get there overnight).

While I would always wish to pay less for something, this is fine with me. Prime is still such an amazing value for me, and Amazon has created so much good will with me by being so awesome for so long that my reaction to this was basically to shrug and say "what took so long?"

Agreed. And, they haven't raised the prices in years.

Yeah, I checked the BLS site about the inflation from 2005-2014 and they are just about on track to follow inflation. And if you consider they didn't adjust in that entire period then the slight amount over inflation is warranted (IMHO).

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=80&year1=2005&y...

Ditto. Sure, price increases suck, but a quick perusal of how many Prime-eligible items I've ordered in the last year would still put me way ahead even at $99/yr.

The value proposition for Amazon Prime has sunk quite a bit in the last year. More and more products have multiple listings: one that's not Prime eligible, and one that is Prime eligible but costs more. So, that two day free shipping isn't free. Plus, living in NYC, a large percentage of the two day free shipping items just get sent USPS anyway, so I'm not getting anything extra.

Amazon's Prime video service is similarly less of a value than it should be. Unlike competing services like Hulu and Netflix, you can't watch Amazon Prime videos on your Android phone or tablet (who cares, it's just the #1 mobile OS, right?). Amazon's logic is to force you to use their proprietary tablets that are based on Android but don't support Google's app store or Google's services, meaning that a whole array of Android apps aren't compatible, including big ones like Google Chrome and Firefox.

I'm ditching Amazon Prime at the end of my term in two months as a result.

I've watched prime videos on my asus tablet just by using a browser. Seems to work fine.

They work to varying degrees within the mobile browser. But the app, which does a better job of displaying and caching the video as you play resulting in a better image, is only available for iOS and Amazon's gimped Android tablets.

While I don't mind the Prime price-hike, I've begun noticing that Amazon's prices are also increasing quite-dramatically. Cereal that used to cost $10 now costs over $18. Dog biscuits used to cost $11 are now over $22. Yet if you compare Amazon's prices to Walmart, you can get these items close to Amazon's old prices with $5 shipping (or free shipping over $50). I know there's been considerable discussion about Amazon being able to "flip the switch" on profitability, and maybe this is what we're seeing ... but even if many consumers are trained to just "go to Amazon" for their shopping needs, if prices rise by 100%, they're likely to seek discounts from competitors. I definitely have.

Same here, and without the carrot of "free shipping" it is much easier to just place an order elsewhere now.

I'm surprised they did not change the cost to $97 so that the cost would still be a prime number.

Prime could cost $199 and I still wouldn't have to think before subscribing.

Pretty much same here and from what I hear, others feel the same.

In Italy Prime costs just 9,99€. That's just a little more than a single shipment. http://www.amazon.it/gp/prime

Crazy. It's 49€ in France

Wow, that's great. In France and Germany it's 49€

In Germany it used to be less and was only just increased - due to the addition of the media services (Prime Instant Video or whatever it is called).

I'd guess that Italy doesn't offer access to that so far, so the price difference isn't thaaaaat big.

Does this have to do with the size of the country? 2 day shipments have to be easier to do within Italy than the continental United States.

€14.95 in Spain http://www.amazon.es/gp/prime

¥3,900 (38 USD) in Japan, with free same-day delivery (of many items) and no media content included.

$79 in Canada without any streaming :(

I can't understand the idea of paying for shipping (whether it's annual or per-shipment) when there's an option to get it for free. If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism. Taking away impulse buying is one of the better things about shopping online.

And the streaming services combined don't match what I get with cable, so I found Prime hard to justify at the previous price point.

If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism.

What about when, you know, you need something urgently? Last time I took a long trip I ordered a backup battery for my cellphone three days before I left. It was either use Amazon Prime or go to a store and pay twice as much.

This is one reason I love Prime. I frequently find myself ordering something I need for a trip at the last minute.

Another instance was when our son needed to move from the carrier to a real car seat. We ordered the new one late one night. The next day before noon it was on our doorstep. And that was the 2-day shipping option.

In a rare case like that I have the option of paying for faster shipping, but it happens rarely enough that it costs me far less than locking myself into paying for a year's worth of shipping I may or may not use.

I hate shopping in physical stores as I don't like crowds of people and find it a waste of my time. As a consequence, I order most things online. Over the years as a Prime member, I've saved an enormous amount of money in shipping.

If you cannot control your impulse buying in a store, what makes you think you can control it online any differently?

Where are you shopping that you can get free shipping for everything? Hell, even getting free shipping for anything before Prime came out was rare, at least for me. After Prime, many stores have shifted to offer free shipping to compete with Amazon. But still, finding everything you want online with free shipping is difficult or impossible. I know because I still find myself buying from other shops when Amazon doesn't carry something I need.

The quality of this service is hit and miss. Sometimes they use a reliable carrier like UPS, other times they send things via USPS so they can be stolen. With this price increase, and their inability (I've asked multiple times) to determine what carrier they will ship with and ship with a reliable carrier, this has become a liability now that I wish I had not renewed. It's amazing to me that Amazon would ship anything of value with such an unreliable carrier as USPS.

I would dispute the unreliability of the USPS based on my own anecdotal evidence. (FedEx/UPS was always iffy based on the driver)

But, assuming USPS is totally unreliable and packages go missing a lot, have you ever had Amazon NOT either refund or replace the item?

I ask because I 'received' a package via UPS with a GoPro and when I got home it was not there. I reported to Amazon and they shipped one out overnight to replace the missing item. That's just one of multiple instances of Amazon having an amazing policy regarding shipping and returns.

No, Amazon has been great about refunding packages so far. Of course, the packages stolen or opened by USPS in the last couple of weeks don't cost a lot. I doubt they would be this gracious with say a Macbook or other high price item, regardless of what their policy might be. USPS steals and opens packages. Period. This has been the case for decades. They also do not respond to any complaints.

Do you have any facts to back up that allegation or is it just you opinion?

I've only lost a few package via USPS in my entire life and none of them recently.

I find myself far more likely to lose a package via UPS or FedEx.

My (and others') packages being stolen is not my opinion--it is a verifiable fact.

I agree. I just let mine lapse because they kept sending me packages via UPS SmartPost, and it was more often than not taking days(!) extra after the handoff to USPS for packages to arrive to my apartment.

The settings page to opt out of Amazon Prime is disabled.

In the UK, Amazon have just raised the cost of Prime from £49 to £79, and bundled in their (failing?) LoveFilm movie streaming service to excuse it.

A lot of people I know (including me) are cancelling as a result - not due to the cost, but more the brazenness of it.

Incredibly, it's 49 EUR (41 GBP) in Germany -- that's after the price hike/LoveFilm inclusion. Half that amount for students.

Still not worth it for me, everything I buy from Amazon tends to be eligible for free shipping anyway. And as far as I know their streaming service doesn't stock videos in their native languages, so it's practically worthless to me.

Probably not actually a lot of people. Most likely most people will continue their subscriptions. And if you haven't cancelled already, I'd be surprised if you actually did, even with what you said. It's just human nature. You'll put it off. You'll forget about your rage daycamping. And 6 months from now, when you accidentally look at your credit card statement, you'll say to yourself "I really should cancel Prime" and go back to playing Flappy Bird instead.

Most of the conversation here seems to be around shipping costs and speed. But there are a number of other perks to Prime. Here are the ones that I use:

* Streaming video: not all the stuff I want to watch is on Prime, but when it is, it saves me a few bucks

* Lending library: ditto, for books. If I care deeply about permanently owning a book, I'll buy the physical copy.

* Kindle First (get a free book every month one month before its release): the books are not exactly destined to be timeless classics, but free reading material is nice and it helps me discover new authors

Any other important Prime perks I'm missing? The shipping plus the above go a long way toward justifying the cost, to me at least.

Still worth it to me. The quick free shipping is great and the streaming educational kid's tv is a godsend. Plus for a family there are considerably more packages coming down (tools, toys, etc.).

Seems like they crunched the numbers and realized that if $79 was worthwhile, $99 would be too. Those who wouldn't find $99 worthwhile probably wouldn't be using it anyway.

Still do think customers should be grandfathered when at all possible.

My activity has dropped on amazon significantly in the last 1year. The prices on amazon.com have gone up, I always find something cheaper else where online including shipping. And now this, just cancelled my subscription.

This makes Newegg even more attractive with their $50 a year premier plan. If you mostly buy computers or electronics (which I assume most of HN readers do).

Prime these days is less about fast shipping and more about the bundled streaming/media services.

Speak for yourself, prime for me is still about fast shipping. I pretty much won't buy anything that doesn't have prime shipping

Perhaps you (like I do myself) look for the Prime Shipping item to create some self-justification for the service.

Is it? I'd rather they split this into 2 plans and let me have just the fast shipping for $79 (or less) and people who want streaming can pay $99.

Netflix still has the better offering IMO. Not only content, but the video interface is better too. Initially Amazon's video player worked on Linux out of the box, but now it's just as hacky to get running as Netflix.

Due to this price increase, I'm going to reevaluate how important fast shipping is to me.

It's not just fast but free shipping. For someone who orders from Amazon regularly throughout the year, that's the real value.

Also, Amazon has way more content on their video streaming service with the caveat that you have to pay to rent/own a lot of it. Agreed about the interface though, Amazon's app offerings for PS3/SmartTV have been subpar in comparison to Netflix though.

Interesting. In DE those services were just unlocked (and the price increased for renewals accordingly). So far it was JUST for fast shipping.

I subscribed for faster/cheaper shipping and canceled now, after a couple years. The streaming services are of no use to me. Most content in Germany is .. German (dubbed). I don't see a streaming client on Android or a way to stream from my XBMC. Inaccessible + expensive -> No prime for me anymore.

Content being dubbed is the most annoying thing. Here's a relevant discussion (a mixture of English and German replies): http://www.amazon.de/forum/high-definition?cdThread=Tx3PQMDU...

Apparently, there is some content which isn't dubbed but it's not enough to make it attractive.

Well, as I said: For me it is the combination of these things.

Even if the content would be awesome: I cannot access it. Unless I own a particular brand of TVs, a weird Amazon tablet, an iOS device (all negative and no interest in any of these things) - how am I supposed to get that stuff on my TV (which happens to BE a 'smart' TV with optional internet connectivity, but it's offline for a very good reason)?

Amazon's streaming video is useless to me. It doesn't work on any of my devices (android, linux, or chromecast), while Netflix does.

I made 2 online movie rentals within the past few weeks, and both times I checked amazon, but then remembered that it doesn't work on my devices, and ended up getting it from Google Play. They're missing out on purchases, and getting people used to using other services - not a great way to set yourself up for the future...

Yeah, I can't quite figure that out. Is their kindle business really so valuable that they are willing to cannibalize their media services?

Just doesn't seem to make sense to race for device adoption in a world where everybody else seems to be racing for broader platform adoption.

I guess I've never been all that impressed with their offering in this area though, especially video, so maybe they're simply recognizing that it isn't as valuable.

Seems to depend on the device. I have no issue using Amazon video on the PS3. As for total selection, I'd say it dwarfs Netflix's library, but you have to pay to rent/own most of it.

Yep and that's how you alienate your existing user-base who signed up when it was all about the shipping.

If they wanted to run a streaming/media service they should have done just that. They have definitely lost me as a customer by switching me from one service to another without even asking for confirmation (I found out in hackernews). Even if I was interested in the media streaming service which I'm absolutely not, I would still be upset about the way they have dealt with it.

I've been paying for Prime for a couple years (and will continue at $99/year), but I couldn't care less about the video. If there were a shipping-only Prime for $79, I wouldn't think twice about dropping the video.

I'd say that is a personal opinion. I say that as my own personal opinion is quite the opposite. I rarely use Prime streaming and prefer Netflix simple based on ease of use. Of course Netflix seems determined to screw that up, but that's a different story.

You can get Shoprunner and shipping will be free on Newegg and lot of other companies (i've used it last week on newegg and brooks brothers).

If you have an SPG Amex card, the membership is at no cost to you.

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