PhantomStranger

Possibly. It's my understanding that anyone's Prime that comes up after that certain date in March will have to pay the increased fee.

Meathead

They did. I spoke with CS twice this morning. The first time the CSR put me on hold and looked into it. Apparently incorrect emails went out early yesterday to some Prime members (like me) with incorrect renewal information. She said it was a mistake and Amazon would not honor the email price.

I hung up with her and was offered a survey on the web about the call and since I didn't give Amazon glowing stars it offered to reconnect me to work out whatever I was displeased about. The second CSR I spoke with was aware of the issue and confirmed that Amazon was honoring the renewal price for those customers who received the incorrect email. She even confirmed this in a follow-up email. Now I'm not sure if you have to call in to get them to honor the email or if they will automatically do it.

Shannon Nutt

The gifting yourself option allowed me to extend until July of 2015...I encourage everyone to do it. Just type in your own email address and pick a delivery date that is one day later than the expiration of your current PRIME subscription. Hurry though, as March 19th is the last day you can lock in that $79 rate.

I thought maybe I could double-up and gift another year after that, but they don't let you pick a delivery date any later than one year from when you purchase the gift membership.

Abob Teff

I'm thinking I'll end up canceling when my renewal comes up.

BOOKS - We have 4 Kindles in our house. When I signed up for Prime it was for the free book every month. However my wife and daughters have a hard time finding anything they want to read; I don't read often enough. I would consider keeping it if the book rental was unlimited rather than just 1 per month. The women of the house would be more likely to try a book (and get more use out of it) if there was no burn factor.

STREAMING - I've watched some stuff on streaming, but not much since Amazon "does not support" hooking my iPad up to the TV. Neither of my set-top players support Amazon streaming. I watch enough I can justify the $79, but I think another $20 pushes it over the top when much of the same content is available on Netflix and I can watch Netflix on TV.

SHIPPING - Since I have Prime, I have made purchases from Amazon that I would have bought at a store. I don't use the shipping enough to justify keeping Prime for that reason though. If I dump Prime, I won't be making those purchases through Amazon. I'll wait a few extra days until I have time to stop at a brick and mortar.

Yes, it is "just $20" but I don't think I can justify another $20.

I agree with many others here -- split the book service, streaming service, and shipping into separate services.

Is this $20 a "drone acquisition fee"?

Why So Blu?

It's still a great deal. Mine doesn't come up for renewal until the Fall, so I'll be okay. I get my money's worth and then some.

Living Dead

Since I live close to a major distribution center, I've never signed up for Prime because I pretty much always get my stuff within 2-3 days after it ships, and sometimes next day.

GatorDeb

My Prime expires on 4/17 so I'm renewing at $79. If I buy the gift Prime to delivery on 3/17/2015 can I cancel mine one month early and then just use the new one? Or can I use the giftcard while having an active one and it just extends it a year? Even if I lose that last month I still come out ahead at $79 for 2015-2016.

davidh777

I bet Amazon is loving everyone paying them a year in advance right now, even at the old rate.

I'm not smart enough to be able to break down everything that Amazon offers via Prime and call it "gouging." For one thing, I'd need to know how much all of their shipping and streaming deals cost, how many shipments and streams they're handling, and how many subscribers that is divided among. I'll just say that there's a lot being offered, and every person is going to use a different amount of services so they have to make their own choice as to whether $99 is worth it.

For myself, I don't buy nearly as many DVDs/BDs as I used to, but I buy more "other stuff" and don't like to hunt for things to hit the free-shipping threshold. And I don't have Netflix so I do use the streaming (better for TV than movies). At the end of the day, it'll probably be worth the $8.25/mo. for me to continue.

Solid Snake

BF sales I make a killing with Prime. I'm sure I owe them a lot more if I had to break down my association with them.

PhantomStranger

They were losing money on Prime service for years, it was a loss-leader program for the most part. At least in terms of raw costs, but it did build up a huge base of customers addicted to shopping at Amazon, so in the end served its purpose. Even today, they are probably running close to break-even or at a small loss for the Prime service. Heavy users of the shipping component run the price up for everybody. They probably should not have made it unlimited shipping, they lose some money on the super users of Prime.

bluetoast

I sent them an email a few months back about some error, and they decided to give me the Student Price for the next 4 years, so I'm safe for a while.

That'sAllFolks

There's no way I'd pay for Prime. I just wouldn't use it enough. The only thing I really buy are movies and they are not that competitive price-wise (plus I can always just PM at BBY where I have free shipping - at least until next Feb).

I don't see how anyone could buy this much ANYWHERE (except maybe a grocery store). I could see the value of Prime if I made that many orders, but even if I bought everything I purchase (outside of food) at Amazon, I wouldn't make near that many orders.

EdTheRipper

I place quite a few orders at Amazon. Here is my breakdown on a year-by-year basis...

2005 - 4
2006 - 3
2007 - 12
2008 - 69 (First year with Prime)
2009 - 56
2010 - 62
2011 - 101
2012 - 188 (!!)
2013 - 94
2014 - 18 (as of this moment)

I have obviously gotten my money's worth out of my Prime membership over the years. At this point, I will probably just renew it anyway. I might try and coerce the "family members" on the account to throw me a few bucks to cover the increase.

kd5

I don't order enough from Amazon to justify paying out even $79 for Prime. I'm sure if I had Prime I might order more (not having to get up to the $35 minimum would be a plus), but I'd still have a hard time justifying $79 (that's alot of shipping from my perspective). I don't care about their (or any, for that matter) streaming service, any other benefits afforded Prime members are wasted on me. However tempted I might be from time to time to just bite the bullet and shell out the $79, however unlikely that might be, I'd be even less inclined to shell out more. If Amazon raises the price of Prime, temptation will pretty much cease to exist. I'd sooner do $25 at B&N (even with their higher prices) than $79 for Prime, even though I haven't even done that yet. Yes, I'm a cheap bastard.

story

Here's how many orders I've made over the years:

2000 1
2001 7
2002 3
2003 3
2004 8
2005 5
2006 10
2007 4
2008 19
2009 48
2010 82
2011 89
2012 89
2013 68
2014 14

I feel like there was a story or two (or more) from people on DVDTalk saying they had their account closed because they were making a bunch of little orders with Prime and Amazon said they were losing money. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Maybe I'm misremembering but that had enough impact on me that we've been making fewer one-item orders and make more multi-item orders. Thing is, if this is true, then what exactly am I paying for here? Please tell me I have nothing to worry about with what I've just described.

We buy groceries, diapers / wipes, etc. from Amazon. We're hooked in (or they're hooked into us?) and we've had a package arrive 1-2 days late maybe 3-4 times since we became Prime members in August, 2011 and half of those were because of weather delays that hit everybody. We watch Prime videos, we borrow books for free on Kindle. Plus we have Amazon Mom and Amazon Student. We're completely in at $99, without a doubt.

I will say if they want Amazon Instant Video to be anywhere near competitive with Netflix, they need to 1. expand their programming (obvious), and 2. make search MUCH easier. It's hard to find what's free on a website that would rather have me pay.

Why So Blu?

Never heard of that.

Trevor

I use the iOS app to search for videos and there's a handy 'prime only' filter button. I think I prefer the search on Amazon over Netflix' search overall, seems to work better finding certain actors or creators.

stevevt

My recollection is it was people who had returned a bunch (or maybe just a couple) of Amazon orders who were getting their accounts closed.

story

Ah, that makes more sense. We've made a few returns but not all that many and usually pretty small items like a book or two.

Holy cow, I just checked my digital orders, too, and we are definitely invested in the Kindle library with many, many more orders than what I listed above. I know I am because grad school books are expensive so I've been snatching them up on Kindle whenever possible.

Gizmo

It's happened to people before. Essentially if you return to much stuff (where Amazon has to pay return shipping)m they eventually ban you.

I've returned a TV (!) and they shipped me out a replacement (!) and gave me a $100 gift card (!). Pretty crazy. Aside from that, I've probably returned 5-6 things over the past decade.

I shutter to think how many transactions I've placed. Where are you guys finding that in a easy fashion? Looks like I placed 185 orders in 2013 and 229 in 2012. Holy shit.

Goat3001

Still very much worth it to me. I buy pretty much everything off Amazon. Cheaper and more choices than going to any store. The two day shipping is worth it even at $8.25 a month.

fumanstan

Looks like i've placed 147 orders in 2013, 65 in 2012, 65 in 2011, 72 in 2010, 38 in 2009. The large increase last year was for work stuff, which I guess is making Prime more worth it.

Timber

With most of my orders shifting to Subscribe and Save now I'm not sure it's worth it to me even at the $79 price point. That said I was about to buy a bed frame last night and still might and it's awefully nice not having to worry about the shipping.

Shannon Nutt

I ran a report for 2013 and found that I had 83 orders during the year - if you had asked me, I probably would have guessed around 50, so 120 isn't really outrageous - especially if using PRIME means you aren't making an effort to bundle stuff.

Shannon Nutt

Yes, some guy was returning Blu-rays for less-than-perfect packaging (this corner is slightly crushed!) and/or loose discs without even checking to see if they were actually damaged or scratched.