Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

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&#x2F;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&#x27;s almost $30-50 <i>per month</i>. 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 <i>super fast</i> shipping (many times next day) and hassle free returns for the most part.<p>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 &quot;stores&quot; 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 &#x2F;fanboy<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="http://imgur.com/5IvQtQG" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;5IvQtQG</a>

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 &quot;what took so long?&quot;

The value proposition for Amazon Prime has sunk quite a bit in the last year. More and more products have multiple listings: one that&#x27;s not Prime eligible, and one that is Prime eligible but costs more. So, that two day free shipping isn&#x27;t free. Plus, living in NYC, a large percentage of the two day free shipping items just get sent USPS anyway, so I&#x27;m not getting anything extra.<p>Amazon&#x27;s Prime video service is similarly less of a value than it should be. Unlike competing services like Hulu and Netflix, you can&#x27;t watch Amazon Prime videos on your Android phone or tablet (who cares, it&#x27;s just the #1 mobile OS, right?). Amazon&#x27;s logic is to force you to use their proprietary tablets that are based on Android but don&#x27;t support Google&#x27;s app store or Google&#x27;s services, meaning that a whole array of Android apps aren&#x27;t compatible, including big ones like Google Chrome and Firefox.<p>I&#x27;m ditching Amazon Prime at the end of my term in two months as a result.

While I don&#x27;t mind the Prime price-hike, I&#x27;ve begun noticing that Amazon&#x27;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&#x27;s prices to Walmart, you can get these items close to Amazon&#x27;s old prices with $5 shipping (or free shipping over $50). I know there&#x27;s been considerable discussion about Amazon being able to &quot;flip the switch&quot; on profitability, and maybe this is what we&#x27;re seeing ... but even if many consumers are trained to just &quot;go to Amazon&quot; for their shopping needs, if prices rise by 100%, they&#x27;re likely to seek discounts from competitors. I definitely have.

I&#x27;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&#x27;t have to think before subscribing.

In Italy Prime costs just 9,99€. That&#x27;s just a little more than a single shipment. <a href="http://www.amazon.it/gp/prime" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.it&#x2F;gp&#x2F;prime</a>

I can&#x27;t understand the idea of paying for shipping (whether it&#x27;s annual or per-shipment) when there&#x27;s an option to get it for free. If I decided I couldn&#x27;t wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I&#x27;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.<p>And the streaming services combined don&#x27;t match what I get with cable, so I found Prime hard to justify at the previous price point.

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&#x27;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&#x27;s amazing to me that Amazon would ship anything of value with such an unreliable carrier as USPS.

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

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:<p>* Streaming video: not all the stuff I want to watch is on Prime, but when it is, it saves me a few bucks<p>* Lending library: ditto, for books. If I care deeply about permanently owning a book, I&#x27;ll buy the physical copy.<p>* 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<p>Any other important Prime perks I&#x27;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&#x27;s tv is a godsend. Plus for a family there are considerably more packages coming down (tools, toys, etc.).<p>Seems like they crunched the numbers and realized that if $79 was worthwhile, $99 would be too. Those who wouldn&#x27;t find $99 worthwhile probably wouldn&#x27;t be using it anyway.<p>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).