Amazon has done what many others dream of: I basically forget that I'm paying for Prime every year. And I perceive that it gives me enough value that I don't mind, but I've never actually checked how many orders I place each year vs. the delivery cost for them if I didn't have Prime.
By comparison, Google sends me an e-mail every month reminding me how much I'm paying for Google Play Music. I don't mind it, but I wonder if it affects their retention rates to do that.
I actually quit it, because most of the times I'm perfectly fine waiting extra time, and am ok with holding certain items in my cart until I accumulate $25 to get a free shipping.
They seem to artificially add delays to processing to discourage me, but I don't really order anything that I need immediately.
Not having prime also prevents me from impulse buying.
Also, majority of things that you purchase on regular basis, such as cleaning supplies, vitamins etc are often much cheaper in local store and are less likely to be knock offs.
Feels like artificial, because they give a week time range and they ship it around the end of that range. The actual shipping then takes about 1-2 days. If they use their own shipping, which they do on Sundays then the product is delivered on the same day they shipped.
Right, but I'm saying the processing (picking and packing process that occurs at the warehouse) before shipping is not first-ordered, first-picked. They've developed a prioritization process for picking which take items ordered _later_ via prime and picks them first. I suppose you could call that "artificial" delays but that's what I think is happening.
I have trouble understanding what you're saying here:
> They've developed a prioritization process for picking which take items ordered _later_ via prime and picks them first.
What I meant to say is that with prime the order is shipped within hours, when without it takes days and it seems to be calculated toward the end of of the time range, but still so it will arrive before the deadline.
Actually any items that are not fulfilled by Amazon are delivered much faster when you don't have prime. When you do it is the reverse, which feels suspicious.
Yes, there's no way for me to completely prove, but statistically without prime items arrive at the later date of the spectrum given, but they also never late than the date given. This could be explained that when deadline approaches they start treating my order as if it was higher priority, but then that would still prove my point.
UPS does weird things with their ground orders. I went to Purdue (West Lafayette, IN). Many packages would ship from Louisville, and for UPS those would go through Indianapolis (about 90 minute drive from West Lafayette). If I shipped UPS ground, my packages would consistently sit in Indianapolis for 2-3 days. While it's possible that their truck was just always full, it was so consistent it felt to me like they were intentionally delaying it.
If you don't mind waiting longer and have Prime, they often offer a "refund" credit. I currently have $5 in digital credits for items I didn't mind waiting a week for on Prime.
Only downside is that the incentive rotates and some of them are simply terrible (prime pantry, women's fashion, and home services for example).
a lot of incentives are terrible, and you can't use two of them on the same order. If I could delay 2 or 3 orders and then get a free digital movie by stacking the credits, I'd do it a lot more often.
The problem I have with that is that the delivery time often goes past the week mark. If I'm going to wait over a week to receive the item I might as well just order from somewhere like banggood which also has free shipping and is usually a dollar or 2 cheaper. I don't really care about Amazon pantry or free digital downloads so that incentive doesn't provide any value to me.
In my experience, that "credit" is really just a promotion for some other service they're pushing. Now all the ones I could get are for prime pantry, which I'm never going to use.
Depending on your life situation and where you live, not having to go to the store for those regular purchases is a huge deal.
I love Amazon subscriptions. Never having to think about buying all those staples, and just having them show up at the right time every month is worth a little extra money, which is at least partially offset by the subscription discounts.
I'd say just order from jet. Can often find the same things for same price or cheaper - especially with coupons. I'm letting my prime expire this month because I got tired of all the low quality junk spamming the search results and not being able to easily tell whats the real product. The other day was trying to find a ge zwave switch and the same one is listed multiple times with prime shipping at different prices all sold by amazon. So like, which one is the real, most current one? Just spent the extra couple bucks and bought it at home depot instead.
All those other extras they throw in are just junk to me. Apart from The Grand Tour there's nothing on prime video I care about, have never used their music much because the interface is an absolute joke (same with video).
Prime Now is nice but for some reason my area doesn't get restaurants despite being in the Portland Metro.
So just looking at shipping costs, I think I've at best broken even. Rarely get things in two days anyways. Usually takes them 3 days.
I had felt the same for the past 10 years (wow!). But the past year I have been thinking about unsubscribing because I end up with so much knock off crap that breaks OR the item I order gets delayed for a month before the seller cancels the order (bc the item was likely stuck in China - yet the shipping estimate was originally 2days).
Anyway, have been debating cancelling the last several months and this headline was the impetus I needed.
That's actually egregious. I was trialing the Amazon cloud service and it rolled over to a 60$ charge without any notification. And when it renewed a 2nd year, it also didn't send a notification.
The Google method of sending a yearly notification is the idiomatic and proper way of selling a service. The Amazon way is the scumbag way because that's how they charge you without you knowing.
Never understood why prime is so cheap in Europe. In Italy is 20 euros, and was 10 a few years ago. Sure, prime video here has a very weak offer, but still free shipment for 20/year is a good deal.
Also they probably are working to lock people in initially with low prices and hike prices overtime once they are dependent (monthly scheduled shipments, etc)
Terrible offer for Prime Video in Europe indeed, but also very cheap as standalone, around 3EUR/month. I’m not sure what the long term plan is. I’d assume they will add live streaming content (football, olympics etc)? That’s what really brings people in front of the screen.
Belgians are one in top of the richest in the world, by averages.
So we just don't spend it as much, as we have excellent cheap health care and in America, it seems you can go broke if one thing happens due to extreme costs -> more spending. That's seems to be my current opinion of reading HN, feel free to correct me
Not all of Europe. It's £8/month in the UK. But lots of things say they'll come next day, and then usually do. And the movie selection is arguably better than on Netflix.
Amazon Prime is great in the UK. I'm surprised that it's two-day shipping in the US. That doesn't seem like a good deal at all. In the UK I regularly get items from ordering to my doorstep in under twelve hours and I don't live near any major city.
The US is huge. You won’t get cheap one day shipping anywhere. Although if you’re in a major city or some other lucky area you will sometimes get one day delivery or same day on Prime items or when choosing two day shipping.
They're still breaking into the market. Same with non-prime free shipping in Europe, its very good. Once Amazon becomes dominant online and local shops close you'll see Amazon prices rise and quality slip like it is in USA (1-2 weeks to deliver non-prime boxes).
It won’t stay that way. But yeah that’s surprising it’s still so cheap in Italy. Perhaps they haven’t cornered the market yet or have enough customers.
I’m betting when they added monthly prices their plan all along was to push people to pay yearly as it’s cheaper. But the price difference must’ve not been enough. Now it is pretty significant so it’ll probably do the job they originally wanted from it. Obviously that’s not the only reason for them adding monthly. Just one reason in my opinion.
Thanks for the heads up! They just passed my value threshold and I'm making sure to set my auto-reknew to off. I have plenty of patience to wait a week for packages.
It's still worth it. The amount of money saved with shipping, and the comfort of last "minute" shopping is priceless. Plus you get a few extra things like storage, movies, and music.
This past week I paid $12 for ground shipping at another site and was reminded about how much shipping added to the price of the product.
Update: Also forgot about the convenience of using Amazon lockers.
For me as a chronic overthinker, having the cost of shipping paid up front definitely decreases decision fatigue and saves me time. If I want something, I don't end up thinking about whether I really want the item quickly, or if I should add another item to get to the free shipping minimum, or if I should just go to the store instead of ordering online. Having it paid up front then is completely worth it for me, even if it were slightly more than I'd pay for shipping otherwise.
> If I want something, I don't end up thinking about whether I really want the item quickly, or if I should add another item to get to the free shipping minimum, or if I should just go to the store instead of ordering online. Having it paid up front then is completely worth it for me, even if it were slightly more than I'd pay for shipping otherwise.
Your conclusion to me is an odd one; maybe you wouldn't have ended up making those purchases were you forced to give them more thought which would save you _more_ in the long term.
I originally got Prime for video when Netflix annoyed me by splitting out DVD and streaming. (Of course, I ended up back with Netflix too :-))
I always figured I could just pool purchases and get free shipping. I didn't anticipate my change in behavior. So many things that I could spend 30 minutes to pick up at a local store, I can now order from Amazon and get them before I'd make it to the store anyway.
I also travel a lot. So having confidence that I'll get a package before I take off on a trip is worth a lot.
It's also the case that a lot of the fillers I used to use to get free shipping like books, CDs, and DVDs, I don't order much any longer because of online content.
I've just canceled ours. Prime in the UK is £79/year for (in my experience) guaranteed free next-day delivery. But Amazon's prices have been creeping up and I frequently find things are significantly cheaper elsewhere. Plus there's little to watch on Prime Video.
Especially now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the vast majority of my disposable income is theirs. It would be very difficult for them to make Prime no longer worthwhile for me.
The only thing I think he should be afraid of is what to do in the case of prices increases or service shutdowns. They are probably mining his data to sell him more things but that seems like it's welcome.
It is a little concerning but legal minds are starting to put together the scholarship that will most likely be needed to pursue an anti-trust case against Amazon.
> Especially now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the vast majority of my disposable income is theirs. It would be very difficult for them to make Prime no longer worthwhile for me.
I have a realized this too, but my response has been to explicitly try to shop elsewhere, to spread my dollars around. I've found Amazon often isn't even really that competitive anymore, they're just coasting on people's habits. I also don't want them to end up an unassailable retail monopoly or near-monopoly.
I agree about spreading purchases to different venders. I try to buy digital books from Kinfle, Google Play Books, and Apple. Losing my entire library due to an account problem seemed like a bad risk.
From many conversations, and my personal experience, the reliability of prime for two day deliveries has gone way down. It's generally a day or two before the item even ships in my region. Amazon is also failing to handle rampant knock-offs mixed in with legitimate products.
It seems pretty brazen to increase the cost of Prime in light of those issues, even if it is only the monthly subscription. I'm sure it won't actually hurt them since they have such a strange-hold on online retail, and even with these issues they do still offer the best service by far, but it really seems like Amazon needs some competition.
I personally don’t even track my delivery times. I order things off amazon so quickly that most of the time when I get a package I had forgotten what I ordered, let alone exactly when I ordered it. It’s nice that packages come in two days but I often don’t really need something that fast so I don’t pay attention. I will continue paying happily for Prime.
Amazon, when considering whether to raise the price of prime, probably gathered a lot of information about how consumers would respond. Matte_black’s experience mirrors my own.
When I order something from Prime with 2-day shipping, it’s sometimes late, and sometimes shows up the next morning. It’s fast enough on average that I feel the price is easily worth it. If I really need something ASAP I’ll pay the extra few dollars for the one-day shipping (which would cost a lot more without Prime).
They’d have to raise the price a lot more to lose me as a customer. If there are a lot of customers like me and matte_black, it makes sense for them to raise the price.
By the way, if you do complain about late packages, they will give you a month of free Prime for each complaint or even put $10 as a credit in your account. So if it’s worth your time to complain, you could get Prime for free. It’s kind of like cloud provider who breaks SLA.
In addition, there's also a very clear contradiction in their statement, specifically how they "often don’t really need something that fast" but yet they will continue paying happily for Prime. Maybe they only care about the other Prime services and not the shipping?
Also in SoCal, I get a mix of both. Usually two days, sometimes one, sometimes it says it is out for delivery on that second day but then they end up not delivering it.
From what I understand, the Amazon delivery people are contractors who are paid to deliver as much as they can. If they can't get to everything that day before 9pm, you don't get your package.
It has only really hurt me a couple of times where I ordered something for a trip, and it didn't arrive in time.
It seems like it's regional, based on replies here. It seems everyone on the west coast gets pretty good delivery times. I'm in a major metro on the east coast, and my experience is shared by a lot of my friends.
Sometimes I comparison shop at other online stores. It has not been uncommon to find the cost for an item at another store plus shipping is equal to or less than buying it with Amazon Prime. Am I really paying for movies and music which I hardly use?
Amazon has been so consistent for me and given me such great customer service that I still buy from them even when they aren't the lowest price. I'm a pretty loyal customer.
In Hawaii, Prime isn't two day, it's "free shipping within sorta 5-7 business days, for most of the stuff marked Prime". And even that has gotten unreliable.
When there's a range of delivery dates specified, it often seems designed to show up on the very last day of that range. A significant fraction of the time they haven't even shipped the thing by the first day of the delivery estimate.
There are also an increasing amount of items that say they are Prime but when you try to buy them, it says "it can't be shipped to your address". Sometimes it's understandable, like things that are very heavy or hazardous, like Li-ion batteries. Other times it's completely incomprehensible, like 1/8" pipe fittings. And Amazon customer service can't give any info, they just say "sorry, we're not going to be able to send you that thing."
I couldn't get them to send me an xbox controller in Hawaii. It's just infuriating. They could at least have the decency to let you filter items you can't get. The mismatch between their listed terms and what you actually get as a Prime customer in Hawaii is borderline fraudulent.
I'm considering putting together and sharing a script that could check your order history and delivery dates. They tend to give a free month of credit for late deliveries, but if I could show them "Well out of 12 months I've had late deliveries every month this year" I should just get the service for free.
I suppose it could be more clear, but I do not see where they guarantee 2-day to Hawaii. You live on an island in the middle of the ocean, expect shipping delays.
Except that the OP was complaining that some items advertised aren't deliverable to Hawaii at all, not that they are deliverable with delays: "I couldn't get them to send me an xbox controller in Hawaii."
I don't really understand the instinct to jump on people complaining about receiving sub-par service compared to the promise given to them when they signed up. Amazon makes an absurd about of money, they could almost certainly do a better job here.
>I'm considering putting together and sharing a script that could check your order history and delivery dates. They tend to give a free month of credit for late deliveries, but if I could show them "Well out of 12 months I've had late deliveries every month this year" I should just get the service for free.
I'm talking about that bit.
Edit: I assumed he expected two day delivery. In his comment below he says he understands it's 3-7 and many come in 8-12, so my mistake.
They advertise 3-7 business days. For the past 3 months it's been more like ~8-11 business days. Nobody here has unrealistic expectations.
USPS would be much faster if they just dropped it in the mail within a couple days. It would also cost less than fedex overnighting items after waiting 2 weeks.
Indeed. It's gotten to the point that if I want something fast, I'll actually avoid Amazon and instead find some merchant who will ship the item USPS Priority Mail which is very reasonably priced and reliably arrives in 3 days.
The biggest problem are merchants that for some reason insist that they can only use UPS/Fedex, which is a complete ripoff to Hawaii. I don't understand how they get any business for their "ground" service here, given that it's usually about the same price as 2-day air but takes a week.
Perhaps you missed the point that I and underbluewaters complained that they were not willing to ship things at all, or taking longer than their own stated timelines? None of us said we expected two-day shipping.
Yeah, it's a state... which is an island in the middle of the ocean. Be at least a little realistic with your expectations. Also, their terms do not guarantee 2-day shipping to Hawaii or Alaska.
If their terms _guarantee_ 2-day shipping to contiguous US, does that mean there's some recourse to a customer when that is not met? Cause it is routinely not these days for many people I know.
Every time Amazon misses a guaranteed delivery date, I send a quick note to customer care and get a free month of Prime added to my account. Takes under a minute and I've never had to even respond a second time to one of these threads.
There are times when 2 days is not the guarantee, which is slightly annoying, but for most items, 2 days is.
So it's unrealistic to expect a multinational corporation to be competent enough to ship XBox controllers and eight-inch pipe fittings to their customers, if they're on an island? Because that's what the parent comment is talking about.
I also live on an island, and have the same problem getting random items shipped. My workaround is to order from a Marketplace seller listed in the sidebar instead. Normally I avoid them and buy direct from Amazon, but this works surprisingly well.
I've purchased all kinds of 'restricted' things this way, high-power magnets, chemicals, flammable aerosols, commercial-grade fire extinguishers, etc. I think Amazon's rule is mostly based on what can't go by air, since they want all options (ground/sea/air) available. I have no idea what method the third-party sellers actually use but everything shows up in plain brown boxes no problem. Try it some time, and just pay a couple bucks extra for shipping and avoid the hassle.
Except it's not "free" shipping. It is a contract for prepaid shipping where they then renege on that contract for various items for no explainable reason.
That it isn't inexplicable isn't in question. It is, however, unacceptable given promises made (voluntarily) by Amazon marketing about the nature of the service.
> Amazon is also failing to handle rampant knock-offs mixed in with legitimate products
This is the only thing I worry about. Granted, I don't think I've personally ever gotten a knock-off but the fact that the possibility exists makes me much more cautious about ordering from amazon.
Some items are much more prone to being counterfeit than others.
If you order a Lego set, you're going to get a Lego set.
But when it comes to industrial stuff, I can't even shop there anymore. Anything labeled as OEM (batteries, auto parts, etc) is a prime candidate for counterfeiting.
Unlike the other comments, I'd like to point out that I have had a similar experience with Amazon's 2-day shipping. I would claim that 1 in 3 packages have an issue of some sort that causes a delay.
Amazon shipping can be terrible depending on where you live. Here in Hawaii they claim 3-7 business days which they regularly don't meet. The pattern I've noticed is that they wait until the very last moment to ship and then use priority overnight to try and meet that deadline. I think they do this to try and pool shipments but it never works out that way. I count on all orders taking a full two weeks to arrive.
I'd cancel Prime in a heartbeat if I had a remotely comparable alternative. They use to provide value in terms of making it easy to pick good products but the 3rd party seller thing has made this more difficult.
+1 on more late Prime deliveries than there used to be.
FWIW, you can request a free month of Prime anytime you get a Prime order late (up to 12 times per subscription renewal, from what I've read). I've done it a few times already; once you find the customer service page, it's pretty painless.
Awesome tip, but I feel like I'm still shit out of luck with any Amazon purchase sent via USPS. Their drivers mark all their Amazon Prime packages as delivered if it's end of day. I've had multiple Amazon deliveries that were "delivered at 7:59pm at normal mail reception desk" that they then delivered the following day
Yeah same here - except with fedex who wont even try to deliver. They'll just sneak up and leave tags saying they attempted.
When I asked amazon about it they really didn't want to do much but I was able to get them to block using their own drivers who were completely clueless on what an entrance to a building looks like (tip: it's not the emergency exit door...)
> From many conversations, and my personal experience, the reliability of prime for two day deliveries has gone way down. It's generally a day or two before the item even ships in my region. Amazon is also failing to handle rampant knock-offs mixed in with legitimate products.
I'm noticing that too. If I'm going to go with standard shipping, they'll wait on it for 2 weeks and then try to ship it the day before the end of the delievery estimation. (I live in Chicago, so theres absolutely no reason to do that other than spite)
I've only had 2 shipping delay issues with Amazon Prime in the last 4 years. Recently the option for 1 day shipping for a minimal fee or free has only made it better in my eyes.
Here in my area, 2-day Prime means 3-4 days. Their guaranteed delivery date is always 4 days away, but about half the time you'll get it in 3. But they still call it "two-day delivery"
I think it now means two days from when they hand it off to usps/ups/fedex. There has been considerable delay recently from when the package is "shipped" and when it's handed over. Probably due to them using their own trucks and simply using the other carriers as the last mile.
I barely had issues with 2-day, 1-day or even same day Prime (not Prime Now) deliveries in the Sacramento area. Probably becasue we have a huge UPS & Amazon hub here.
once in a while they will miss the window but will notify right away and deliver it within the next day, pretty early in the day
When the courier service has switched from Fedex to OnTrac, my previous experience of 2 days or less went to 3 days minimum with the occasional "Whoops we gave it to the wrong person" thrown in for good measure.
In both Oakland and Colorado, I have also seen very poor rates of successful 2-day Prime delivery. Often indeed, the item ships about 5 minutes before the "Item will arrive by 8pm today" commitment (and that message will continue to show well after 8pm and the item has not arrived).
I order things like food from Amazon (Soylent), and I have relied on the shipping. But it is awful. I would say about 50% of the time my package arrives late, by a day or even 3-4 days. It's insane to pay $100 a year for a service that absolutely does not meet its promises. Just call it 4 day delivery and we'll be good.
Amazon Prime is a scam. I'm a loyal customer because there are few alternatives, but they do not deliver the service that you pay for.
What?? Amazon Prime is a killer value! Netflix is $11/month and Spotify is $10/month. Sure, those services are definitely better than Prime Video and Music, but I still use Amazon's offerings a similar amount so the $13/month bundle feels like a great value at 40% lower cost. And this doesn't even count the services I don't use like free Kindle books or Twitch game discounts.
Not to mention the faster delivery times... The real benefit there has been changing the way I shop and think about shopping. I think I save massive amounts of time by almost never going to stores again. Even if the time savings is moot in the end, the psychological benefit of never having to go to stores has been wonderful. How much is that worth? I don't know, but it feels like almost zero cost given the value I get from Prime Video and Music (again, I admit that those services aren't "great").
This is actually my biggest problem with Prime: it feels like a bunch of substandard services, most of which I don't need, bundled together. If I'm not going to use free Kindle books or Twitch discounts (and I'm not), their value to me is $0. If Amazon Music doesn't have the songs I want to hear, and I have to keep paying for Spotify for those, then its value to me is $0. Prime's value is mostly free shipping, and it feels like the rest is just promotional fluff (maybe with the exception of Prime Video, which has some well-regarded original content).
But it's all shades of gray. While you might like Prime Video - others may find it useless but enjoy the free Kindle books or Twitch discounts or other included offers.
Personally, I order enough things throughout a year that Prime pays for itself in shipping costs. Any additional items are just that to me. Nice to have, especially since I'm not being charged extra, but are not why I'm paying.
> Nice to have, especially since I'm not being charged extra, but are not why I'm paying.
That's not how it works. Just because you aren't being billed by line item, you are being charged more. Those services come at a cost to them, and instead of being amortized across the users that benefit, they're being amortized across all users.
Case in point: this price increase. I'm sure it factors into account the price of all those services you aren't using/didn't sign up for Amazon Prime for. But you're paying it anyway.
EDIT:
The best example of this is one of the biggest complaints about cable tv services: to get channel x, you have to purchase a bundle of 2000 other channels too, which "justifies" an insane price of $80 more a month or whatever just for that one channel. The rationale is "but you're getting 20001 channels, not one, for that price!" and that's exactly what you're seeing here.
Only true without grandfathered pricing or with actual price increases. I've paid the same price for Prime as when I first bought into it, even as additional items have been added for what I have been paying.
My example is more like:
I pay $80 for 200 channels.
2 years later I still pay $80 for 200 channels and 50 other channels that have been added.
3 years later I still pay $80 for 250 channels and 10 on-demand movies
4 years later I still pay $80 for 250 channels, 10 on-demand movies, and their new music channels
I've had Prime since day 1 and the price went from $75 or $79 to $100/year, so that isn't true (at least for me, in case it somehow is for you).
But in all cases, while your price for that channel hasn't increased, the market price for that channel has. Your son moves out and he can't get the package you're getting now on his own; you're an exception that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that - in general - this one service now costs that much more.
You're correct, I've only been a Prime customer for as long as it's been $99 annually, which was sometime in 2014 [0]. However, they've still added more to what Prime membership includes since that time so my statement remains true for myself.
>But in all cases, while your price for that channel hasn't increased, the market price for that channel has.
The only important factor for what I receive for what I'm paying is the price I'm paying. Other people's pricing is irrelevant. Other people's prices are not what I am paying and are not a factor in determining if I feel I am getting value for my money.
If I think Amazon Prime is worth $99/yr and not a cent more - then if they ever increase my pricing then I simply cancel my subscription and now they lose my $99/yr. If they grandfather me in since I've been paying $99/yr for years then they'll likely continue to receive my $99/yr as long as I feel the price is still justified for what I receive. If they begin removing things (eg: Prime no longer is 2 day shipping) then I cancel as I'd no longer be getting my money's worth.
I am not stating "forced bundles" are good - but just that I don't pay for Prime because of any of the extra bundled items and the price I have been paying for Prime has not increased even with additional items being added. Even if the price point was set some time in the past under the assumption of these items being added before they had ever been added - I had no knowledge of it and deemed $99/yr to be a fair price to pay at the time, so they are viewed as value adds even if they (technically) might not be.
I used to feel this exact way, and I do still think there are more than a few of their services that are pretty paltry.
But with Prime video, not only do they have highly praised original content, they fill in gaps that Netflix and Hulu have, with content from the HBO catalog, as well as TV shows that Netflix doesn't carry.
Add to that, the shipping for me, while not perfect, any time I've done free same day shipping, it's there.
My only request would be that I would gladly trade some of my benefits (Amazon music for example, along with others) in exchange for some type of access to audible.com content.
It would be nice if you could configure these services a la carte, but I doubt that's in Amazon's financial interest.
I use Netflix all the time, every time I check Amazon video the landing page looks the same, no new shows or movies. In fact my video landing page has looked the same for a good 2 months now. I'm not sure if they haven't added anything new or they just suck at promoting the new additions...
I 100% agree! Every app of theirs show the same stuff. I can't tell yet if theyre copying Netflix on their initial landing page on a consistent basis, but I feel like they've let some aspect of discovery escape them.
Overall, I do love their library, but they could evangelize it in such a better way.
I signed up for Amazon Prime for a month trial, and it seems pointless.
There's no Amazon Netherlands, so ordering from Amazon Germany instead who do have a lot. Not everything is subject to free delivery with Prime though. They wrote next day delivery. It took them 3 days. I can already order a lot from Bol.com with free shipping from 20 EUR order, and free return S&H. I suppose this is where, internationally, there's going to be larger differences.
Already got Spotify, not switching.
Already got cable, Netflix, and HBO. Not gonna add another. Already can't consume all this.
Free ebooks, I got a Kobo w/o DRM.
Twitch I don't touch with a 10 pole feet. I use Steam primarily, and bought various games on sale but I don't have time for games.
If you're using two of these services though, and it'd mean you'd ditch the competitor, then Amazon Prime is already worth it.
> From many conversations, and my personal experience, the reliability of prime for two day deliveries has gone way down
Also they push Amazon Logistics on you, which is terrible. I've had so many problems with them. The worst thing is they removed the option to "de-prioritize" them for your deliveries, like you can with any other problem delivery service. So you're SOL if you, for instance, USPS knows how to do its job in your area.
We live less than 5 miles away from a major distribution center; same day is offered for just about everything, with everything else reliably arriving 1-2 days post order.
However, 2-day shipping is the only option available for most other places. I can see how Prime isn't as good of a deal for places like that.
Denver Metro here, I don't think Amazon have missed a two day window in at least a year. I've only had two misses in over three years of having a Prime sub.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime membership about a year ago and haven't looked back. I end up spending less money per month on things that I really don't need and my house is no longer filled with endless cardboard boxes.
> my house is no longer filled with endless cardboard boxes.
You can throw in in the trash, you know :)
Cancelling Prime is probably good for the same reason I shouldn't have gotten a Moviepass. I now have one less thing blocking me from watching a mediocre movie.
Trees were killed to make those boxes in the first place (do they have 100% recycled boxes yet?). Better to not order than to dump or even recycle the boxes.
Trees grow back faster than you might think. Especially the species and grades that go into papermaking. Nobody is cutting down old-growth forest and putting it into pulp. Unless they are a complete idiot - there's no money in it; it's been a while since I was doing my father's logging invoices, but his margins on spruce and fir or hardwood pulp were razor thin, after accounting to stumpage to the landowner and operating expenses. It was largely a way to get rid of the stuff that needed to be cut, but that he couldn't convince anyone to scale out for veneer or saw logs. A huge part of the pulpwood was also blowdowns, storm damage, and disease or insect culls.
Sure, but trees are not a good reason for that. I'll try to edit and add a better citation[0], but making cardboard boxes is more efficient than going into forests and cutting down trees.
Amazon has a program where you can use the old boxes to ship donations to places like Goodwill. Amazon will pay the shipping cost, you get rid of a box and donate to charity at the same time.
This monthly hike hurts me because I don't use Prime most of the year either: I pick it up for Christmas shopping season, it pays for itself easily in terms of lightning deals I can take advantage of. And sometimes I'll pick up a month when I'm going to buy a game, since Prime users can get $15 off new games, which covers the cost of the month of Prime.
But in most cases, yeah: I spend less money without Prime, and am rarely in a hurry, and don't mind waiting to hit the $25 minimum for super saver. Not having Prime has also lead me to shop elsewhere more: I buy stuff from Walmart, Target, and Best Buy a lot more in addition to Amazon purchases.
While I’m not sure I get $156/year worth of value from Prime, or even $99, I share my account with 2 other close family members, and together we place enough orders for it to be worth it. Same with Costco etc. — so as long as These services remain easy to share, the price increases are aren’t too bad.
I think the new way is to only allow two other people in your household. So for people who cancelled and rebought Prime or got Prime in the last few years, they don’t get your perk.
I too am lucky to be grandfathered in. But can’t really say it is a current Prime benefit anymore.
Walmart, Jet.com and Target offer free 2 day shipping if you order $35, $35, or $25 respectively. It so happens in my area, all three use Fedex ground, which tends to be more reliable than UPS.
Additionally, most items that cost less than $6-8 each tend to be significantly cheaper at Walmart or Target, or you can by a single item rather than a 3-pack, which is a common Amazon strategy.
If you buy a decent number of higher price items, Amazon tends to have a price advantage, so the $99-per-year Prime subscription is worth it. However, you will throw a bunch of money away if you are buying a handful of small-ticket items from Amazon on a regular basis.
The biggest thing is probably convenience. Even Amazon regularly reminds me of this, by saying I saved > 50 trips to the store for 1-off items that I've ordered on Prime. From shipping speed to not having to go blunder around a store looking for an item, Prime makes sense.
It makes even more sense if you comparison shop. With Amazon, you can pick the _exact right item_, whereas a big box store like Walmart or Target will only stock a few options at best, 0 at worst. I was looking for a specific light bulb at Home Depot the other day. Didn't find it. Went to Lowe's. Didn't find it. Ordered the exact item from Amazon while walking out of Lowe's. I only went to stores for the time convenience (I obviously needed it urgently), but they failed for lack of stock. That's what Amazon offers to me -- instant availability of a huge range of items, and ridiculously fast shipping on the smallest of those items.
I agree that shopping at physical stores tends to be a waste of time, with poor selection.
I am referring to shopping at walmart.com, jet.com and target.com, which tend to have many of the exact same small-ticket items as amazon.com, but at cheaper prices and without a subscription for 2 day free shipping. It seems they tend to ship the items from a local store, and thus can use low-cost ground shipping and get it there in two days.
I don't know what Amazon USA is like nowadays but the UK site has reclassified many smaller items as 'Add-ons' which can't be ordered individually, even with Prime.
The items seem to vary but range from rulers to multipacks of soap, duct tape, packs of pens, USB sticks and even once a big exercise ball that I was considering.
Nowadays I usually go straight to eBay for small items and pay the Royal Mail postage for them.
> It makes even more sense if you comparison shop. With Amazon, you can pick the _exact right item_, whereas a big box store like Walmart or Target will only stock a few options at best, 0 at worst. I was looking for a specific light bulb at Home Depot the other day. Didn't find it. Went to Lowe's. Didn't find it. Ordered the exact item from Amazon while walking out of Lowe's. I only went to stores for the time convenience (I obviously needed it urgently), but they failed for lack of stock. That's what Amazon offers to me -- instant availability of a huge range of items, and ridiculously fast shipping on the smallest of those items.
Why didn't you go to lowes.com or walmart.com? This isn't an apples to apples comparison.
And why not check the lowes/homedepot sites before bothering to go into the store? They both have pretty good stock indicators and they'll tell you exactly where the item is.
I agree with this. In the past few months, I've found walmart.com to be cheaper than amazon.com for manytdepartments/products (certainly not always true). However, the point is it might be worth it to comparison shop at the cost of an additional minute.
I've stopped shopping at amazon, but the prime subscription I expected to expire annoyingly auto-renewed itself. There seems to be an (intentional?) lack of prime account management features. The only user facing options seem to be "cancel now" or "email me right before auto-renewal". I don't see a way to simply turn off automatic renewal.
On the other hand I think prime was a useful influence on other e-commence sites. Shipping times have become dramatically shorter in recent years.
So, thank you Amazon for forcing your competition to ship faster while allowing your own site to become overrun with fake reviews and crappy knock-off products!
Recently Amazon upped its minimum order for Prime Now (2 hr delivery) -- used to be 20 euros, now it's 40. I cancelled my subscription because of that, but the customer service was courteous and refunded the unused months fairly quickly.
Until I read this article I didn't even realize I could get Prime monthly. Back in the day when it started it was a one time fee, $70? I paid it, and Amazon has been charging me since then. Like all subscription services, you are supposed to deiced once and forget about it. I worry about the concentration of power in the hands of Amazon. But I love my Kindle and I love Prime.
I've wondered why Amazon Prime charges tax in my state for what's essentially a yearly membership club fee. My guess is that since it's bundled with streaming services etc it counts as being entertainment even though I don't use those features.
I pay for Prime yearly, so this does not affect me. However, in the last couple years, the quality of service has decreased dramatically. When Prime first rolled out, it used to be that I'd receive my packages on day 2 like clockwork. These days, I'm lucky if I receive packages in 4 or 5 days. Additionally, with inventory co-mingling, Amazon has become a dumping ground for counterfeit and damaged products. I've wasted so much time this past year sending stuff back (sometimes repeatedly) because I've received something that was damaged (usually not during shipping) or clearly fraudulent.
The upside of course, is that Amazon's customer service remains top notch and any issues that I have are ultimately resolved to my "satisfaction." It'd be nice if I didn't have to spend so much time in chats with Amazon customer service.
Many people in this and other recent threads talking about counterfeit items...please be aggressive about reporting these to customer service! It's only happened to me once, and customer service just refunded the ~$50 purchase without even asking me to send it back. A few days later I saw the seller was no longer on Amazon, so I suspect this is something Amazon is starting to take more seriously.
Amazon really needs to do a better job of clearly showing which products are sold by third-parties and how well-vetted those third-parties actually are. I've not seen anyone say that a "Sold by Amazon" product is counterfeit.
This said...
I've come to rely less and less on Prime for actually meeting its 2-day promises. Most of the time I don't care when it shows up, but when I do care, I've lost all faith that Amazon will actually pull through so I end up just buying locally.
If volume is the issue, they really could incentivize the "no rush" shipping more than the hokey $5 credit things.
How obvious was the counterfeit? I’m worried That I’m oblivious enough to not notice something is counterfeit and just think the product is bad quality.
I was certainly fooled the first one or two times it happened; my initial thought was that Levi's provided the worst of its production to Amazon. The jeans were cut and sewn poorly, covered in sawdust, and fell apart within months. It's only upon doing further research that I realized they were counterfeit, and that many people have had this problem.
I wish Amazon Prime would break itself up into packages instead of raising their rates every 6 months as they throw more and more crap under the umbrella
It annoys me greatly that I'm subsidizing Prime Video when I have zero interest in using it
Can you afford to pay yearly? Seems like they are trying to get people to pay yearly. They have really only raised that price once 3 or so years ago (otherwise they did a $5 increase).
I rarely get two-day deliveries anymore, with the fee increase, I'm likely to terminate the service :/ I only ship about one item per month on Amazon, not worth the $13/mo
Is Prime still worth it? Many items on Amazon Prime are more expensive than buying at local retailers, and competitors like Walmart, Costco, and Jet (now part of Walmart) offer cheap, fast shipping, often with lower prices.
I'm planning on cancelling my Prime subscription when it goes up for renewal since I rarely use it (it would actually be cheaper to pay for 2-day shipping every time).
Same-day arrival is a godsend for me, which is why I keep paying for it. I don't care about their Music or Video options, though it's handy to have with Echos around the apartment.
I've just canceled my prime this Monday. I kept it only for the Grand Tour Show. I did also notice that the shipping took longer than what they state and most items I had to return since they were not as described. After that I received an email asking me if I am happy with service since I returned 2-3 items.
I'm fortunate to live close to one of their distribution centers. I regularly get things same or next day.
When I use other resellers online it takes upwards of a week to get things. For the few situations where they're less than amazon, their shipping fees and shipping times lose the sale.
Fedex seems to go out of their way to sit on packages. UPS, on the other hand, seems to go to extra lengths to get packages through their system as quickly as possible, regardless of shipping type. As in, things ordered UPS Ground regularly get here in 2 days. Fedex, though, when they say a week, it'll damned well be 7 days.
169 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadBy comparison, Google sends me an e-mail every month reminding me how much I'm paying for Google Play Music. I don't mind it, but I wonder if it affects their retention rates to do that.
They seem to artificially add delays to processing to discourage me, but I don't really order anything that I need immediately.
Not having prime also prevents me from impulse buying.
Also, majority of things that you purchase on regular basis, such as cleaning supplies, vitamins etc are often much cheaper in local store and are less likely to be knock offs.
> They've developed a prioritization process for picking which take items ordered _later_ via prime and picks them first.
What I meant to say is that with prime the order is shipped within hours, when without it takes days and it seems to be calculated toward the end of of the time range, but still so it will arrive before the deadline.
Actually any items that are not fulfilled by Amazon are delivered much faster when you don't have prime. When you do it is the reverse, which feels suspicious.
Yes, there's no way for me to completely prove, but statistically without prime items arrive at the later date of the spectrum given, but they also never late than the date given. This could be explained that when deadline approaches they start treating my order as if it was higher priority, but then that would still prove my point.
Non-prime items won't see similar shipping priority until near the end of their deadlines.
It's to minimize prime-order shipping latency as much as possible. Incenticizing prime is a happy side-effect.
Only downside is that the incentive rotates and some of them are simply terrible (prime pantry, women's fashion, and home services for example).
I love Amazon subscriptions. Never having to think about buying all those staples, and just having them show up at the right time every month is worth a little extra money, which is at least partially offset by the subscription discounts.
All those other extras they throw in are just junk to me. Apart from The Grand Tour there's nothing on prime video I care about, have never used their music much because the interface is an absolute joke (same with video).
Prime Now is nice but for some reason my area doesn't get restaurants despite being in the Portland Metro.
So just looking at shipping costs, I think I've at best broken even. Rarely get things in two days anyways. Usually takes them 3 days.
My amazon activity is much less than it used to be. Too much cheap and down right counterfeit products.
The 2 day Prime shipping is great...but it’s been taking forever to just get my stuff shipped out.
Anyway, have been debating cancelling the last several months and this headline was the impetus I needed.
You stop price checking. Amazon is far from the cheapest place to order things now. Depending on the item of course.
Next time price check an item before just grabbing it on Amazon, I did. Saved over 40% by doing so.
The Google method of sending a yearly notification is the idiomatic and proper way of selling a service. The Amazon way is the scumbag way because that's how they charge you without you knowing.
Also they probably are working to lock people in initially with low prices and hike prices overtime once they are dependent (monthly scheduled shipments, etc)
So we just don't spend it as much, as we have excellent cheap health care and in America, it seems you can go broke if one thing happens due to extreme costs -> more spending. That's seems to be my current opinion of reading HN, feel free to correct me
I have this to back me up :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_financi...
But I'm wondering what the averages would be if we exclude the top 2%. Which probably skew the numbers for the USA ( not sure)
This past week I paid $12 for ground shipping at another site and was reminded about how much shipping added to the price of the product.
Update: Also forgot about the convenience of using Amazon lockers.
Your conclusion to me is an odd one; maybe you wouldn't have ended up making those purchases were you forced to give them more thought which would save you _more_ in the long term.
But I also don't order as much I did. So I might cancel.
I always figured I could just pool purchases and get free shipping. I didn't anticipate my change in behavior. So many things that I could spend 30 minutes to pick up at a local store, I can now order from Amazon and get them before I'd make it to the store anyway.
I also travel a lot. So having confidence that I'll get a package before I take off on a trip is worth a lot.
It's also the case that a lot of the fillers I used to use to get free shipping like books, CDs, and DVDs, I don't order much any longer because of online content.
Realistically speaking, probably not, no.
Amazon's Antitrust Paradox: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
I have a realized this too, but my response has been to explicitly try to shop elsewhere, to spread my dollars around. I've found Amazon often isn't even really that competitive anymore, they're just coasting on people's habits. I also don't want them to end up an unassailable retail monopoly or near-monopoly.
It seems pretty brazen to increase the cost of Prime in light of those issues, even if it is only the monthly subscription. I'm sure it won't actually hurt them since they have such a strange-hold on online retail, and even with these issues they do still offer the best service by far, but it really seems like Amazon needs some competition.
When I order something from Prime with 2-day shipping, it’s sometimes late, and sometimes shows up the next morning. It’s fast enough on average that I feel the price is easily worth it. If I really need something ASAP I’ll pay the extra few dollars for the one-day shipping (which would cost a lot more without Prime).
They’d have to raise the price a lot more to lose me as a customer. If there are a lot of customers like me and matte_black, it makes sense for them to raise the price.
By the way, if you do complain about late packages, they will give you a month of free Prime for each complaint or even put $10 as a credit in your account. So if it’s worth your time to complain, you could get Prime for free. It’s kind of like cloud provider who breaks SLA.
I'm in Southern California, so maybe the greater density here means different systems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From what I understand, the Amazon delivery people are contractors who are paid to deliver as much as they can. If they can't get to everything that day before 9pm, you don't get your package.
It has only really hurt me a couple of times where I ordered something for a trip, and it didn't arrive in time.
When there's a range of delivery dates specified, it often seems designed to show up on the very last day of that range. A significant fraction of the time they haven't even shipped the thing by the first day of the delivery estimate.
There are also an increasing amount of items that say they are Prime but when you try to buy them, it says "it can't be shipped to your address". Sometimes it's understandable, like things that are very heavy or hazardous, like Li-ion batteries. Other times it's completely incomprehensible, like 1/8" pipe fittings. And Amazon customer service can't give any info, they just say "sorry, we're not going to be able to send you that thing."
I'm considering putting together and sharing a script that could check your order history and delivery dates. They tend to give a free month of credit for late deliveries, but if I could show them "Well out of 12 months I've had late deliveries every month this year" I should just get the service for free.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
I suppose it could be more clear, but I do not see where they guarantee 2-day to Hawaii. You live on an island in the middle of the ocean, expect shipping delays.
I don't really understand the instinct to jump on people complaining about receiving sub-par service compared to the promise given to them when they signed up. Amazon makes an absurd about of money, they could almost certainly do a better job here.
>I'm considering putting together and sharing a script that could check your order history and delivery dates. They tend to give a free month of credit for late deliveries, but if I could show them "Well out of 12 months I've had late deliveries every month this year" I should just get the service for free.
I'm talking about that bit.
Edit: I assumed he expected two day delivery. In his comment below he says he understands it's 3-7 and many come in 8-12, so my mistake.
USPS would be much faster if they just dropped it in the mail within a couple days. It would also cost less than fedex overnighting items after waiting 2 weeks.
The biggest problem are merchants that for some reason insist that they can only use UPS/Fedex, which is a complete ripoff to Hawaii. I don't understand how they get any business for their "ground" service here, given that it's usually about the same price as 2-day air but takes a week.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
There are times when 2 days is not the guarantee, which is slightly annoying, but for most items, 2 days is.
I've purchased all kinds of 'restricted' things this way, high-power magnets, chemicals, flammable aerosols, commercial-grade fire extinguishers, etc. I think Amazon's rule is mostly based on what can't go by air, since they want all options (ground/sea/air) available. I have no idea what method the third-party sellers actually use but everything shows up in plain brown boxes no problem. Try it some time, and just pay a couple bucks extra for shipping and avoid the hassle.
You are complaining about free shipping speed to an island 2,400 miles off the coast of California
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/help/id=201118070
This is the only thing I worry about. Granted, I don't think I've personally ever gotten a knock-off but the fact that the possibility exists makes me much more cautious about ordering from amazon.
If you order a Lego set, you're going to get a Lego set.
But when it comes to industrial stuff, I can't even shop there anymore. Anything labeled as OEM (batteries, auto parts, etc) is a prime candidate for counterfeiting.
I'd cancel Prime in a heartbeat if I had a remotely comparable alternative. They use to provide value in terms of making it easy to pick good products but the 3rd party seller thing has made this more difficult.
FWIW, you can request a free month of Prime anytime you get a Prime order late (up to 12 times per subscription renewal, from what I've read). I've done it a few times already; once you find the customer service page, it's pretty painless.
EDIT: Just want to make it clear that this isn't my isolated experience -- http://www.cbs46.com/story/36856477/mail-carriers-usps-warns...
When I asked amazon about it they really didn't want to do much but I was able to get them to block using their own drivers who were completely clueless on what an entrance to a building looks like (tip: it's not the emergency exit door...)
I'm noticing that too. If I'm going to go with standard shipping, they'll wait on it for 2 weeks and then try to ship it the day before the end of the delievery estimation. (I live in Chicago, so theres absolutely no reason to do that other than spite)
That said, I do live in the Greater Seattle area.
I live almost in the middle of nowhere, except that I'm less than an hour away from a major shipping distribution center.
once in a while they will miss the window but will notify right away and deliver it within the next day, pretty early in the day
I order things like food from Amazon (Soylent), and I have relied on the shipping. But it is awful. I would say about 50% of the time my package arrives late, by a day or even 3-4 days. It's insane to pay $100 a year for a service that absolutely does not meet its promises. Just call it 4 day delivery and we'll be good.
Amazon Prime is a scam. I'm a loyal customer because there are few alternatives, but they do not deliver the service that you pay for.
Not to mention the faster delivery times... The real benefit there has been changing the way I shop and think about shopping. I think I save massive amounts of time by almost never going to stores again. Even if the time savings is moot in the end, the psychological benefit of never having to go to stores has been wonderful. How much is that worth? I don't know, but it feels like almost zero cost given the value I get from Prime Video and Music (again, I admit that those services aren't "great").
Not for me wrt Netflix vs Prime Video. The latter is much better if you value movies over shows and quantity over quality especially for older movies.
Personally, I order enough things throughout a year that Prime pays for itself in shipping costs. Any additional items are just that to me. Nice to have, especially since I'm not being charged extra, but are not why I'm paying.
That's not how it works. Just because you aren't being billed by line item, you are being charged more. Those services come at a cost to them, and instead of being amortized across the users that benefit, they're being amortized across all users.
Case in point: this price increase. I'm sure it factors into account the price of all those services you aren't using/didn't sign up for Amazon Prime for. But you're paying it anyway.
EDIT:
The best example of this is one of the biggest complaints about cable tv services: to get channel x, you have to purchase a bundle of 2000 other channels too, which "justifies" an insane price of $80 more a month or whatever just for that one channel. The rationale is "but you're getting 20001 channels, not one, for that price!" and that's exactly what you're seeing here.
My example is more like:
I pay $80 for 200 channels.
2 years later I still pay $80 for 200 channels and 50 other channels that have been added.
3 years later I still pay $80 for 250 channels and 10 on-demand movies
4 years later I still pay $80 for 250 channels, 10 on-demand movies, and their new music channels
But in all cases, while your price for that channel hasn't increased, the market price for that channel has. Your son moves out and he can't get the package you're getting now on his own; you're an exception that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that - in general - this one service now costs that much more.
>But in all cases, while your price for that channel hasn't increased, the market price for that channel has.
The only important factor for what I receive for what I'm paying is the price I'm paying. Other people's pricing is irrelevant. Other people's prices are not what I am paying and are not a factor in determining if I feel I am getting value for my money.
If I think Amazon Prime is worth $99/yr and not a cent more - then if they ever increase my pricing then I simply cancel my subscription and now they lose my $99/yr. If they grandfather me in since I've been paying $99/yr for years then they'll likely continue to receive my $99/yr as long as I feel the price is still justified for what I receive. If they begin removing things (eg: Prime no longer is 2 day shipping) then I cancel as I'd no longer be getting my money's worth.
I am not stating "forced bundles" are good - but just that I don't pay for Prime because of any of the extra bundled items and the price I have been paying for Prime has not increased even with additional items being added. Even if the price point was set some time in the past under the assumption of these items being added before they had ever been added - I had no knowledge of it and deemed $99/yr to be a fair price to pay at the time, so they are viewed as value adds even if they (technically) might not be.
[0] http://time.com/23172/amazon-prime-hikes-price-to-99/ (Amazon's official announcement is in the second sentence but is a lengthy URL with querystrings)
But with Prime video, not only do they have highly praised original content, they fill in gaps that Netflix and Hulu have, with content from the HBO catalog, as well as TV shows that Netflix doesn't carry.
Add to that, the shipping for me, while not perfect, any time I've done free same day shipping, it's there.
My only request would be that I would gladly trade some of my benefits (Amazon music for example, along with others) in exchange for some type of access to audible.com content.
It would be nice if you could configure these services a la carte, but I doubt that's in Amazon's financial interest.
Overall, I do love their library, but they could evangelize it in such a better way.
I signed up for Amazon Prime for a month trial, and it seems pointless.
There's no Amazon Netherlands, so ordering from Amazon Germany instead who do have a lot. Not everything is subject to free delivery with Prime though. They wrote next day delivery. It took them 3 days. I can already order a lot from Bol.com with free shipping from 20 EUR order, and free return S&H. I suppose this is where, internationally, there's going to be larger differences.
Already got Spotify, not switching.
Already got cable, Netflix, and HBO. Not gonna add another. Already can't consume all this.
Free ebooks, I got a Kobo w/o DRM.
Twitch I don't touch with a 10 pole feet. I use Steam primarily, and bought various games on sale but I don't have time for games.
If you're using two of these services though, and it'd mean you'd ditch the competitor, then Amazon Prime is already worth it.
Also they push Amazon Logistics on you, which is terrible. I've had so many problems with them. The worst thing is they removed the option to "de-prioritize" them for your deliveries, like you can with any other problem delivery service. So you're SOL if you, for instance, USPS knows how to do its job in your area.
[1] http://www.cbs46.com/story/36856477/mail-carriers-usps-warns... N.B. I've personally had this happen a couple times now.
However, 2-day shipping is the only option available for most other places. I can see how Prime isn't as good of a deal for places like that.
You can throw in in the trash, you know :)
Cancelling Prime is probably good for the same reason I shouldn't have gotten a Moviepass. I now have one less thing blocking me from watching a mediocre movie.
Sure, but trees are not a good reason for that. I'll try to edit and add a better citation[0], but making cardboard boxes is more efficient than going into forests and cutting down trees.
[0]: http://www.internationalpaper.com/company/regions/north-amer...
> You can throw in in the trash, you know :)
I prefer to build forts for my cats out of my leftover boxes.
https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/xde6cauvpfp66o2
But in most cases, yeah: I spend less money without Prime, and am rarely in a hurry, and don't mind waiting to hit the $25 minimum for super saver. Not having Prime has also lead me to shop elsewhere more: I buy stuff from Walmart, Target, and Best Buy a lot more in addition to Amazon purchases.
I too am lucky to be grandfathered in. But can’t really say it is a current Prime benefit anymore.
Additionally, most items that cost less than $6-8 each tend to be significantly cheaper at Walmart or Target, or you can by a single item rather than a 3-pack, which is a common Amazon strategy.
If you buy a decent number of higher price items, Amazon tends to have a price advantage, so the $99-per-year Prime subscription is worth it. However, you will throw a bunch of money away if you are buying a handful of small-ticket items from Amazon on a regular basis.
It makes even more sense if you comparison shop. With Amazon, you can pick the _exact right item_, whereas a big box store like Walmart or Target will only stock a few options at best, 0 at worst. I was looking for a specific light bulb at Home Depot the other day. Didn't find it. Went to Lowe's. Didn't find it. Ordered the exact item from Amazon while walking out of Lowe's. I only went to stores for the time convenience (I obviously needed it urgently), but they failed for lack of stock. That's what Amazon offers to me -- instant availability of a huge range of items, and ridiculously fast shipping on the smallest of those items.
I am referring to shopping at walmart.com, jet.com and target.com, which tend to have many of the exact same small-ticket items as amazon.com, but at cheaper prices and without a subscription for 2 day free shipping. It seems they tend to ship the items from a local store, and thus can use low-cost ground shipping and get it there in two days.
The items seem to vary but range from rulers to multipacks of soap, duct tape, packs of pens, USB sticks and even once a big exercise ball that I was considering.
Nowadays I usually go straight to eBay for small items and pay the Royal Mail postage for them.
Why didn't you go to lowes.com or walmart.com? This isn't an apples to apples comparison.
On the other hand I think prime was a useful influence on other e-commence sites. Shipping times have become dramatically shorter in recent years.
So, thank you Amazon for forcing your competition to ship faster while allowing your own site to become overrun with fake reviews and crappy knock-off products!
It's relatively new, only added in April, 2016: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/amazon-prime-now-available-mon...
The upside of course, is that Amazon's customer service remains top notch and any issues that I have are ultimately resolved to my "satisfaction." It'd be nice if I didn't have to spend so much time in chats with Amazon customer service.
Amazon really needs to do a better job of clearly showing which products are sold by third-parties and how well-vetted those third-parties actually are. I've not seen anyone say that a "Sold by Amazon" product is counterfeit.
This said... I've come to rely less and less on Prime for actually meeting its 2-day promises. Most of the time I don't care when it shows up, but when I do care, I've lost all faith that Amazon will actually pull through so I end up just buying locally.
If volume is the issue, they really could incentivize the "no rush" shipping more than the hokey $5 credit things.
I've had it happen to me with Levi's, and word of mouth tells me this is a problem in general with big name clothing.
It annoys me greatly that I'm subsidizing Prime Video when I have zero interest in using it
I'm planning on cancelling my Prime subscription when it goes up for renewal since I rarely use it (it would actually be cheaper to pay for 2-day shipping every time).
When I use other resellers online it takes upwards of a week to get things. For the few situations where they're less than amazon, their shipping fees and shipping times lose the sale.
Fedex seems to go out of their way to sit on packages. UPS, on the other hand, seems to go to extra lengths to get packages through their system as quickly as possible, regardless of shipping type. As in, things ordered UPS Ground regularly get here in 2 days. Fedex, though, when they say a week, it'll damned well be 7 days.