Amazon Hikes Prime Membership Fee 276
An anonymous reader writes with official news that, as expected, "Amazon officially announced that it is increasing Prime Membership fees from $79 to $99. Amazon Students will pay $49, and participants of Amazon Fresh (the grocery shopping service) will continue to have a $299 fee. The price hike in Prime Membership is attributed to rising shipping costs, but some wonder if the 'real question around Prime is whether it's sustainable at all, even at a higher price.'"
Re:Still worth it (Score:5, Insightful)
They already have free shipping at the $35 order mark, so... no.
The free shipping is "standard 5-8 day shipping", so it's not quite the same as free 2-day prime shipping.
Plus, my orders rarely exceed $35, so it might take weeks to accumulate an order that big.
Prime still provides value to me (I dropped my $7.99 Netflix subscription when Amazon added free Prime movie streaming - both Netflix and Amazon streaming catalogs are equally poor), even when they increase it from $6.60/month to $8.25/month.
Amazon just wants to see how much they can squeeze (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a horde of loyal customers who are willing to pay a FEE just to have "exclusive" access to free shipping and some media streaming. What about that needs to be "sustainable", the goal is merely to make people feel compelled to prefer to shop where they have a vested interest (also known as the human nature to "send good money after bad"). Are they collecting as much from the prime fee as it costs them to ship all that crap? Probably not, but that's hardly the point. The question to ask is: would they make more money if prime didn't exist? Meaning, would all those customers who bought with prime have just shopped elsewhere instead? The answer is probably yes, otherwise Amazon would be pulling the plug instead of doubling down and increasing the rate. The last thing they want to do is drive away customers.
Re:Still Worth It (Score:3, Insightful)
But that strikes me as "Paying for the right to continue using your own property as you wish".
Re:Amazon just wants to see how much they can sque (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazon just wants to see how much they can sque (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't speak for anyone but myself (and my facebook posting about this has generated quite a bit of discussion about this amongst my friends), but this will result in me spending less at Amazon, as well as not renewing Prime next year. Prime is great for things I don't need today, but would love by the end of the week (2-day shipping). It's great for the one time every couple years I need something tomorrow with $3.99 overnight. The video services I don't use (hulu + netflix), and I don't do the kindle sharing thing. The Kindle itself has replaced almost all of my book buying habits, with the exception of technical books, which I still prefer in dead-tree edition. This has reduced the need to actually ship things to me. Over the last year or so, I've begun exploring stuff like buying toiletries via Prime, just to make it semi-worthwhile. I still don't use Prime to order computer parts, or giant TVs and the like as I'd rather have a local return point vs. packing and shipping defective items, etc, but I could be convinced if the value was there. Basically, at $79 a year, I felt that was fair enough that I didn't even bother to create a new account with my educational email address to pay the student rate. At $99/year, that value proposition no longer holds true for me. Your mileage may vary, of course.
So, after my Prime runs out, I'll be shopping more locally and maybe paying a little more, to get the things I normally would have ordered from Amazon. Oh well, such is life.
and worth every penny (Score:4, Insightful)