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Amazon Cuts Down On Prime Sharing 79

An anonymous reader writes: Tech Crunch reports that Amazon quietly rolled out changes to how their Prime subscriptions can be shared. The good news is that existing members aren't immediately losing their current sharing setups. It used to be that Amazon would let Prime subscribers share free shipping and a few other benefits with up to four other "household" members, with little restriction on what counted as a "household." The bad news: as of last weekend, Amazon now limits sharing to one other adult and four "child" profiles. The adults will need to authorize each other to use credit/debit cards associated with the account. Amazon didn't make any announcement about this, so it's unknown how long existing Prime shares will stay in effect. They could disappear when the subscription is up for renewal, or earlier if Amazon decides to crack down on it.
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Amazon Cuts Down On Prime Sharing

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    • More great news for AMZN shareholders ... Sky's the limit.

      It's awful, isn't it? We should definitely choose some politicians that will limit the sort of success that a company's founders and investors can earn. That's how other people will suddenly start doing the things that will make them prosperous and there will be no more wealth gap. Limit success so that everyone succeeds! There's no prosperity until there's no prosperity!

      What's the matter, put all your money into Apple stock and frustrated that it's lost value over the last few months while Amazon's con

  • I wanted to use one account for ebooks and another for everything else. Works fine on ios but android has single sign on that can't be disabled.

    So.....Now i have two $99 amazon prime subs.

    Can anyone please tell me how to break single sign on on android?

    • I wanted to use one account for ebooks and another for everything else.

      Why?

      • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        Ever thought about sharing the parts of amazon prime you don't use?

        I don't use prime music the selection sucks but my sister likes it and she has a lot of expensive ebooks for school on her amazon account.

        Lucky for her one of those ebooks was so expensive it came with a free one year prime sub.
        SSO is a rarther moot point for the next 8 months or so.

        Also amazon likes to remind you of the prime benefits you aren't using or can't use.

        For instance the kindle owners lending library is a prime benefit I have a ki

    • Call up Amazon. They'll most likely refund you the money for one of your accounts.

      That doesn't solve your single sign on problem, but at least it gets you your $99.

      As for the problem with the accounts my best suggestion is to set up multiple profiles with Android ... assuming your OS is sufficiently recent to support this feature. Sorry that I don't have a better suggestion.

    • by RDW ( 41497 )

      Order everything from one account, then strip the DRM from your books and read them on the Android app of your choice without signing on to anything?

    • I wanted to use one account for ebooks and another for everything else. Works fine on ios but android has single sign on that can't be disabled.

      So.....Now i have two $99 amazon prime subs.

      Can anyone please tell me how to break single sign on on android?

      Can't you just use Kindle Family Library? Login on your phone to the non-eBook account, which should be able to see the Kindle books via family sharing anyway.

    • Can anyone please tell me how to break single sign on on android?

      It isn't really hard. sign out and click the link below sign on that says 'sign on as a different user'.

      Why do I know? I have two accounts w/ the same username and different passwords that amazon wouldn't combine for me. somehow when my first kindle was bought it didn't go in under the same account. Real pita but I had bought a bunch of kindle books before I realized the problem and have ended up keeping the two accounts since. Wasn't a problem they combined single sign on on android but they fixed the

  • by sdguero ( 1112795 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @05:30PM (#50252395)
    Our household spends a lot of money on Amazon, but we are not going to renew Prime this year. I ahve been rodering thing from Amazon since the 90s but my satisfaction level with the company peaked a couple years ago adn has been sliding down since. The reasons we are cancelling are varied:

    - Items listed as having Prime often do not arrive for 5-6 business days. This is typical for larger items. It annoys me that Amazon lists tham as prime (to me this means item will arrive 2-3 business days), and their practice of having fine print about extra handling time for some prime items is abrasive. Just don't list it as Prime if it won't be shipped for 3-4 days!
    - The streaming video options are weak and I don't like the picture quality
    - "Prime day" is a joke
    - They raised the annual price of Prime 3x since I signed up
    - Items shipped prime from Amazon have shown up obivously used or broken multiple many times over the past year (much more often than before)
    - Amazon's support people were really hard to deal with when things in the above bullet point happened
    - As far as I can tell "super saver" shipping usually only takes one additional day (and sometimes none) to arrive compared to prime
    - I have been finding better prices on many things from retailers like Costco and Walmart compared to what Amazon offers
    - Amazon uses a variety of tactics to make the camelcamlcamel plugin not work relably to show price history on an item.

    Maybe I will regret the decision and we will sign back up, but we are definitely going to try living without it.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by njahnke ( 757694 )
      Where do you live?
    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @05:42PM (#50252485)

      I ahve been rodering thing from Amazon since the 90s but my satisfaction level with the company peaked a couple years ago adn has been sliding down since.

      Before your Prime membership expires, you should order a new keyboard. Something is wrong with the one you are using.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      My family uses Amazon. We all live in the same house. 96 separate orders shipped to the house so far this year. 168 in 2014. That is ORDERS, not just 96 and 168 items.

      To each his won. I see the benefit of Prime just for the shipping alone.
      I've only watched a prime video once and my wife got 2 Kindle books once.

      • by murdocj ( 543661 )

        I've occasionally thought about Prime but I just don't get that much stuff from Amazon. Curious as to what you are buying that you get an order basically every other day?

        • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          Well I didn't use to buy much of anything from amazon because their standard shipping is much slower than the standard shipping methods on ebay.

          Even if you pay extra for "expedited" ebay's "fast and free" is still faster.

          The fact that amazon sellers can call usps priority mail expedited is BS.

          What do I buy? well whatever I happen to need at the time
          for example the last 10 things I bought on amazon.

          1 trunk lift support. (yep had one to break)

          1 lithium jump starter. (never had lithium type before should be in

          • Looking at your purchase history... HDMI cables is a reasonable recommendation. Out of your last ten eBay orders, 3 items were TV remotes. Only problem is... Amazon shouldn't have known that!
            • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

              I did buy a tv wall mount last month I assume it picked up on that.

              What makes me wonder is the email I received from amazon this monday for a free upgrade to amazon business that said in the fine print "Based on your past purchases, we think you might be interested in Amazon Business."

              I don't feel I buy quite that much in bulk but I do wonder what they are offering as they say you can buy things from sellers who only deal in B2B but don't give any examples.

              I looked for a review but I am unable to find one f

              • I got that email too and ignored it because I already had Prime. It gives you two things:

                1: Free 2 day shipping on any order of $49 or more.
                2: Access to certain business and industrial products not available to non-business customers.

                If I didn't have Prime, and didn't need any of the non-shipping benefits like music, video, Kindle Lending Library, etc, it'd be a no-brainer, since you get the fast shipping on $50 or more orders, and can continue with smaller orders and paying regular shipping (or free
      • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        Wow Im up to 99 amazon orders this year only 85 last year.....I didn't realise i had been using it that much more.

        Still that's way behind my ebay account with 147 orders this year and I am well on my way to beating last years record of 236 orders.

        Netflix/Prime sub for 1 year 8 months.

        I order a lot of things I would otherwise get on ebay on amazon with the 2day ship and if I can't get it with the faster shipping I get it on ebay for the cheaper rate because amazons shipping from 3rd parties is very slow comp

        • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
          Ebay is dangerous. I just started selling some Alix 2d3's that I was given. I refreshed them and they were selling for a bit more each auction. No complaints, no problems that I'm aware of in any way.

          Boom, account suspended, no recourse, no appeal, no warning, nothing.
          I had just purchased a shipping label for my last auction that ended, and shipped an item with it. They have the tracking number, it was purchased through their site. They ignored this and refunded the buyer his money, claim to have refunded
          • I had a similar thing where I sold an item and the buyer didn't like it. I said fine, send me the item and I will refund but they just complained to paypal and got their money refunded while they still had the item. I had no recompense. Pissed me off enough to make me avoid paypal as much as possible for the last 15 years though.

    • I'm not renewing my Prime membership either this year, but curiously my reasons are completely different to yours. In my case I won't renew because:

      1. The selection of films and TV shows on Prime is quite dreadful. I'm a SciFi fan, and I estimate that less than 10% of the non-retro SciFi content that I wish to watch is provided on Prime. (I'm in UK.)
      2. Content available on Prime has no permanence. You might have added a Prime film to your Watchlist and looked forward to a happy weekend's viewing, only to fi
      • by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        I'm not renewing my Prime membership either this year, but curiously my reasons are completely different to yours. In my case I won't renew because:

        1. The selection of films and TV shows on Prime is quite dreadful. I'm a SciFi fan, and I estimate that less than 10% of the non-retro SciFi content that I wish to watch is provided on Prime. (I'm in UK.)
        2. Content available on Prime has no permanence. You might have added a Prime film to your Watchlist and looked forward to a happy weekend's viewing, only to find that it's been removed from Prime before you had the chance. In other words, Amazon is using Prime to play bait and switch games. That's intolerable.

        So no, after 1 year it's bye bye Prime. It's a very poor video service.

        I didn't realize that anyone signed up for Prime for their streaming video, their catalog is subpar to Netflix, I just treat it as a value-add to their Prime shipping. Video quality seems fine, no worse than Netflix streaming.

        Don't blame Amazon (or Netflix) for the non-permanence of streaming titles or lack of content - both services would love to have a full movie catalog with titles that are available forever, but the studios don't want that. It'd be nice if movies had the same compulsory licensing as mus

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I didn't realize that anyone signed up for Prime for their streaming video, their catalog is subpar to Netflix

          That depends on the viewers age. Since 2013 when Nickelodeon moved off Netflix and onto Amazon Prime Video, their catalog became quite good for the under-5 crowd.

    • by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @06:18PM (#50252667)

      - They raised the annual price of Prime 3x since I signed up

      Huh?

      Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 for $79 [cnet.com]. The price has gone up once, in 2014, to $99. So I'm not sure how you could have seen three price increases. Even if you were a student and are counting the loss of the student discount once you left school, that's only two increases.

      Items shipped prime from Amazon have shown up obivously used or broken multiple many times over the past year (much more often than before)

      Unfortunately Prime doesn't guarantee the quality of an item, just that it ships quickly. More and more third party sellers are using Amazon, including Amazon's fulfillment system, which means their goods can be shipped out by Amazon and qualify for Prime. As has been the case with Amazon for some time now, if it's not being sold by Amazon directly then it's a crap-shoot; you're basically buying eBay style and hoping for the best. Prime shipping doesn't change that.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Agreed. And if the item isn't in the condition you expect it in, their return policy is fairly generous as well, and often times they'll ship out a replacement item under the same shipping level before they receive your return.

      • This. And though I've had hundreds of shipments from Amazon, personal and business-wise, very few have had problems. And in every case, they've had a replacement out the door to me before I even had the tape on the return box. Probably a quarter of the items I order now are delivered the same day, stuff is arriving on Sundays ... it all just works, and keeps working better as time goes by. Be reasonably intelligent about the sources of third-party listings, and you're done.
        • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          Third party listing's.

          Yeah thats one of the problems with buying from amazon instead of ebay.

          On amazon you always get a stock photo if you get a photo at all.

          On ebay you always get a picture of the item itself unless the seller has a bunch of whatever it is.

          Also with amazon you have no idea how fresh food items are Twizzlers are often dry and hard wish I could get them fresh for as cheap as amazon but the local sam's club never seems to have any and they are not well sealed so they don't keep well.

          A screwed

        • This. And though I've had hundreds of shipments from Amazon, personal and business-wise, very few have had problems. And in every case, they've had a replacement out the door to me before I even had the tape on the return box. Probably a quarter of the items I order now are delivered the same day, stuff is arriving on Sundays ... it all just works, and keeps working better as time goes by. Be reasonably intelligent about the sources of third-party listings, and you're done.

          Also... they either changed their refund policy, or give better trust to people with long track records. Whenever I've had to return an item, I can credited the same day the tracking number is scanned by a carrier. Used to be you'd have to wait until a day or two after they received the item.

          • I think, indeed, that's related to your track record as a customer. I've received TXT messages from Amazon about a processed credit within literally seconds of a UPS drop-off point scanning a package. Fun to see that many moving parts moving so quickly.
      • by bjwest ( 14070 )

        - They raised the annual price of Prime 3x since I signed up

        Huh?

        Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 for $79 [cnet.com]. The price has gone up once, in 2014, to $99. So I'm not sure how you could have seen three price increases. Even if you were a student and are counting the loss of the student discount once you left school, that's only two increases.

        Didn't you read his post? He was using the Super Secret Prime back in the 90's. That was less than $79, so the public prime rate of $79 was an increase for those people.

      • I am not sure of the numbers but the prime costs in the UK jumped a LOT over the last year or two. Something like 49 to 99 GBP.

        They added a bunch of video's, libraries and now music so there is some value but I wasn't looking for a bundle, i just wanted the expedited shipping.

      • I thought it was $109 now...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by krelvin ( 771644 )

      - Items listed as having Prime often do not arrive for 5-6 business days. This is typical for larger items. It annoys me that Amazon lists tham as prime (to me this means item will arrive 2-3 business days), and their practice of having fine print about extra handling time for some prime items is abrasive. Just don't list it as Prime if it won't be shipped for 3-4 days!

      You must living timbuktu... and order really off the wall stuff. Here in Phx, a major Amazon warehouse is so close this just doesn't happen. I get all Prime items in 2 business days or sometimes even the next day. It is rare for an item to miss the 2 day business delivery date.

      - The streaming video options are weak and I don't like the picture quality

      Don't really use Prime for this... so it is an extra for me. Gives me a second place to look if Netflix doesn't have something.

      - "Prime day" is a joke

      Yes it is a joke considering anyone can basically participate (even non-prime members with a free signu

    • Items listed as having Prime often do not arrive for 5-6 business days. This is typical for larger items. It annoys me that Amazon lists tham as prime (to me this means item will arrive 2-3 business days)

      Nowhere in the definition of Prime is a shipping speed guaranteed. Don't blame Amazon for asinine assumptions you've made on your own hook.

      • Well it used to say "expidited handling" but they may have dropped that. My problem is that I will make 5 orders over the course of a month and they will arrive in 2 days (awesome!) so I will get an expectation of quick delivery times. Then I will make the mistake of depending on something arriving in 3-4 days, but it will take 6 or 7 (or way more!) and I end up having to go buy the thing somewhere else because I needed it, and then return the one from Amazon. All of this is a pain in my ass. As someone els
    • I've also been finding better prices at local stores like Walmart. The best thing about that is I don't need to wait for an Item to ship. I've found that it's mostly the 3rd party sellers that are inflating prices on Amazon like $99 so-called "Rare" DVDs that can be found on EBay for $20 or less.

      I've also noticed things like when you add an Item to your Cart and leave it for awhile (30 min); the price will go up. Take it out and the price will go back down. Amazon really needs to take a hard look at the pra

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      Our household spends a lot of money on Amazon, but we are not going to renew Prime this year. I ahve been rodering thing from Amazon since the 90s but my satisfaction level with the company peaked a couple years ago adn has been sliding down since. The reasons we are cancelling are varied: - Items listed as having Prime often do not arrive for 5-6 business days. This is typical for larger items. It annoys me that Amazon lists tham as prime (to me this means item will arrive 2-3 business days), and their practice of having fine print about extra handling time for some prime items is abrasive. Just don't list it as Prime if it won't be shipped for 3-4 days! - The streaming video options are weak and I don't like the picture quality - "Prime day" is a joke - They raised the annual price of Prime 3x since I signed up - Items shipped prime from Amazon have shown up obivously used or broken multiple many times over the past year (much more often than before) - Amazon's support people were really hard to deal with when things in the above bullet point happened - As far as I can tell "super saver" shipping usually only takes one additional day (and sometimes none) to arrive compared to prime - I have been finding better prices on many things from retailers like Costco and Walmart compared to what Amazon offers - Amazon uses a variety of tactics to make the camelcamlcamel plugin not work relably to show price history on an item. Maybe I will regret the decision and we will sign back up, but we are definitely going to try living without it.

      Same here. I haven't had used or broken items arrive yet, but I am completely fed up with the 2 day delivery promise turning into 5 days or longer after I order an item. Especially frustrating when I order a bunch of things for a project, plan on starting the project on day X, then one item somehow doesn't arrive until the next week. I may still be eligible for student prime rates but it still isn't worth it. I live in Houston; there really is no excuse for the shipping delays. Maybe Amazon has subcont

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Some of those are true for non-Prime members.

  • For me this is better because now I can share amazon prime videos and kindle books with my household without having to share accounts.
  • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @05:42PM (#50252487) Homepage Journal

    Prime sharing?

    I came here thinking that this was a crypto problem.

  • Argh - I just set up my Household on Amazon... there are some issues with sharing Prime within a household, and nobody in Customer Service understands what's going on. After an hour wasted with an idiot and a supervisor I finally figured it out on my own (you have to enable Content sharing or Prime doesn't share). Most of the documentation appears to be wrong. Apparently Amazon has never heard of this whole UX testing thing... but at least I get a pun out of it.

  • If Amazon breaks my sharing setup, then I will cancel my Prime mebership and take my approximately $7,000 a year worth of business with them to another retailer and drop Kindle in favor of a competing eBook service. I hear there is a competing thing called ShopRunner.... sounds interesting.

  • I'm not seeing the issue with this. I read through all the replies up to now, and it appears to me that people are complaining about services they're taking for granted.
    I live next to a major us city. Chicago to be specific. I order lots of things, and they get delivered very quickly. I do not have problems with prime shipments taking 4 or 5 days like a couple peoe complained about, but didn't say where they live. I purchased prime solely for the shipping bonuses.
    People are complaining about shipping and co

    • With prime I can buy a single item that costs $4 and have it shipped

      Not any more. Most things in that price range are now "add-on" items for Prime, you need to be buying something else in order to purchase them. Today I was looking to buy some spark plugs from Amazon and almost all of them that were Prime eligible were add-ons. Also, anything that is Prime eligible is always more expensive. It isn't really free shipping, they just add the shipping cost to the price. At best, Prime is a free upgrade to 2 day shipping.

Fast, cheap, good: pick two.

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