Price of Amazon Prime May Jump To $119 a Year 298
colinneagle writes "Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak hinted during the company's earnings conference call [Thursday] that we might see an increase to the company's popular Amazon Prime service. As it stands now, Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and offers users free shipping on millions of items, free book borrowing for select Kindle titles, and last but not least, free streaming to the company's video on-demand service. Going forward, Amazon may increase that pricepoint to either $99 or $119. That's a rather significant price increase, but it's important to keep in mind that the price of Amazon Prime has remained the same ever since Amazon first started the program nine years ago." How many products do you use that haven't increased in price for that long?
how many products? (Score:5, Insightful)
hmm lets see.
isp is cheaper now than 9 years ago.
the tv I got at back home I could not have afforded 9 years ago.
my mobile subscriptions are cheaper than 9 years ago. I can order stuff from china cheaper than 9 years ago(transportation costs).
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Re:how many products? (Score:5, Funny)
I spend way too much on living. I'd save lots of money if only I could shake my food addiction. I tried going cold turkey but then I developed an overwhelming craving for cold turkey.
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wouldn't a better punch line be...
"i tried going cold turkey, but then I developed an overwhelming craving for hot turkey."?
Re:how many products? (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on where you live and what your costs are. Real-estate prices are down in some places and up in others. Oil prices are up considerably from the '90s, though roughly flat for the past few years. Natural-gas prices are up in Europe, but way down in the U.S. due to the shale-gas boom. Food prices are relatively stable overall, though specific food items have gone up or down. Amortized cost of car ownership has gone down, due to a mixture of cheaper initial-sales prices and longer average lifespans. Amortized cost of ownership of a family computer suitable for basic email/web has gone way down, due to advances in technology. Airfare has gone down in Europe (due to competition from low-cost airlines), but up in the U.S. and internationally (due to increased oil prices, plus maybe related to airline consolidation). Etc., etc.
So, if you live in Pittsburgh, use a lot of natural-gas for heating, drive a basic car relatively short distances, and have a home computer, your overall cost of living has probably declined over the past 20 years. On the other hand, if you live in Boston, take frequent roadtrips or plane trips, and heat you apartment with fuel oil, your cost of living has probably increased over the past 20 years.
Of all these, rent/housing costs are typically the dominating factor in most CoL equations.
Re:how many products? (Score:5, Interesting)
Generally speaking, we are in deflation, not inflation. So as the commenter correctly points out, a lot of things are decreasing in price.
Here's the problem: our wages are also decreasing.
Here's another problem: a lot of things -- especially thing which we are *legally required* to buy from one source-- are increasing in price. So housing, electricity, union leadership, health insurance, the cost of government, public schools, taxes, bailouts... all are crashing through the roof.
Basically, if the purveyor thinks he has a captive market, he's grabbing everything he can.
But, that being the case, the appropriate question is not as the original headline, "how many things haven't increased in price in that long", it is instead, "how many things, when they increased in price 25- to 50-%, did you have the option to not buy, and still continued to buy?"
Typically speaking, when something went up in price 25- or 50- percent, I stopped buying it. That is, my purchases went to something like 5% of what they had been before. Often, I stopped buying it completely, because I had the incentive to find better alternatives. Once I had the better alternatives, I was done.
Here's a better question: in today's era of retail cannibalization, how will Amazon's market share hold up if they increase prices?
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Nothing is decreasing in price. Please name ONE thing that is still the same quality as before but is lower in price.
HDTV's are garbage quality compared to what was out 10 years ago, yes UTTER garbage. They used to be repairable by swapping out separate boards, today they are throw-away items because they are made as cheap as possible. Electronics in general are utter crap quality compared to 10-20 years ago. THAT is why it's cheaper.
You are paying less for a lesser product.
Re:how many products? (Score:5, Informative)
Please name ONE thing that is still the same quality as before but is lower in price.
m job ... ;(
have not had a raise in a long long LONG time. essentially I went backwards about 10 yrs ago and never caught back up again with the cost of living. my software and hardware skills are as good (or better) than 10 yrs ago but I'm paid LESS, overall.
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Well, bicycle components, for example (the better ones).
A decent aluminium bike frame is way cheaper, than 10 years ago, and at the same time better, because the technology is mature. Same goes for hydraulic disc brakes.
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Okay, first of all, deflation is a money supply issue, and when. Sou realize that money supply includes credit -- and that credit is the largest part of the economy, then you'll find that yes, we are in deflation here in the US.
Now, what about PRICE inflation / deflation?
Well, as robotics, improved methods, and tech make manufacturing faster, cheaper, and easier, that causes deflation. Likewise, as power over little folks forces their wages down, that makes things cheaper. More slaves (you, me) means cheape
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Read up on Modern Monetary Theory if you haven't already. Bill Mitchell's blog is by far the best.
I almost NEVER read anyone on slashdot or mainstream sites that understands bank credit. Nearly everyone thinks of money as some sort of commodity, even though it's never really been that way, and definitely is nothing like that now.
Cheers to you.
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The problem with Bill Mitchell's approach to monetary theory (Chartalism), is that it is focuses on public debt when it's the inevitable deleveraging of private debt that cause recessions and depressions. Given, it may be a workable approach, but it's not very direct. Steve Keen, on the other hand, focuses directly on the role of private debt in the macroeconomy. He's currently working on a dynamic model fully capable accurately simulating booms, recessions and depressions in all their glory, and he already
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Plus the products we sell are the same price they were 10 years ago. We've offset cost increases by increases in productivity, and our margin has actually gone up. I have prime, I would drop it if it goes up. I also have Netflix, which kicks Amazon's ass when it comes to video interface. Amazon is constantly trying to up sell you, making it much harder to find and enjoy videos than Netflix. Right now, I have Prime only for the shipping savings.
The Umbrella Corporation. (Score:3)
I can order from online companies I have never heard of, without fear of being cheated, when they are under the umbrella of the Amazon corporation. This is their prime benefit to me.
The reduced prime membership rates also include a nominal fee (sometimes $3.99) to upgrade to one day shipping... very handy when shopping parts for a job. It is still almost magical to me that I can order something from a city 1500 miles away at 1400 h
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no, the price of 55" fullhd tv's came down... as have prices for usable refrigators, washing machines and other household shit. not everything goes up in price yearly even if the article summary implies that.
in regards of amazon prime.. has shipping gotten more expensive or are people ordering more stuff?
Both (Score:3)
has shipping gotten more expensive or are people ordering more stuff?
Both. As wages and fuel prices increase, shipping costs increase. (Much of this ultimately results from cost-push [wikipedia.org] when the U.S. minimum wage and other wages tied to it rise.) And people have been ordering so much stuff from online stores in general that in the fourth quarter of 2013, parcel volume exceeded even UPS's reserve capacity.
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I agree with you for the most part ... but increased parcel volume should reduce the cost per parcel (smaller distances between drops).
Re:how many products? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, 99% of the time, I don't care about getting things quickly, but I joined Prime last summer because I needed to buy a bunch of things for a trip to Europe, and I wanted to make sure stuff arrived in time. I initially planned to cancel it after a year, but I've tried the Prime Instant Video, and now I'm debating.
Either way, if it goes over the price of Netflix ($96 annually), I can't imagine choosing to stay with Prime over Netflix. The two-day shipping benefit is only significant if you would ordinarily have paid for two-day shipping. Otherwise, it's just not a very enticing perk unless you know you're going to need to buy a lot of gear in a short period of time. And that doesn't lead to continuous customer revenue. It leads to people buying it for just long enough to get the job done, then dropping it, which raises the cost for Amazon, which means they'll raise the price, and then even fewer people will buy it when it isn't absolutely necessary.
What really matters is the streaming service. And in that regard, Amazon's offering doesn't compare too favorably. Netflix has more content, and fewer encoding problems. There was one episode of Buffy where the video was jerky on every device I own, and I've watched a few TV shows where Amazon incorrectly encoded 16:9 content as letterboxed 4:3 content, so I get four black bars on my TV. That was excusable ten years ago. Now, it's just negligent.
And the Netflix iOS app actually works over cellular connections, unlike Prime, which deliberately refuses to work. That means if I were using Netflix, I could watch stuff on my phone while away from home as part of my unlimited data package. With Amazon, I have use my laptop, where I have a tethering data limit of about three hours of video.
So I've been debating whether to continue Prime even at $79 or jump to Netflix for only a few dollars more. Raise the price to $119, and they'll make my decision a lot easier.
Re:how many products? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, right now at $79 I just keep letting my Prime membership auto-renew because a) I'm lazy, and b) it does save me a little at Christmastime. But their video catalog is pretty limited - much of what I've tried to watch is TV shows where, it turns out, they've only included a few episodes you can access without paying more. And their Kindle Lending Library is likewise pretty limited - it's "all the Harry Potter books plus hundreds of authors you'll never want to read".
Really, even at $79 it's hard to justify. There's not a whole lot I *must* get in two days...
I'll probably just not renew this time around - free ground shipping is good enough. And, if they further limit that, I'll probably start frequenting other online stores. Pretty much everyone is on the web now; I just currently default to Amazon because of the "free" shipping.
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I'd add that Amazon stubbornly refuses to release a Prime app for Android. They have for iOS and Kindle Android, but no general Android. While their streaming selection might be somewhat competitive with Netflix at times (what one lacks the other sometimes has), I'm limited with Prime. I can watch Netflix via my Roku box, our Android tablets, computers, or even our phones. Amazon Prime, we can only watch via our Roku box (with a worse interface than Netflix) and on our computers. Were Amazon to release
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You only buy one car ever in your life? I own 3 of them right now, and have owned 20 in my lifetime. And I'm on house #3 looking to move to House #4 in 4-5 years.
I think you college kids really need to learn reality, "fixed one time purchases" That is a complete HOOT!
Re:how many products? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly because Newspapers only hire no talent hacks to write for them that have no education at all in what they are reporting.
newspapers killed themselves, they deserve the horrible lingering death they are enjoying.
"Sumsing vwrong here!" (Score:4, Interesting)
"Sumsing vwrong here!"
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/amazon-prime-could-soon-cost-next-to-nothing/
But but there has been no inflation in 10 years (Score:2, Insightful)
According to the US federal reserve governments are printing billions of dollars all over the world to prevent the horrible horrible deflation that might happen. Why there has been no rising prices in stocks, food, commodities, or cars, or anything. Nope no inflation anywhere.... Just like all the unemployment numbers are perfectly fine and everyone is doing much better. After all gold is super cheap. I don't possibly see why Amazon would jack up prices all of the sudden, especially since its been ma
Re: But but there has been no inflation in 10 year (Score:2)
Your final thought there made me think of something. Imagine if all the spare cycles on EC2 were devoted to mining bitcoin any time they were idle. Amazon probably does have the capacity to corner the market on crypto currency, Google could as well.
Re: But but there has been no inflation in 10 year (Score:4, Informative)
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You having them != Amazon (or any other host) having them.
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They are printing billion of dollars so everyone (not the least of which is the federal and local governments) doesn't go bankrupt ...
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Your DVR? So you only watch obscure and really old things? I found them completely useless and every time I wanted to watch something I had to pay to watch it because it had an additional fee attached to it. Netflix blows them out of the water hard, and Hulu actually has TV shows in a timely manner.
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Nobody is making you pay for them. If you aren't going to spend more on shipping than a Prime membership then don't get said membership if you don't want the other features.
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I'm not sure how you read hostility from posting a fact. There was none.
worth it to me, with the free shipping and video (Score:3)
Not sure I'd be paying for it for just one or the other, but the free shipping on eligible items and Amazon Video on my Roku make it a sweet deal.
My coworkers get a laugh at how many packages I get, but for anyone who's busy, there are countless items that are just a pain to get in the store, but easy as pie to just show up in a box and bring home from work. (Have 'em shipped to work to avoid the whole randomness of where packages get left thing.)
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Have 'em shipped to work to avoid the whole randomness of where packages get left thing.
This is getting common enough that some companies are starting to complain, though. If a few people do it occasionally it's no big deal, but if 500 employees are each receiving multiple packages a week, it starts becoming a significant added burden on the corporate mailroom.
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The mailroom staff are demanding bribes or they'll go postal.
Re:worth it to me, with the free shipping and vide (Score:5, Insightful)
This is getting common enough that some companies are starting to complain, though. If a few people do it occasionally it's no big deal, but if 500 employees are each receiving multiple packages a week, it starts becoming a significant added burden on the corporate mailroom.
The relationship between company and employees, at first approximation, is that employees come to work, and the company pays them money. In a better approximation, employees do useful work to advance the purposes of the company, while the company does things to keep employees happy. Adding a person to the mailroom is a cheap way to make 500 employees a lot happier, so they will work for you instead of someone else if everything else is equal.
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That's certainly an option. However around here, we got an email in December asking us to please not have all our Christmas shopping sent to the office address. No real enforcement, just "hey don't ship everything to the office pls". My guess is that this will become more common if more people start doing it: right now the people ordering from prime regularly to their work address at most workplaces are a pretty small proportion of employees, so it's not a big deal to accommodate them.
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Sure, if the place you work for has the money to do this. The situation is where we work, we don't, and we can't get funding for a position like that. Quite a few people started to use work as the delivery address, and the higher-ups passed a new policy for no personal packages allowed to be delivered at work - they are flat-out refused. We don't h
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Employer can STFU and stop being assholes or they can try and pay someone else for my expert talents and all the experience I have with their systems... Childish hissy fit by a moron manager are always costly in employee replacement and training.
Why is it you people all roll over for the company? they OWE YOU not the other way around.
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That is why you dont have it delivered to the mail room. Put in your address the Building Address and Suite. it get's delivered to the receptionist. Bypass themail room as much as possible and you end run the idiots in management. Be nice and buy the Receptionist lunch once in a while and she will never say a word.
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That depends. I'm at a university and, no matter what I put for the address, the package always goes through the receiving department. Some companies are like that, too. This is especially true at places with restricted access to the buildings, in which case delivery trucks are only allowed to go to the receiving docks.
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we have offices in various countries and we have foreign workers fly to the US for extended periods of time to work here. you would not believe the amount of amazon boxes that accumulate in our open office environ when the foreign workers 'go nuts' and buy everything they can from amazon before returning home.
the funny part: most of the foreign workers are from china and the goods they buy are almost always made in china. but they are cheaper here and they buy from amazon, have it shipped to the company m
Re:worth it to me, with the free shipping and vide (Score:5, Insightful)
Your cow-orkers don't steal your packages, don't break your packages, and don't bully you for receiving packages? Must be nice not working among humans.
If that is happening to you then you're the one not working among humans.
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My current place of employment has a separate area for personal packages. Warehouse staff will sign off on the package (which is fantastic since I don't have to be at home and the dog still hasn't figured out to use the little terminal thing). They place it in the locked area, email you that you have a package and you pick it up at your convenience.
Doesn't cost the warehouse staff anything - they're signing for tons of boxes anyway. Makes people happier.
amazon is a Service, not a product (Score:2)
Makes sense from a shareholder PoV (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes perfect sense from a shareholder point of view. Raising the price to $119 will decrease the number of Prime members, thereby decreasing the cost of providing the Prime service, but the people who stay with Prime will likely more than pay for those who leave. So, it's a win-win for shareholders and Amazon.
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This makes perfect sense from a shareholder point of view. Raising the price to $119 will decrease the number of Prime members, thereby decreasing the cost of providing the Prime service, but the people who stay with Prime will likely more than pay for those who leave.
This logic is horribly flawed. Yes, it's possible that this will be the case, but it will really depend on a lot of factors.
The main problem is your assumption that the people who would drop were the ones who weren't profitable to Amazon. This is not necessarily true.
Let's take the shipping aspect. I bet a lot of people who pay for Amazon Prime don't order nearly as often as they assume they might. They just want stuff fast occasionally, so it's convenient. Maybe they only place an order every 4-6
Brilliant strategy: Pay more for less (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it interesting that this comes just as Amazon has fallen in love with hybrid shipping services such as UPS Mail Innovations and FedEx SmartPost for Prime delivery. These services utilize UPS or FedEx only to the destination city where your package is then handed off to the USPS for delivery. As a result, Prime "guaranteed" 2-day delivery has become "often 2-day" or "occasional 2-day" ...and now, they feel like this is worth more? Wow.
Oh, they still haven't dropped the magic word "guaranteed". Their offering to satisfy the guarantee is an additional month of inconsistent, slower than stated service.
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On the flip side I live in bumfuck and the only carrier I've found to be more reliable for delivering to my rural address than OnTrac is California Overnight, which is even more local and even smaller. And shockingly inexpensive, judging by what people have paid to ship things to me via them.
Computers have gone DOWN in price (Score:2)
Computers have gone down in price.
I paid $10,000 less for my new tractor than the one 12 years before and the new one is 50% more powerful.
Music, DVDs and other entertainment cost less - I don't go to the theater which I hear costs more but the fact that it costs more is part of why I don't go.
Amazon Prime has even less to delivery than computers so by your logic it should decrease in price over time.
Seeing as it's not a product... (Score:3, Insightful)
...it really doesn't need to be justified. It's a leash. Like your Sam's, BJ's or Costco membership. It makes you want to buy more stuff at Amazon (on account of you don't want to waste that $80 you handed them) and they make it all up on volume and margins. No way the $80 ever offset the shipping in any reasonable fashion. I get free shipping from Bean's and pay nothing up front for it.
They do need to get more money though, if only to replace the drones that will no doubt be used for plinking practice by the neighbor kids.
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Not always. Sometimes it is free shipping. Amazon Prime is a fantastic deal for folks not living in the continental US. And will remain so until they wise up and find that even more affiliates 'can't' ship to my destination address.
Just had a propane grill shipped to Alaska. For free. Hard to beat that.
I don't expect it to last. WalMart stopped free shipping to Alaska a while back. At present, the back of the UPS / FedEx trucks are just full of Amazon boxes. Is it a good deal for them? Who knows?
I'd buy it at $99, maybe not $119 (Score:2)
Having Prime makes me more likely to buy an item. In fact, when I search I generally click the "Prime" filter. Many of the items I won't buy without Prime because the extra shipping discourages me .It's not that I care all that much about the actual shipping cost, just the total price. When a retailer puts an artificially low price then tacks on a large shipping price then I get annoyed and don't buy from them. With Prime, I know the price I see is what I'll pay and have it there in two days.
I don't use the
If only Prime were a premium service... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Prime member, for every non-prime eligible item I find, I look for a Prime eligible counterpart. The price for the counterpart is _always_ about $3-5 more expensive, usually by the same amount as the quoted shipping price on the non-Prime eligible item. So what we are getting here is the 2-day upgrade for free, not the entire cost of shipping. Most of the time, 2-day vs. 4-day shipping makes no difference to me.
We do occasionally stream Prime content, but the vast majority of titles on Prime are also on Netflix. If I could cancel my Netflix subscription and replace with Prime, the $120 pricepoint might not look so steep, but alas, it often seems Amazon's library is only about 25% the size of Netflix, so that's not an option.
So as it stands, I feel I am not really getting $80 in value from Prime as it stands. $120 with no improvement to the service is out of the question. I like the idea of a premium Amazon service, it just needs to actually _be_ premium.
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Except non prime items ship for $8. They just hide your "savings" in the shipping cost.
That is commonly untrue on items which cost any significant amount of money, which typically have free shipping.
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But how many of those you order a month? Vs soap, books, lightbulbs, undies and other small items that one needs quite often?
Also, if you buy the $400 GoPro Hero through amazon prime, and there's an issue with it, they will ship you a new one before you drop yours, for free return, into a UPS box.
Free shipping also means free shipping back. Free shipping also works on small items.
Dude. You are missing the whole point.
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Well, according to the government (Score:2)
"...How many products do you use that haven't increased in price for that long?..."
Pretty much none. Of course, the government (of both parties) has been telling me "inflation's at/near 0%" for longer than that....
Why Prime? (Score:2)
I never saw the fascination of Amazon Prime. I figured that, like most people on /., I'm not in the target demographic. I'm quite happy to wait 3-5 days for a package to arive. In addition, when I buy a movie, I like to hold the disc in my hand.
Prime is for the people that must have what they bought now. Whatever happened to delaying gratification?
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It's not really the wait time, it's mostly that almost all shipping is free. Where regular Amazon users generally pay a few bucks in shipping per order (yes, there are free 3-5 day shipping items but not everything is), Prime users don't pay anything at all AND they get a 2 day delivery. I order just about anything for my office from Amazon, the Prime cost is recouped in less than a month.
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Amazon Instant Videos, which includes much better movies than are available via Netflix. $79/year breaks down to being cheaper than Netflix Streaming.
The free two-day shipping is just a perk for me. You can also share Prime shipping with other Amazon accounts, which allows my wife (and the business she runs) to benefit from Prime with no additional cost.
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Re:Why Prime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prime is for the people that must have what they bought now. Whatever happened to delaying gratification?
You don't go to stores? Prime is to replace driving to do store shopping, not getting a book you will read next month. Need an odd concrete anchor bolt you can't find at the little hardware store or Home Depot? Just get it on Amazon and save the hour and a half drive to the specialty concrete yard
Our washing machine died, and I paid $4 to have the part here the very next day. Sears was a week plus shipping and double the price. What benefit would I have gained by waiting a week to fix the washer?
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What I'm saying is that for the extra $79 a year, I don't see much value added over standard amazon. Especially since if your amazon cart is $50 or more you typically get free shipping anyway.
So maybe it makes sense for you. I generally don't need that special part the next day. And for the rare times I do need something the next day, I go to a local store.
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I don't think you figured "like most people on /." part right. At least in my experience, just about every computer geek I know has Prime.
Screw the delayed gratification. When I go to store to buy something, I get it right then and there. Online was always a pain because of the delay... Prime makes the delay very manageable.
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Surprising - our State doesn't extract taxes on sales here in NH, but so many of my friends have Prime. We use it to replace driving. I can get a package overnight for what gas costs to go to the local urban sprawl and do other things with my time. Plus, if you need anything odd, the local & big box stores rarely have it. Yeah, the local store will order it for you if you have two weeks to wait, but to do that you have to go there and not find it in the first place.
Food has gone down in price. (Score:2)
In real dollars food costs far less than it did 30 years ago. Not everything goes up in price. In fact, accounting for inflation, a lot of things go down in price.
If it wasn't such a mess in Europe (Score:3)
I have Prime for the German amazon, as it is the closest (less delivery time) to where I live, the prices are in euros, and has the most diversity of the European amazon stores.
However, I have my kindle set to amazon.co.uk because I only understand a few German words, most my reading is in English, my magazine subscriptions (Analog) are available only from there or the US, and I'd rather read some of my favourite authors in the original UK English spelling.
As such, I can't loan kindle titles (only if I had my kindle set to the German amazon), and of course I don't have the streaming. The interesting part here is that I can have prime either with German, French, Italian or UK amazon, without living in any of these countries, but I must pay a Prime subscription in each country, like if it was a different company and not the same one with headquarters in Luxembourg.
My Pirates Bay Prime is still the same price... (Score:2)
Smarmy answers to rhetorical questions....
The Demonoid made me do it.
Aaarrrrr. Aarrrrrrr...
Price has NOT remained the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Nine years ago, I could order whatever I wanted and have it delivered in two days.
Now every item on Amazon is an "add-on item" that you can only get shipped to you if you're buying more than $25 worth of stuff. Making me pay $25 for extra stuff I don't need or want when I need toothpaste and deodorant is quite an increase in cost from nine years ago. Amazon Prime was almost $80. That $80 investment gives people quite an incentive to choose amazon.com, and it's not even like every item on amazon was availabl
Price of the service is not the point (Score:2)
Hey If You Want to Make Money Amazon (Score:2)
What hasn't gone up in price for that long? (Score:4, Interesting)
Costco hot dog and soda at the snack bar. Been $1.50 for nigh on 20 years.
Limited appeal service. (Score:3, Insightful)
When Amazon introduced Prime at $79, I evaluated it.
It really didn't offer me enough to compensate for the $79 fee.
Some people have a life style that the service at makes sense, at certain price points.
I imagine there are some people for whom a Valet makes sense.
For you it may be the greatest thing since slice bread.
For me, the break even is very low. Lower than $79.
It will be interesting to see what they do.
An iron law of economics (Score:3)
Things that are "bargains" will increase in price or decrease in quality or quantity until they are merely "ok" deals. Yet another reason economics truly is the dismal science.
Re:It doesn't offer free shipping (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I love prime, but at $129 I would actually count my purchases
Prime makes financial sense if you make on average more than 2 orders a month items that would be covered by prime that would not be eligible for free shipping, at $5 shipping.
The streaming videos and free upgrade to 2 day shipping on prime eligible items: add additional value.
I suppose what would be interesting is if they started offering a "Prime Lite" for $60 a year --- with no streaming videos, no 2 day shipping, but free standard shipping on all normally prime-eligible items fulfilled by Amazon.
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I agree, they should offer a Prime Shipping only option, at the old price.
But even if it did increase to $120 I would still pay it, as long as Amazon remains sales tax free
anyway my Prime subscription renews in October, so I have time to save up for the increase
Use tax (Score:2)
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What U.S. state do you live in that charges sales tax but doesn't require you to report use tax on your income tax return?
No one pays use tax. Have you ever done so? Hell, a few years back a newspaper in my city ran a story about use tax on internet sales and they reported that the state Department of Revenue told them that the previous year there had been fewer than 200 use tax returns filed in the whole state. I decided to look up how many people the Department of Revenue employed—it's far, far more than 200.
No one pays use tax, not even the tax collectors.
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Free Super Saver Shipping is a minimum of $35 now, and usually takes 3-5 days to even ship out from Amazon,
Interesting... I suppose it depends on item. Some items have significant shipping, but are prime eligible. A few items are ineligible for super saver shipping; for some items there is a "Subscribe and Save" option that includes free shipping and a discount --- for automatic reordering of the item on a continual X week basis.
Some big ticket items include automatic free shipping, even without p
Re:It doesn't offer free shipping (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon punishes people who use free shipping, they will refuse to process the order until there is a whole semi truck full going to the section of the state you are in, I have had an item sit for 7 days before they shipped it. It's the scammy Fedex Post they use, Fedex delivers a semi truck to your state region post office then they carry the packages off to the cities around it. If your timing sucks it can be up to 10 days before it ships.
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And to further confuse things, it depends on where you live. In Alaska (and I presume Hawaii and perhaps Puerto Rico), Prime is a great deal because routine shipping is expensive. Except when it's impossible when you find out that the affiliate doesn't ship to the hinterlands. Amazon also jacks up prices in Alaska, apparently to cover shipping or just because they're Amazon.
It's complicated...
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Also, natural gas: was around $6.50 per million BTU in 2003, now it's $2.25.
Re:Milk (Score:4, Funny)
Was $1.10 in 2003, now it is $0.99
Last time I checked, it was over $40 a galon 128 fl oz.
Yeap, it starts at $45 now [amazon.com], but can get as high as $120,000.00 [amazon.com] (+$13.49 shipping).
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in your mind.... Its $4.75 a gallon here in 2014
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The population isn't increasing, at least not everywhere. Ever heard of the demographic time bomb?
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Given an increasing population and a limited supply of land, the price of real estate will never get cheaper.
Yeah, I know; house prices never go down, isn't it?
Housing corrections (Score:2)
Prime is for those who don't understand marketing (Score:2, Flamebait)
Why do manufacturers come out with those two-bit coupons? The handling on that $0.25 discount is probably $25.00. What do they get for that?
(1) They get some advertising of their product, sure, but most importantly (2) They lower the barrier to entry/purchase so that (3) More people buy their product with (4) Less thought about it.
Gift cards are a similar idea. Give someone a gift card and they will spend it as a "bonus". Give them cash and they wi
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When gift cards first came out, they used to offer something extra, for your trouble. That something extra was a tip-of-the-icebergian fraction of what they were gaining from the transaction. Now we are all so accepting of, and enamoured with, gifting hunks of plastic that they charge...up to $10...for a "gift" charge card.
For one thing, these new cards with a fee run on the credit card network and can be used at any business that takes credit cards. Retailer-specific gift cards, such as Walmart cards, Target cards, Google Play cards, and the like, still have no transaction fee for a couple reasons. First, the retailer doesn't have to pay a transaction fee every time a shopper uses the gift card, especially when it requires store gift cards to be purchased with cash or EFTPOS (PIN debit), which has a much lower swipe fee than
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They need Prime for diapers? They could order an extra day's worth and go back to regular shipping. They'll also notice that non-Prime items are typically cheaper.
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I also noticed recently that a LOT of items are no longer "prime eligible" and their video service is a joke compared to anything else out there, we never use it.
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the prime items cost more to buy and so the 'free shipping' is just discounted shipping, its never free. the amazon prime item is always more, by a few dollars, at least, than the non-prime item.
I just joined prime a few months ago but I don't know if I'll continue it if they raise prices that much. its already expensive for shipping and the 'free 2nd day' costs more if you find the primable items.
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