Amazon To Increase Prime Membership Fee By Up To 43% In Europe (cnbc.com) 48
Amazon is raising prices for its Prime subscription service in the U.K. and across Europe as the e-commerce giant grapples with the effects of rising inflation. CNBC reports: In the U.K., Amazon is set to hike the annual price of a Prime membership to 95 pounds ($114), up from 79 pounds, representing a 20% jump. The changes will take effect Sept. 15. The company is enforcing even steeper price increases in European markets. In France, the price of an annual Prime membership is going up to 69.90 euros ($70) from 49 euros, a 43% increase. German Prime members can expect a 30% hike in their annual Prime prices to 89.90 euros, up from 69 euros.
Amazon blamed the price rises on "increased inflation and operating costs," along with higher expenses tied to faster delivery and content production for its Prime Video streaming service, Reuters reported. The company is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings Thursday. The move follows similar price hikes Amazon announced in the U.S. earlier this year. In February, the company said it would raise the price of its annual Prime membership for Americans to $139 from $119.
Amazon blamed the price rises on "increased inflation and operating costs," along with higher expenses tied to faster delivery and content production for its Prime Video streaming service, Reuters reported. The company is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings Thursday. The move follows similar price hikes Amazon announced in the U.S. earlier this year. In February, the company said it would raise the price of its annual Prime membership for Americans to $139 from $119.
They have to (Score:4, Interesting)
They have to increase their fees to cover the fines the EU keeps hitting them with.
Re:They have to (Score:4, Interesting)
They aren't fines, just a business expense. This is why if you're going to put monetary penalties on a company it needs to be enough for boards to get ousted, and even then it's still better to just start holding management criminally responsible for their company's crimes.
And when they try to claim they're too stupid and uninformed to face charges treat it as a confession of gross negligence on top of everything else, not a viable defense.
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This is why if you're going to put monetary penalties on a company it needs to be enough for boards to get ousted, and even then it's still better to just start holding management criminally responsible for their company's crimes.
Isn't the whole purpose of corporations to spread the risk so that no single person is left holding the proverbial empty bag? If you want to push for stronger criminal punishment (and I'm not saying you're wrong), why not just abolish corporations altogether? Turn them into something closer to cooperatives.
Re:They have to (Score:5, Informative)
And when inflation goes back down, will they lower their prices?
I don't think you understand inflation.
High inflation means prices rise rapidly.
Low inflation means prices rise slowly. It doesn't mean prices decline. That is deflation.
Re:They have to (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully things will never get that bad again but spare a thought for people in countries with runaway inflation.
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But even in 1978, the average house price was only about 5-6x the average wage. Today it's 13-14x average wage.
Under the rules back in 1978, hardly anybody would be able to get a 90% mortgage now. Most first time buyers (FTBs) rely on help from their parents or inheritance, even under the current rules.
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Citation needed.
Median US house price in 2022 was about $440,000. [stlouisfed.org] Median US household income in 2020 was about $67,000. [census.gov] That's about 6-7x, not 13-14x. Even if you use median earnings for a single worker including part-time workers in the calculation (a little more than $41,000 in 2020) you don't get up to 13-14x.
The median household income in 1978 was only around $15,000. [census.gov] The median house
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I did run some figures through a compound interest calculator though. My first house cost £15k and at 24% interest I would have had to pay back £5.6m over 25y. An equivalent house nowadays costs £500k. At 4% interest the payback is only £1.4m over 25y.
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Re: They have to (Score:2)
I have ordered 58 things from Amazon this month.
I find Amazon quite useful.
Re:They have to (Score:4, Funny)
All Amazon has to do is follow the law and they don't get fined. Simple. Plenty of other companies manage to do it every single day, why is it so hard for Amazon?
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All Amazon has to do is follow the law and they don't get fined. Simple. Plenty of other companies manage to do it every single day, why is it so hard for Amazon?
Because mega-corporations like Amazon are targets for fines in a way that smaller business (including large corporations that aren't mega-corps like Amazon) are not. Many of the rules seem to be made up just to target these giant corps. Similar things happened to Microsoft back in the 90's when they were declared a "monopoly". Many of their fines stem from things like abusing their monopoly power or similar things which don't really apply to anyone else. As long as you're the second biggest guy on the b
Re:They have to (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of the rules seem to be made up just to target these giant corps. Similar things happened to Microsoft back in the 90's when they were declared a "monopoly". .
Surprise. The laws are made up to target the companies that commit crimes. I personally have never been touched by the laws on armed robbery or murder. Can you guess why? Does it seem unfair to you that only a small group of people get touched by laws on murder and do you think that we should correct this societal injustice?
There are two things here. Only big companies get the opportunity to do certain criminal things. AmigaOS never had the chance to force Windows out of the market, so they never did it. I have no idea if Commodore would have done that if they had found themselves in the position to, but since they never had the opportunity we'll never find out for sure.
The second thing is that the reason that these companies are the biggest dominant companies in their market is because they were willing to commit crimes to get there. Microsoft Windows was pretty bad with better alternatives. There was more software software available for other systems like MacOS so there wasn't a drive. Microsoft did a bunch of deliberate things, such as buying up all of the duplicating capacity at the time of the release of OS2 and getting exclusive agreements to stop other people's operating systems on PCs that most people wouldn't do because they were unethical. Microsoft did not, naturally get to dominance in the PC operating system market. They came to that because they were willing to do things which either were, or should have been crimes.
Re:They have to (Score:4, Funny)
I personally have never been touched by the laws on armed robbery or murder. Can you guess why?
You're really good at it? What are your rates?
Asking for a friend.
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Microsoft is the dominant OS around the world because IBM licensed their OS, because Gary Kildall chose to go off in his private plane, rather than meet with IBM execs when they came calling.
IBM focused the marketplace on a single architecture, and Microsoft was free to license their OS to clone makers.
MS and Windows were the dominate OS long, long before OS/2 came along
When IBM entered the PC market, it turned what was a toy you hooked up to a television set into a business machine, it's only competitor of
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Microsoft is the dominant OS around the world because IBM licensed their OS, because Gary Kildall chose to go off in his private plane, rather than meet with IBM execs when they came calling.
Didn't happen that way, but cool story.
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I chose not to fully research and document the "correct" version of the story, as described by Forbes - details vary, but end result the same, Bill Gates got te contract that Kildall didn't want:
In 1980 IBM was out looking for an operating system for its coming PC. The legend is that Kildall missed a meeting with IBM because he was out flying one of his planes. He could never live down that legend, but it wasn't entirely true. He was flying, yes, but he showed up only a little late. Then he talked all day and through the night on a flight with the IBM representatives back to their office in Florida. The sticking point: IBM wanted to pay a flat $200,000 license fee to get a royalty-free license in perpetuity. Kildall wanted more.
Bill Gates came up with a similar operating system. He gave DOS away to IBM for $50,000 and figured, correctly, that he could get rich by licensing the system to other computer manufacturers.
Source: Forbes [forbes.com]
The point is, and remains, that Microsoft did not commit "crimes" to become the dominant OS in PCs for the last 40 years.
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Oh bullocks. They're written to target US tech companies, ignoring the locals, whether it's xenophobic protectionism or just going after those with the biggest pockets. The perfect example is that "right to be forgotten" guy in Spain who was accused by the local press of being a deadbeat and skipping out on his debts. Now, the logical and reasonable thing to do if a publication writes something libelous or defamatory about you would be to go after it at the source. Sue and punish the publisher, have the
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Cool story bro. The vast majority of fines go to EU companies over local market monopoly issues. It's just a shock to the US tech companies that they can't just buy off politicians and enforcement like they do in the states.
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> Cool story bro.
Yeah, you can fuck right off with that bullshit. This isn't wikipedia and I gave more than enough search terms in my post to lead you right to a dozen articles on the incident on Google's first page of results. So, if you're going to accuse someone of lying, try harder and pick a target with a shorter memory.
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I didn't accuse you of lying before, just assumed you didn't know. Now I am [cnbc.com]. Do the research yourself, here are some terms is one of the most standard internet lies - you'd give direct links that others could investigate for truth if you actually believed what you say. If you actually know you will find that the biggest fine for a cartel ever, subsequent to that list, was for European truck producers [europa.eu]. Google has one fine coming which may be bigger when finally settled, but that is after repeatedly ignoring
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Bullocks. None of that has anything to do with anything. Since you are too dishonest and lazy, here you go: https://letmegooglethat.com/?q... [letmegooglethat.com]
I did get one thing wrong though. The guy I remembered as being falsely accused of being a deadbeat actually WAS a deadbeat. So the original content was not actually libelous at all. But the EU still went on the warpath against Google, instead of the original publisher, for it anyway. Which just makes the EU's position vis a vis illegitimately targeting foreign
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All Amazon has to do is follow the law and they don't get fined. Simple. Plenty of other companies manage to do it every single day, why is it so hard for Amazon?
Because mega-corporations like Amazon are targets for fines in a way that smaller business (including large corporations that aren't mega-corps like Amazon) are not. Many of the rules seem to be made up just to target these giant corps. Similar things happened to Microsoft back in the 90's when they were declared a "monopoly". Many of their fines stem from things like abusing their monopoly power or similar things which don't really apply to anyone else. As long as you're the second biggest guy on the block, it's easy to follow the law and not get fined. It becomes very difficult when you're the biggest.
The argument about fines is bollocks. Prices already rose for Americans from $119 p/a to $139 p/a.
As far as things inflating in price, this is one of the lowest from £79 to £95 per annum. That's £14 a year (and about the same as the US). Not the £10 a week my food shopping (for one, yep, forever alone guy here) has gone up.in the last few months (for comparison, that's about 20%). For what you get for Prime it's still pretty good value and I've been expecting this kind of thing fo
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Follow the law? Who do you think I am, a peasant?
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All Amazon has to do is follow the law and they don't get fined. Simple. Plenty of other companies manage to do it every single day, why is it so hard for Amazon?
I think the term to clearly describe EU "laws" is kafkaesque
Sign 'o' the times baby (Score:1)
They're going to pass that on to their customers too.
Still a good deal (Score:3)
Most of the time I use Amazon by default. When, due to lack of availability or delay, I'm forced to order elsewhere, I'm almost always reminded why prime is a good deal if you use it. Throw in "Prime Video" and if you watch much of it, it's hard to beat the value.
I've chosen my moral crusades. Amazon isn't one.
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Almost everything I could get on Amazon, I can buy cheaper on eBay (new), even after factoring in the price of postage. Prime's free and fast delivery used to seem handy, especially on smaller items where most of the cost is postage, except that's clearly factored in the price now on Amazon so you're not getting any discount. The speed is still an advantage, but unless you need a lot of things very fast and very frequently, then I didn't think it was worth the old price, let along the new higher one. I thin
Re: Still a good deal (Score:2)
Since i have been acammed hard multiple times on ebay i refusr to use them. I have lost thousands buying and selling things on ebay.
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It depends how good you are at planning ahead. If you can wait a few extra days for stuff to arrive, you can usually get it with free shipping anyway.
Amazon Prime is VERY expensive. It's not just the price of the subscription, it's the fact that everything sold under the scheme has the Prime Tax added to its price. You can find the same people selling the same stuff elsewhere, usually eBay, at significantly lower prices.
It might be worth paying the Prime Tax for the easy returns if it's something valuable,
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Ebay, in my experience, is absolutely terrible for anything that even remotely resembles a mainstream commodity. I'm in Canada, and the shipping costs for everything are simply exorbitant - as in $60 to ship a $40 product. I can generally walk into a Best Buy and pay less off the floor.
Ebay is good for things from china that I can wait a couple months for - can't beat the prices for Arduino project parts, for instance. But it no substitute for Amazon.
Inflation spiral (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids too young to remember that 80s and 90s, this is what an inflation spiral looks like.
Companies raise prices citing increases in costs, then workers going on strike for increase in wages due to increases in cost of living, which then causes further increases in companies' costs and hence further price increases.
It is an unending loop which won't stop until you hit recession. The Feds was supposed to prevent this by raising interest rates when signs of inflation was observed, but they sat on their asses last year pretending not to see the signs, by now it is too late and everyone pays for their mistakes.
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That's not entirely true, current inflation is a result of known issues; energy costs and post-covid supply chain constraints.
When there's a single set of things you can point to at the core of it all then you have to fix that, because if you don't, then monetary policy won't make the blindest bit of difference. Monetary policy only helps if there's no single underlying issue like that and you're trying to bring down a general cycle of inflation that's not driven by anything other than artificial price incr
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There was no inflation spiral in the 80s and 90s (at least not in the US). The spiral was starting in the 60s and got going in the 70s. The early 80s was the recession that wrung out the inflation. We have had low inflation rates since then until this year.
Ditch prime (Score:3)
I did years ago and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's flat out too much money you can buy things for much cheaper at other retailers yeah you might have to wait an extra day or two but I can live with that I think most of us can.
I also buy less stuff which is an added bonus.
If you are using prime and ordering a few things a week and watching prime TV and some of the other bundled services then keep it. You're just using it for shipping then ditch it, Amazon does not need your money.
In short... (Score:4, Informative)
we're paying for their latest Hobbit, which is something like $60 million per episode.
Umm ... Canada already there (Score:2)
Fees are ~$120CAD now. Why is everywhere else cheaper for just about anything but snow?
A refreshing change? (Score:2)
What they said:
Amazon blamed the price rises on "increased inflation and operating costs," along with higher expenses tied to faster delivery and content production for its Prime Video streaming service
What I wish they had said:
Amazon admitted the price rises are because "we want more money, and we're taking it because we know our customers will keep giving it to us", along with higher expenses tied to increased C-suite salaries and shareholder dividends.
Seriously, I find the deception, propaganda, and gaslighting harder to take than the pillaging they're trying unsuccessfully to cover up.
Prime in UK is not worth it (Score:2)
Prime in UK is not worth it anyway. You can get free delivery on almost anything just by having it go to a pickup locker instead of your home address. Prime Video is dismally bad for content, for streaming quality and for being horrible or impossible to use on non-approved browsers, OS or or Kodi. The Music service is not great. The one service I find worth a monthly fee is Audible Premium Plus which is £7.99 and includes one audiobook of my choice monthly and lots of chances for big discoun