Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 170 posts

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#81

Post by sp00ls »

Someone1234 wrote: post #24
takeda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bas…

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).

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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#82

Post by jstarfish »

ng12 wrote: post #48
AlexB138 wrote: post #11

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 ac…

> 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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#83

Post by AlexB138 »

socalnate1 wrote: post #29
AlexB138 wrote: post #11

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 ac…

I've had almost the exact opposite experience. I often get Prime deliveries the next day, even when I order in the late afternoon or evening. I'm in Southern California, so maybe the greater density here means different systems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#85

Post by greymeister »

AlexB138 wrote: post #11

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 ac…

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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#86

Post by underbluewaters »

EpicEng wrote: post #75
underbluewaters wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can absolutely expect them to honor the terms that they themselves defined for a service that costs more than $100/year.

The terms state Free 2-day shipping to the contiguous US. It states 5 day shipping to Hawaii and Alaska 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.

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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#87

Post by EpicEng »

untog wrote: post #80
EpicEng wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terms state Free 2-day shipping to the contiguous US. It states 5 day shipping to Hawaii and Alaska 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.

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 almos…

Except your being selective about what he said.

>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.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#88

Post by brotoss »

lutorm wrote: post #47
AlexB138 wrote: post #11

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 ac…

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 increasin…

Is this satire?

You are complaining about free shipping speed to an island 2,400 miles off the coast of California

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#89

Post by EpicEng »

underbluewaters wrote: post #86
EpicEng wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terms state Free 2-day shipping to the contiguous US. It states 5 day shipping to Hawaii and Alaska 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.

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.

Well I'm with you there. I assumed you were talking about 2-day delivery, my mistake.

Re: Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase

#90

Post by zhjansbnas »

rando444 wrote: post #69
matte_black wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm failing to see how your anecdote about how you're happy to pay for something you admittedly don't care about is relevant.

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.

Post reply on HN