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

Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#61

Post by praneshp »

ams6110 wrote: post #17
dberg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also convenience. 2 days and not thinking about shipping. It’s more than just calculating the total of all you pay for shipping IMO

Many sellers offer free shipping without prime. Or offer the same item cheaper than prime with a slightly longer shipping delay.

aka several logins, several places I have to maintain credit cards for (depending on which one I get most points on), several services that can get hacked and leave my details in a public database, etc...

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#62

Post by desk_rabbit »

chrisseaton wrote: post #59
desk_rabbit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person who made the original comment, just someone who found your response silly.

I'm using the generic 'you' as an indefinite pronoun.

Fair enough. Then I would say that when "I" said, "Maybe for some. I never watch anything on it," "I" had already acknowledged that not everyone saw things the same way as "me."

Again - I bet you that most people care about the shipping and nothing else. That is an important fact when considering the value prime offers.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#63

Post by tfehring »

eigen-vector wrote: post #21

It makes sense if you compare to other contemporary subscription services. Spotify is ~$120 per year Netflix is ~$110-$130 per year Amazon Prime comes with a plethora of auxillary benefits like Amazon Video and Music, Prime day deals, magazine subscriptions, and many more that I'm probably leaving out. Considering all this, $119 per year doesn't seem like all that much. It's still less than ten bucks a month.

Prime Music is worthless because it's not comprehensive enough to replace a better service like Spotify. Same goes for Prime Video - I haven't seen anything worthwhile that isn't available on Netflix, unless you include titles that you have to pay for separately anyway.

And I've never found anything worth buying on Prime Day - it seems like a marketing gimmick crossed with an opportunity for Amazon to clear out the junk at the back of their warehouses.

I like the convenience of Prime shipping, so I've tried to justify keeping it, but I just can't. It might be worth it if PrimeNow had a better selection in my area, or if Fresh were (1) available in my area and (2) not ludicrously expensive. As it stands, I don't get my money's worth from Prime shipping, and none of the other benefits seem to be worth using.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#64

Post by desk_rabbit »

eganist wrote: post #29

Nope. • Prime Video is losing selection to "channels" that require extra payment on its own platform. • Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. • Those which are assured to arrive within two days don't always do so, but I never get a credit for that delay against my prime membership for a failure to meet their SLA even though I'm supposedly covered with some sort of guarantee. • Prime shipping is no longe…

> • "Add-on items" — items that don't ship alone because they're too small/cheap.

This is the only thing Amazon has done annoying enough to get me to buy elsewhere (other than, occasionally, price comparisons).

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#65

Post by xster »

eganist wrote: post #29

Nope. • Prime Video is losing selection to "channels" that require extra payment on its own platform. • Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. • Those which are assured to arrive within two days don't always do so, but I never get a credit for that delay against my prime membership for a failure to meet their SLA even though I'm supposedly covered with some sort of guarantee. • Prime shipping is no longe…

I can't quite figure out what I'm paying for anymore either. I would assume it's mostly for 2 days shipping but Amazon 2 days shipping so frequently 5 days shipping these days and it's not like any other merchants don't deliver it 3-ish days anyway.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#66

Post by webdev23 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

I like the idea Prime but slowly and surely Amazon is pricing people out. At $119 I have to think that it might not be worth being part of it. Do I really order that much from Amazon that paying $119 ahead of any purchases is worth it? I don't think so.

You can also pay monthly. It's more expensive per month, but you may save over the course of the year if you bulk purchase on months you need amazon prime.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#67

Post by diffeomorphism »

benburleson wrote: post #5
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

I like the idea Prime but slowly and surely Amazon is pricing people out. At $119 I have to think that it might not be worth being part of it. Do I really order that much from Amazon that paying $119 ahead of any purchases is worth it? I don't think so.

Prime provides much more value than the order shipping benefit, which is part of their reason for the increase.

Then they should offer "prime light" without these "benefits".

Amazon is trying to leverage their dominant market position to enter video streaming, music streaming, ... etc.. And have customers pay higher rates on top of that. At some point that becomes abuse of monopoly.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#68

Post by [deleted] »

StudentStuff wrote: post #35
eganist wrote: post #29

Nope. • Prime Video is losing selection to "channels" that require extra payment on its own platform. • Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. • Those which are assured to arrive within two days don't always do so, but I never get a credit for that delay against my prime membership for a failure to meet their SLA even though I'm supposedly covered with some sort of guarantee. • Prime shipping is no longe…

This was my experience too, I've had multiple instances of fake items or really old stock (circa 2014) showing up, and in the latter case I'd even asked beforehand to ensure I didn't end up with an older revision of the product. Ended up being a few grand worth of hardware to return, and a week and change delay to that project. Not risking buying from Amazon again!

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#69

Post by xster »

genericone wrote: post #10

From the comments so far, I just can't shake this feeling of being astroturfed to support the price increase... Is it just me?

Ya, I don't know if they outsource these comments to the same people that do astroturfing for platforms like Facebook. These one liners just appear so out of place in a engineer-y / HN crowd to be inconspicuous.

Re: Amazon Raises Annual Prime Price 20% to $119

#70

Post by mycodebreaks »

My main reason for shopping from Amazon is that I do not want to sign up separately on many retailer's websites. E.g. target, best buy, Walmart, ...

If there is a single sign-on option which provides good enough data safety & privacy, lot of my shopping will move away from Amazon to this virtual YC 2019 company.

Post reply on HN