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

The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#11

Post by corobo »

armadsen wrote: post #8
corobo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a new announcement? If I order before (I think) 8pm I'll almost definitely get the order next day. In the UK if that helps any, Midlands

New for the entire US (some areas/cities already had it). Not sure about this article, but another article about the announcement that I read mentions that the UK has already had free one day delivery for a while.

Ah gotcha. Yeah it'd make sense that the US has had a harder time rolling it out, being that the entirety of the UK can fit into many of the states!

I'm not used to us getting things before the US I guess :)

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#12

Post by rygxqpbsngav »

In a way, The prime videos alone now is worth the price. Get access to wide range of movies and exclusive TV shows for 79£ (coming to 6.7£ per month - less than netflix). + Prime reads, magazines, prime music etc. One day and same day shipping is already a side benefit.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#14

Post by dbbk »

enlyth wrote: post #4
sveng wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you actually read this article. It’s excellent, especially its narrative stitched together with first-person, you-are-there, accounts. Rather timely also since Amazon announced this week that it’s working on one day deliveries for Prime customers. And those in the know will tell you that same-day (even 2-4 hours!) deliveries are on the roadmap for Prime customers in major metro areas.

We already get 2 hour delivery in London with Amazon Prime Now

Yes, lots of countries have long had next-day and same-day delivery, next-day is just new to the US.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#15

Post by miltech »

dbbk wrote: post #14
enlyth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already get 2 hour delivery in London with Amazon Prime Now

Yes, lots of countries have long had next-day and same-day delivery, next-day is just new to the US.

Prime Now has been around for quite some time in quite a few locales in the US. (est. 2014)

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#16

Post by save_ferris »

sveng wrote: post #3
oldjokes wrote: post #2

They just stratified online shopping. Everything is becoming more and more stratified, from airline cabins to online content to education. I'd argue that copying this trend and tweaking the spreadsheets to extract money in a more fine grained manner while just cutting every dime on the lower tier is not exactly innovation. Holding this up on a pedestal as the great moment of triumph and creativity in tech is not real…

Not sure if you actually read this article. It’s excellent, especially its narrative stitched together with first-person, you-are-there, accounts. Rather timely also since Amazon announced this week that it’s working on one day deliveries for Prime customers. And those in the know will tell you that same-day (even 2-4 hours!) deliveries are on the roadmap for Prime customers in major metro areas.

What shocked me was that after I let my Prime membership expire and ordered something to be shipped, I got the usual 7-10 business day ETA on my package.

The package came the next day, and no extra cost to me. I've made two other orders since then, and they both arrived next day despite the order confirmation telling me 7-10 days.

I'm sure that there's some shipping infrastructure slack that allows them to do this, but I find it super strange now that I get prompted to pay an extra $10 for next-day shipping only to get it anyway.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#17

Post by orev »

Prime really was a stroke of genius. The free shipping was just the lure. Once you’ve signed up, you’re now invested in using Amazon first for everything “because I’m paying for the membership”. Then they started adding video and the other benefits, and it became such a great value even if you don’t use most of the benefits.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#18

Post by daveFNbuck »

save_ferris wrote: post #16
sveng wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you actually read this article. It’s excellent, especially its narrative stitched together with first-person, you-are-there, accounts. Rather timely also since Amazon announced this week that it’s working on one day deliveries for Prime customers. And those in the know will tell you that same-day (even 2-4 hours!) deliveries are on the roadmap for Prime customers in major metro areas.

What shocked me was that after I let my Prime membership expire and ordered something to be shipped, I got the usual 7-10 business day ETA on my package. The package came the next day, and no extra cost to me. I've made two other orders since then, and they both arrived next day despite the order confirmation telling me 7-10 days. I'm sure that there's some shipping infrastructure slack that allows them to do this, b…

Meanwhile, I pay for prime and experience extremely unreliable shipping.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#19

Post by sevensor »

Back in 2005 or so, I had a friend who was working at Amazon. When he told me he was ordering things like toothpaste, I could hardly believe it. His apartment was in easy walking distance of a drugstore, and I thought him ordering toothpaste from an online bookseller instead was insane. Little did I know he was living in the future.

Re: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

#20

Post by omega3 »

As an active subscriber, I find Prime very frustrating, the plethora of different benefits on offer sounds amazing. However, in practice Video doesn't have the shows and movies I want to watch, Reading doesn't have the books I want to read, Music doesn't have the music I want to listen to and shopping still takes two days to arrive (to one of the biggest cities in the UK). It seems every time I want to watch a movie or a tv show or read a new book I go through a ritual of checking if it's by a stroke of luck available on Prime and only to end up disappointed.

It looks to me like they went with something very similar to the 24h gym model - all these benefits which you don't end up using.

Post reply on HN