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Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

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Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#51

Post by lsaferite »

untog wrote: post #32
gdulli wrote: post #22

I can't understand the idea of paying for shipping (whether it's annual or per-shipment) when there's an option to get it for free. If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism. Taking away impulse buying is one of the better things about shopping online. And the streaming services combined don't match what I get with cable…

If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism. What about when, you know, you need something urgently? Last time I took a long trip I ordered a backup battery for my cellphone three days before I left. It was either use Amazon Prime or go to a store and pay twice as much.

This is one reason I love Prime. I frequently find myself ordering something I need for a trip at the last minute.

Another instance was when our son needed to move from the carrier to a real car seat. We ordered the new one late one night. The next day before noon it was on our doorstep. And that was the 2-day shipping option.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#52

Post by lsaferite »

josefresco wrote: post #3
scottcanoni wrote: post #2

This makes Newegg even more attractive with their $50 a year premier plan. If you mostly buy computers or electronics (which I assume most of HN readers do).

Prime these days is less about fast shipping and more about the bundled streaming/media services.

I'd say that is a personal opinion. I say that as my own personal opinion is quite the opposite. I rarely use Prime streaming and prefer Netflix simple based on ease of use. Of course Netflix seems determined to screw that up, but that's a different story.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#53

Post by nathanb »

Most of the conversation here seems to be around shipping costs and speed. But there are a number of other perks to Prime. Here are the ones that I use:

* Streaming video: not all the stuff I want to watch is on Prime, but when it is, it saves me a few bucks

* Lending library: ditto, for books. If I care deeply about permanently owning a book, I'll buy the physical copy.

* Kindle First (get a free book every month one month before its release): the books are not exactly destined to be timeless classics, but free reading material is nice and it helps me discover new authors

Any other important Prime perks I'm missing? The shipping plus the above go a long way toward justifying the cost, to me at least.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#54

Post by gdulli »

untog wrote: post #32
gdulli wrote: post #22

I can't understand the idea of paying for shipping (whether it's annual or per-shipment) when there's an option to get it for free. If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism. Taking away impulse buying is one of the better things about shopping online. And the streaming services combined don't match what I get with cable…

If I decided I couldn't wait a few extra days to get the things I order, I feel I'd be crossing a line of giving in too much to consumerism. What about when, you know, you need something urgently? Last time I took a long trip I ordered a backup battery for my cellphone three days before I left. It was either use Amazon Prime or go to a store and pay twice as much.

In a rare case like that I have the option of paying for faster shipping, but it happens rarely enough that it costs me far less than locking myself into paying for a year's worth of shipping I may or may not use.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#56

Post by JohnTHaller »

The value proposition for Amazon Prime has sunk quite a bit in the last year. More and more products have multiple listings: one that's not Prime eligible, and one that is Prime eligible but costs more. So, that two day free shipping isn't free. Plus, living in NYC, a large percentage of the two day free shipping items just get sent USPS anyway, so I'm not getting anything extra.

Amazon's Prime video service is similarly less of a value than it should be. Unlike competing services like Hulu and Netflix, you can't watch Amazon Prime videos on your Android phone or tablet (who cares, it's just the #1 mobile OS, right?). Amazon's logic is to force you to use their proprietary tablets that are based on Android but don't support Google's app store or Google's services, meaning that a whole array of Android apps aren't compatible, including big ones like Google Chrome and Firefox.

I'm ditching Amazon Prime at the end of my term in two months as a result.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#57

Post by icefox »

uptown wrote: post #50

While I don't mind the Prime price-hike, I've begun noticing that Amazon's prices are also increasing quite-dramatically. Cereal that used to cost $10 now costs over $18. Dog biscuits used to cost $11 are now over $22. Yet if you compare Amazon's prices to Walmart, you can get these items close to Amazon's old prices with $5 shipping (or free shipping over $50). I know there's been considerable discussion about Amazo…

Same here, and without the carrot of "free shipping" it is much easier to just place an order elsewhere now.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#58

Post by jamesbritt »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #56

The value proposition for Amazon Prime has sunk quite a bit in the last year. More and more products have multiple listings: one that's not Prime eligible, and one that is Prime eligible but costs more. So, that two day free shipping isn't free. Plus, living in NYC, a large percentage of the two day free shipping items just get sent USPS anyway, so I'm not getting anything extra. Amazon's Prime video service is simil…

I've watched prime videos on my asus tablet just by using a browser. Seems to work fine.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#59

Post by JohnTHaller »

jamesbritt wrote: post #58
JohnTHaller wrote: post #56

The value proposition for Amazon Prime has sunk quite a bit in the last year. More and more products have multiple listings: one that's not Prime eligible, and one that is Prime eligible but costs more. So, that two day free shipping isn't free. Plus, living in NYC, a large percentage of the two day free shipping items just get sent USPS anyway, so I'm not getting anything extra. Amazon's Prime video service is simil…

I've watched prime videos on my asus tablet just by using a browser. Seems to work fine.

They work to varying degrees within the mobile browser. But the app, which does a better job of displaying and caching the video as you play resulting in a better image, is only available for iOS and Amazon's gimped Android tablets.

Re: Amazon Prime To Cost $99 A Year

#60

Post by tzs »

dbpatterson wrote: post #44
mhb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm considering whether it's worth it. I thought that, for orders over $25, shipping was free anyway. With the amount of ordering you do, wouldn't there be little advantage to having Prime, especially if you tried to aggregate your items?

Just as a side note, the over $25 shipping is the slowest they can find. So if it is all books, it is media mail (which is _really_ slow), and otherwise it is whatever the slowest that UPS does (3-5 days), vs two day shipping on everything.

And if the slowest they can find is not slow enough, they will insert a delay.

It used to be that when you ordered something with free shipping, they shipped it fairly quickly, so how long it took you to get it mostly depended on the speed of the carrier. I would often get free shipped items in one or two days if they came from the Amazon warehouse in my city.

Then they changed that. If I ordered something with free shipping that was going to ship from the warehouse in my city, they would wait several days before shipping it, and then the carrier would deliver it in one or two days, just ensuring that the item would not arrive earlier than the advertised arrival window.

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