I have until January to decide. I’ll probably renew.
The thing about Prime that has me wondering is the number of things that aren’t eligible.
Take waterbed conditioner. There are lots of different options on Amazon for the product I need. Same manufacturer; different vendors, quantities, prices, etc. A couple are Prime-eligible. The cheapest, by a comfortable margin (including shipping), is not.
I don’t purchase a whole lot on Amazon, so I’m right on the edge. Never knew about the .edu discount, though! I wonder if it would automagically apply if I shift my Amazon account e-mail over to my .edu address…
My gf initially registered with (and still signs in with) her @gmail account, but signed up for Prime via her grad school email.
I’m on the edge, too. This was the first year I’ve used Prime. I’m usually quite content to go with super saver shipping. I’m doubtful I got my money’s worth this year, and I really doubt I’ll get my money’s worth when it’s $100.
No need to change your email, you just need to verify.
Ah! Thanks, guys.
It’s official: Prime is going up to $99, which is a weird figure because it’s a non-Prime number.
Nerdiest sentence ever. Only in nerdland would $99 be considered a weird price.
How do you do this? My wife just got Prime, so her account doesn’t renew for a while, but she never uses streaming, lending library, etc. How do I just add her to mine.
You live in the same household and were subscribing to prime twice?
Found out that Prime Student didn’t require a class schedule like I’d been previously told, so I gladly resubbed at $40 after not renewing when my subscription ran out last time, in part due to missing the two-day guarantee multiple times. First item I ordered after resubscribing arrived in one day, which is the first time that’s ever happened. If I can get things a day after ordering on a consistent basis I’ll gladly reup for $100 when the time comes.
I’m almost at the end of my first year of Prime, and I’m going to let it renew.
While I only spend about $200/month at Amazon (on average), it’s certainly been nice to get all my stuff so fast, even though I really didn’t need it that fast.
But where I really feel it’s been worth it has been the video streaming. I originally decided to try Prime precisely because I was spending about $20 a month renting movies from Amazon, and I was seeing that a lot of those movies (about half) would have been free with Prime. So, doing the math, I figured I’d at least break even, and I have. In fact, I’ve made an effort to rent nothing but Prime movies and TV shows. As I don’t currently have HBO or any of those premium cable packages, I haven’t seen most of the movies or TV shows that Prime carries, so just for video streaming alone, Prime has been more than worth it for me, as it’s been cheaper than adding just one Premium cable channel.
It also helps that I have a nice, big computer monitor, and that my primary computer is located in the living room, and situated such that both the girlfriend and I can both see it. So yeah, in my specific and odd situation, it’s still totally worth it even at $99.
Plus, I heart Amazon.
I believe you go to My Account > Manage Prime Membership and fill something out there. As a satellite account I don’t have those options so I’m not sure.
Prime covers everything that Amazon sells directly (except add-on items) and anything that’s fulfilled through their fulfillment services/warehouses. I honestly don’t quite understand how it works that Amazon is willing to do fulfillment for (and advertise) their direct competitors on items they sell, but they do.
Amazon gets a substantial cut. By amount of goods I think a majority may have even been 3rd party.
They can become Ebay. The strategy is to be the #1 stop for anything you want to buy. I think Amazon only started turning a profit a couple of years ago yeah?
Once they reach their market share they can increase profits and bleed us dry.
I realize I’m somewhat fossilized but what are people spending a couple of hundred dollars a month on with Amazon that needs physical shipping? When I think of my own spending habits most of the money goes towards things Amazon can’t provide me – mortgage, utilities, gas and oil for the car, and fresh produce, fruits, and meats. The stuff I do buy from Amazon is digital and doesn’t need Prime.
We do have Prime but all we use it for is streaming video. There isn’t much we want to order, otherwise.
Well, I got my 50 in plasma TV last May with the free shipping. More recently I bought like a year’s supply of yummy black peppercorns. I’ll probably start buying bulk Basmati rice here pretty soon (I adore the flavor). Some people who have pets buy huge bags of dog/cat food to save having to lug them from the store.
Books. But not a couple hundred! Yikes.
Since Amazon sells pretty much everything, and sells most of it at a competitive price, this is like asking “why do people want worldly goods?”
Stuff I’ve bought in the last 3 months from Amazon:
Physical books.
A bathroom scale.
A cover for my snow blower.
A gas siphon to empty the tank of the snow blower - it doesn’t have any way to drain the gas, and simply burning it as suggested feels too wasteful.
A power scrubber.
A set of flatware, as a gift for my sister-in-law, who doesn’t seem to have any.
A kit to mount a ceiling lamp.
A GPS.
Some driving gloves.
A replacement lid for my food processor.
A wedge pillow, to help me deal with my reflux issues.
A wireless charger for my Nexus 7.
A Dropcam to monitor my bird when we’re out.
A replacement splash guard for the disposal.
A food processor.
A PSU.
Sheets and a comforter.
Christmas gifts.
SDD, GeForce GTX 770 and external drive enclosure.
That’s the last 4 months for me.
Yeah, I guess I’m not all that much in the worldly goods business these days. The only thing I’ve purchased in the last couple of months other than grocery store stuff is some light-bulbs. We may be replacing the gutters soon. I guess that counts. I don’t even go to Target or places like that. I don’t really seem to need much. There’s a reason advertisers don’t target my age group.
Amazon would get me if they could deliver fresh groceries at a competitive price. As it is we have Prime now because we forgot to cancel it after the free trial but I know we won’t renew at $99. We just don’t get that much out of it. We watch Netflix a lot more than Prime. (It also irks me that one of the benefits of Prime, a free ebook once a month, isn’t available to me because I don’t have a Kindle. I use the Kindle app on my iPad but that doesn’t qualify me.)