
One year of Amazon Prime free for students - michaelfairley
http://www.amazon.com/gp/student/signup/info
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elbenshira
I hate Amazon Prime. It made me buy tons of awesome books resulting in an
awesome credit card bill.

~~~
jrockway
Same for me, except I like it :) Amazon was my third-biggest money sink last
year (under IKEA and American Airlines).

But it's OK, because I buy _everything_ from Amazon, and it saves me a lot of
time and money. I never would have thought about buying laundry detergent
online and having it shipped overnight. But it ends up being cheaper than
buying it at the grocery store, and I don't have to carry it home.

I'm not convinced Amazon makes any money off of me, but that's really not my
problem :)

~~~
blhack
> _buying laundry detergent online and having it shipped overnight._... _I
> don't have to carry it home_

Am I the only one that is absolutely _amazed_ that this is even possible? I
mean...if you described this to somebody 100 years ago, they would have
thought it was a form of magic.

"There is a box on my desk. It shows me pictures of things I can buy. If i
press on one of the pictures, that item shows up at my door while I'm at work
the next day and the money is automatically given to the person I bought it
from by my bank."

~~~
adammichaelc
Or radio communication "...yeah, and your voice travels through the air until
it reaches whoever you're talking to..."

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necubi
This is pretty awesome, but note this (from the FAQ):

"When you sign up for Amazon Student, you'll receive e-mail alerts for
discounts and promotions. If you don't want any more Amazon Student e-mails,
you may cancel your Amazon Student membership. If you do this, your Amazon
Prime benefits will also end when the membership is canceled."

~~~
woodall
If you have a Gmail account you can ad an "+Amazon"- or whatever- to then end.
This allows you to easily categorize these emails, just in-case you do want to
put them in the trash or use some other filter. Example:
firstname.lastname+AMAZON@gmail.com

On a side note, you can also remove any periods(.) from an email. Example:
firstname.lastname@gmail.com becomes firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I think this
was done to help cut back on phishing and scamming, but I don't really know
why.

~~~
baddox
If you have a Gmail account, it won't work for this. You have to sign up with
a .edu email account and verify that it's you.

~~~
profgubler
I used my regular gmail/amazon account and it just had me add my .edu email. I
think most comm will come through my gmail.

~~~
woodall
This is what I did last year when buying books. They used my .edu address to
verify that I was at a university, but sent notifications to my Gmail.

My university has since moved to Microsoft's Live service- retaining the .edu
extension. I will try to see if the plus(+) notion works with it.

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ramchip
Am I wrong or is this only for Americans?

> Only students currently enrolled in a college or university who have a valid
> .edu e-mail address to confirm their status are eligible to participate in
> Amazon Student.

~~~
agravier
you are right.

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kacy
I know I'm just like most of the people commenting here, but this is an
incredible deal. Over the last three semesters, I've saved so much money on
textbooks. In fact, more than half of the books I've purchased new on Amazon
were a few dollars cheaper than the _used_ textbooks in my student store. Go
take advantage of this if you can! :-)

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anotherperson
I tried a free two month trial of this a couple years ago. It was right around
this time too. Prime is incredibly useful for ordering textbooks.

~~~
johnswamps
It's incredibly useful for ordering a lot of things on Amazon. Prime is quite
devious, it's completely changed the way I use Amazon and has dramatically
increased the amount of money I spend there. To wit:

1\. I now order many things I wouldn't have even considered ordering on-line
before. When I can order something off Amazon and have it in 2 days with free
shipping, why bother buying it at the store?

2\. The amount of time I wait before ordering an item has decreased. While
before I would "batch order" anything I want from Amazon, giving me time to
review everything I was thinking of purchasing, not needing to worry about
shipping lends itself to ordering items one at a time. One Click makes it even
easier. This makes impulse buys a lot easier.

3\. Ordering something from Amazon is so much more attractive than ordering
from other websites now, even more than it was before. Even when ordering from
the Amazon site, I almost always buy prime eligible items which are usually
items sold by Amazon itself, not a retailer. I'll usually spend a few extra
bucks buying the same item from Amazon than from somewhere else just for the
convenience.

tldr: Prime makes you spend a lot of money at Amazon

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Agree. I will go out of my way to avoid shopping in stores. I think I probably
make half or more of my required and discretionary purchases on Amazon, simply
because Prime is so friggin' easy.

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ShabbyDoo
Amazon must know that tons of alums still have .edu email addresses. Perhaps
this program is also a form of price discrimination for Prime? Those willing
to cheat the system are less likely to pay $80/year than those who won't?

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jbeda
The Terms state: "We may ask you to furnish documentation supporting your
eligibility. If you do not provide documentation indicating that you meet the
eligibility requirements above, you may be required to reimburse us for
benefits you received as a result of your Amazon Student membership."

If they call you on it, you may be on the hook for full shipping charges for
everything you ordered. Not clear what would happen if you don't pony up but
banishment from Amazon would be slightly painful for me, at least.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Wouldn't it be hard for Amazon to claim that you owe them more than $80 given
that they sell Prime for that price? And, Amazon probably won't ask everyone
(or even many students) for proof given that most would probably forget -- an
outcome which hurts Amazon's goal of capturing student revenue.

~~~
jergason
They could charge you for how much shipping would have cost if you weren't an
Amazon Prime member.

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deltaqueue
Prime is an extremely smart program. You WILL end up spending more money at
Amazon, but it's OK because their prices are great and you end up saving an
incredible amount of time. You have to be careful to use it efficiently (and
not "shop"/browse and accumulate too much stuff), though. I've bought
thousands of dollars worth of stuff over the past few years--electronics,
books, toothpaste, vitamins, and even oatmeal--and haven't been to Bed Bath
and Beyond / Walmart / etc. in ages.

This means I can do enjoyable things on the weekend instead of running
errands.

~~~
potatolicious
And I practically refuse to buy things from third-parties that are not Prime-
eligible (i.e., sellers who don't use Fulfillment by Amazon)... it's a
deviously smart tactic that will get sellers to fall in line into Amazon's own
selling ecosystem.

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caryme
Amazon claims that email is not a valid .edu address. It says the same for my
roommate's email.

We both go to Northwestern University where the student email addresses are
Google Apps emails @u.northwestern.edu.

~~~
paulbaumgart
The problem might be that subdomains are often assigned to people/groups
affiliated with the university who can then run their own mail servers under
that subdomain. This makes it trivial to give an email address ending in .edu
to people who aren't students.

Since in my experience Amazon's customer support people are actually people,
they might be able to make an exception for your particular domain if you
contact them.

~~~
mattmillr
I don't think I ever had a me@domain.edu address in school. There was always
an vestigial environment name in the middle (@eos.ncsu.edu and
@titan.sfasu.edu)

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tibbon
My college's email addresses for students are all .net addresses. Only faculty
get .edu addresses. I went to Berklee. I just emailed customer support about
it to see if it would still work.

~~~
k0z
If you really went to Berkeley, don't you think you'd know how to spell it?

~~~
harpastum

        Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the
        largest independent college of contemporary music in the world.
    
                   - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berklee_College_of_Music
    

or look at <http://www.berklee.edu/>

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stcredzero
They're trying to hook them early. It's just like giving college students
credit cards. (I am a massive Prime user myself.)

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sliverstorm
It seems to me like Amazon could really use it's own shipping co. The Kindle
really helps reduce delivery burden I'm sure, but the best model for Amazon
involves reducing delivery times across the board. Bringing the middleman
(delivery service) into the fold would help them reach that goal.

Acquisition of FedEx or UPS imminent?

~~~
wmf
AmazonFresh (<http://fresh.amazon.com/>) and AmazonTote
(<http://tote.amazon.com/AmazonToteLearnMore>) are already up and running in
the Seattle area. Modulo sales tax concerns, I could see them expanding to
other areas.

~~~
ippisl
Doesn't amazon tote use freelance shipping companies?

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Alex3917
"When you sign up for Amazon Student, you'll receive e-mail alerts for
discounts and promotions. If you don't want any more Amazon Student e-mails,
you may cancel your Amazon Student membership. If you do this, your Amazon
Prime benefits will also end when the membership is canceled."

This is brilliant.

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fairlyodd
CORRECTION: Amazon Prime free for anyone with a .edu mail address. I graduated
long ago, but my .edu mail address is for life, so I occasionally mooch on
these discounts. Too bad I already ponied up for an Amazon Prime this year :|

~~~
norova
You'll get a refund for your "unused" paid portion of Prime if you sign up.

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fairlyodd
Wow, I did! Thanks

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chime
This is sweet. I am already a paying Prime member. I just signed up for the
Student Prime and got a refund of $50+ for the remainder of my plan. I'm now
signed up as a student Prime member.

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dfreidin
They couldn't have done this a few months ago when I was still a student?

~~~
il
Your school email address should still be valid.

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freshfey
US only :(

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Jach
Argh, I just bought some books last week too.

Oh well, I'll need more. Signed up!

