
Amazon to increase fee of prime from $99 to $119 in U.S - lechiffre10
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/26/17287476/amazon-prime-new-price-increase-119-99-dollars
======
ntsplnkv2
I just cancelled my Prime membership that was $99 a year. I got a lot of use
out of it, and from a customer perspective, Amazon is really great-easy
returns, quick shipping, good customer service.

Reasons: * The increase in "fake" reviews, or even bad reviews (seriously, 1
word responses like "great") turned me off. Was I getting something good? or
something that was boosted?

* The price of convenience was too high and it made my spending habits worse. Being able to quickly jump on an impulse and buy something was something at times I didn't control.

* The other services aren't as good as their competitors. The video library isn't great and I have cable already anyway. Amazon Music isn't great.

* The value isn't as good anymore. Their prices aren't cheaper than their competitors (e.g. Walmart). I can get free shipping anywhere now. The speed isn't as valuable as it once was to me. Certainly not at a price increase. What value has Prime added to me to justify the price increase?

~~~
henryw
I usually use [https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/) to double
check. I think a lot of sellers buy fake reviews without knowing about this
service.

~~~
slumberlust
It's a good resource, but why is the onus on the consumer to make sure the
reviews are good? If Amazon is doing anything to combat these fake review
pumps, they haven't been public about it.

------
dvt
What I find really interesting is that as far as product and pricing strategy
goes, starting low and raising prices is regarded as a _big_ no-no. The
argument being that customers (especially consumers, e.g. non-business
clients) respond very negatively to raising prices, _especially_ after getting
used to price X. And yet Amazon has continued to hike up the price of Prime
and people don't seem to be leaving.

Why? Does Prime really have no competitors? Are people "locked in" the Amazon
ecosystem (akin to Facebook/Instagram)? Even though I could never work for
Amazon as a "worker bee" (engineering or otherwise), I think Jeff Bezos and
the people he surrounds himself with are absolute business geniuses.

~~~
test6554
Netflix costs roughly $130 per year.

Apple Music costs $120 per year.

Shipping costs $5-$7 per package.

They are offering less value, but also a lower annual cost.

~~~
stirlo
Most prime subscribers would have these subscriptions as well as Prime so it's
not really a saving, just some bonus content.

------
stirlo
At what point will customers start to say “maybe paying for shipping/driving
to the store” isn’t that bad?

This is a 50% increase in price since Prime got started and if you’re not
getting something delivered every fortnight probably costing you more. Let
alone the fact that amazon has been shown to use their reputation as a cost
leader (in electronics, books, etc.) to increase the price of everyday items
so the same basket can cost you less in Walmart.

~~~
c22
This is true, but this increase still comes in at slightly cheaper than
Netflix and includes a comparable streaming service. From this perspective the
free shipping is simply a bonus.

~~~
stirlo
I wouldn't consider Netflix and Amazon Prime Video comparable. Netflix has
around 10x the content whenever I look whereas amazon has The Grand Tour, The
Man in the High Castle and not much else. I can't see many people having Prime
and skipping a Netflix subscription so it doesn't really work as a saving it's
more of a nice to have bonus.

~~~
c22
I consider them fairly comparable:

* They both have a very large corpus of garbage shows and films.

* They each have a small handful of quality shows and movies that shifts as their licensing deals evolve and expire.

* Both of them are increasingly bolstering their content with self-produced content that is mostly of dubious quality.

At least in my household we seem to use each service roughly equally (I'd say
40/40 with the other 20% going to HBO now and no other cable, tv, or video
consumption).

You're also not giving Amazon a fair shake if all you see of value is _The Man
in the High Castle_ and _The Grand Tour_ , I clearly get a lot of value out of
my subscription and I have yet to watch either of those. Right now I see they
have all of _House_ , _Sons of Anarchy_ , _Star Trek_ (most/all versions?),
_The Americans_ , and many more; dozens of episodes of _I Love Lucy_ , _Mr.
Rogers_ , and _Sesame Street_ ; and some great movies like _1984_ ,
_Spaceballs_ , _Charlotte 's Web_, the _Indiana Jones_ movies, (all the?)
_Star Trek_ s, etc.

------
igetspam
I've been looking for a good reason to ditch Amazon and a 20% hike in their
service price is as good a reason as any. With a few exceptions (like
diapers), I rarely need something immediately. The courier companies they've
been using can't seem to stop stomping across my lawn and through my planters,
no matter how many times I scream at them or complain to Amazon. Prime Video
has only a couple things worth watching and I already have a Netflix account.
I just set the reminder to let me know three days before renewal, so I can
cancel.

~~~
nambit
Netflix costs $130 a year. Would you pay that upfront ever and/or does prime
give you a better value?

~~~
igetspam
I actually pay more, so I can stream on more devices at once in 4k. It has
entertainment value. I have no problem $15 a month for something that helps me
relax after work or calms my child when she's upset that her mother and I are
doing housework and I wouldn't have a problem paying that once a year as a
lump sum. The Prime Video catalog provides none of those benefits as there's
just not that much good content. Even the children's programming is mostly
knock-off versions of popular shows/characters. The price isn't the problem,
it's the value proposition.

The true value of Amazon Prime is shipping and as others have mentioned, the
near instant-gratification aspect of same/next day delivery has been bad for
our spending habits. Waiting a day or two extra isn't a bad thing and plenty
of vendors offer expedited and/or free shipping without a yearly membership.

~~~
igetspam
ps- Paying Amazon for Prime doesn't stop anyone from paying for Netflix
because the Prime catalog is not an equivalent service. I currently pay for
both. Now I'm only going to pay for one.

------
pavon
Does anyone know why shipping speeds of 3-4 days are typically not offered?
You see overnight, 1-day, 2-day shipping and then beyond that is 5 days or
longer.

My most common time frame for delivery is that I order something over the
weekend, and would like to have it by the next weekend. This is counted as
being ordered by COB Monday, so with Amazon 2-day shipping it will get here by
Wednesday, but with the old 5-day shipping, more often than not I wouldn't get
it until the next Monday, which is too late. Then Amazon pushed this out to
5-8 days. In Amazon's case you could argue it is an intentional decision to
boost prime subscriptions, but most other online retailers have similar
delivery options.

I feel bad making people bust their asses to get a package to me ASAP, only to
have it sit around for days without me using it, and wish a middle ground was
available.

------
martinald
I don't really buy much from Amazon these days. I think it has a perception of
good value more than it actually is. (I'm in the UK).

1) I can usually find nearly all of 'big ticket' items (TVs, laptops etc) on a
competitors site for the same price or less, with fast shipping and extended
warranty.

2) For random low value stuff eBay is often cheaper usually and doesn't have
any shipping limits.

3) Amazon is absolutely horrible to browse with the amount of junk and fakes
now, the signal to noise is way too low to try and compare products in a
category.

The only thing I find them consistently good for and buy from ironically is
books, what they started with.

Prime Now in London would be good but the UI is atrocious. It is basically
unusable, there are so many glaring errors and features missing I don't know
where to start. Different stores have different 'baskets', but it shows you
products from all stores. So you end up with £12 in your amazon basket and £28
in your morrisons basket which means you can't order either as there is a £40
minimum order per 'store'. If they cancel your order for whatever reason
(maybe one item was out of stock) you have to add everything by hand one by
one, there's no readd to cart button. It's totally crazy for an ecommerce
company to be SO BAD at UI.

~~~
paulddraper
My last eight items, over two months:

Cloth napkins (more convenient than trying to find them at crowded Walmart).

Replacement aquarium lights (cheaper than Petco).

Good no-spill sippy cups (could only find this kind on Amazon).

Art paper (nothing special).

Instant pot (used; only available in that condition on Amazon/Ebay).

Cloth diaper covers (hard to find these nowadays).

New ballast matching my aquarium lights (hard to find), when I found out
that's why the earlier lights went out.

1" yoga mat because of my post-ACL-repair knee (hard to find).

~~~
stirlo
I'm very sure I could find all of these on eBay with minimal effort. eBays
experience maybe slightly worse than Amazon but I'm not paying $120 a year for
it...

~~~
paulddraper
You wind up paying a lot more than $120 if you're getting 2-day shipping with
all that.

------
avar
I signed up for an Amazon Prime trial a couple of monthly ago, after not using
Amazon in a while. Was generally happy with it, but then ordered a kitchen
appliance that broke after using it once.

Left the most boring and respectful review you can imagine, just stating the
facts, how it was used, and that it broke after using it as instructed in the
manual.

The review was removed within a couple of hours for breaking some non-specific
policy, while similar reviews that end on a positive note are shown
prominently.

I don't want to use Amazon after that. They're clearly just cultivating a
review echo chamber optimized for conversion.

------
idoh
Amazon ...

... ‘Earth’s most customer-centric company’

... 'There are two kinds of retailers: those folks who work to figure how to
charge more, and companies that work to figure how to charge less, and we are
going to be the second.'

Amazon used to be this way, but it seems like they are drifting quite a bit!

------
donarb
Wait, the price is still $99 per year if you don't pay by the month. The price
raise is only for those who were paying $10.99/month and will be paying
$12.99/month.

~~~
alistproducer2
Source?

~~~
donarb
Hmm, I swear that I read the price hadn't changed for annual subscribers, I
stand corrected.

------
merinowool
I had prime for couple of years until things started going downhill (mainly
not available next day or weekend delivery), but what's broke camel's back was
disrespectful attitude of customer "service". I can handle a lot, but not
this. It's been couple of months now and I can see I saved a lot of money by
not buying things on impulse, or buying cheaper elsewhere.

------
Invictus0
At this rate, how many packages would you have to order for Prime to be a good
deal, assuming you use none of the other Prime services?

~~~
test6554
It's free shipping, prime video and prime music.

Netflix alone costs about $130 per year.

~~~
pishpash
Half as good is probably a tenth the utility.

------
lutorm
Hmm, combined with Amazon's increasing tendency to just not want to ship Prime
stuff to Hawaii, it might be time to get out.

------
atomical
Should people pay to shop? If I buy a product from Jeff Bezos shouldn't he try
to ship it to me as fast as humanly possible? If you don't have prime you end
up waiting twice as long. Isn't that bad service?

~~~
beaucoupfish
Jeff Bezos (or any retailer) could ship you everything as fast as humanly
possible, but then he'd have to include the cost of doing that in the price.

Instead, you get to pay for the type of shipping you want, or pay for
expedited shipping up front.

------
dewiz
Anyone knows if movies bought on Amazon streaming video require a subscription
to be watched, eg on Roku and similar apps? I’m thinking of deleting Prime and
wonder what will happen to movies I bought on Amazon platform

~~~
snuxoll
Anything you purchase off Amazon Video is yours to watch whenever, with or
without a membership.

------
ausjke
now this is getting close to the point that i check out walmart etc more
often, then again, amazon is deeply rooted in online purchases these days
already, sigh

------
oh-kumudo
Guessing it is related to USPS reform plan...?

------
zeeveener
Non-Google, Non-AMP link: [https://www.recode.net/2018/4/26/17287476/amazon-
prime-new-p...](https://www.recode.net/2018/4/26/17287476/amazon-prime-new-
price-increase-119-99-dollars)

~~~
joeblau
Good lord AMP is garbage. I get sent to this Redirect Notice link. Can a
moderator update the link please?

