
Amazon Cuts Down on Prime Members Sharing Their Benefits - louieloop
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/03/amazon-cuts-down-on-prime-members-sharing-their-benefits/
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Someone1234
I like some aspects of the new system, including sharing payment methods, and
so on. For a typical marriage-like situation, it is wonderful not having to
log over to my wife's account to gain other prime benefits (shipping was
shared, but things like prime video were not). Now both of our accounts are
flagged prime for all purposes as far as I can tell.

That being said, when my kids are older, it would have been nice if we could
grant them this stuff also, and as far as I can tell that is not the case.
Only the two adults get the prime, while the kids get just the shared digital
library.

What's interesting is that Amazon has been doing nice things in the kids
department like the "Amazon Allowance."[0] Effectively a parent can give a kid
some money, and they can use it on Amazon however they wish. So not being able
to grant the kids prime on their account effectively means that a lot of the
allowance will wind up going to avoidable postage charges (particularly on
smaller orders of sub-$25, which I'd imagine are things an allowance might be
utilised on).

I almost don't wonder if Amazon shouldn't change prime in the following way:

\- Prime postage is now tied to a physical address (not Amazon Account),
regardless of sender (e.g. gifts are now prime eligible).

\- The prime account holder gets a certain number of prime "credits" they can
use to send prime packages to other physical addresses, like friends and
relatives.

Effectively this means if you pay $100/year your address is now Prime flagged.
So no matter who sends the item, it gets prime postage. So all household
members, or people sending you gifts.

Such a change would be controversial, but it would solve the "household
problem" since now whoever lives there gets the prime no matter what their
relationship to the account holder or similar.

[0]
[http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=11453461011](http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=11453461011)

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dpeck
I really hope they don't go to something like this. I realize I'm not the
common use case but I am often ordering things to be delivered to my home,
office, inlaws house, etc depending on where I'm going to be on its arrival
date and where I need to actually use the item.

Eg in the last couple weeks:

We needed wanted programmable thermostats at the family vacation house, had
those sent there so I wouldn't forget them.

Wanted some new pens at the office, had a few packs of Pilot G-2s sent to
office.

Needed a new scale for the kitchen since my 10 year old one stopped working,
delivered to home.

Kid was staying with grandma for a couple of nights and needed some more
diapers, had those sent to her house.

Not all that uncommon for a week or two for me.

If prime locked down to a single address I would seriously consider dropping
it and I've been a member and big fan of it pretty much since it launched.

~~~
bjwbell
Shipping to multiple addresses is probably pretty common. I frequently send
gifts to relatives using my prime account. I'd hate to lose free shipping for
those items.

~~~
dpeck
As sibling says, gifts wouldn't be a problem with a "credits" type system, but
for someone like me who could ship things to myself at 3+ addresses in a week
it would be a no-go unless theres enough credits account for that, which would
pretty much make it useless for its purpose of preventing sharing.

------
mikeash
No surprise. Prime was effectively $20/year if you could find four other
people to share it with. The only shocking thing is that it took them this
long to crack down on it.

~~~
aNoob7000
I believe Amazon knew about all the sharing that was going on but waited until
there was enough users hooked to pull the trigger. An example of another
company where people share accounts is Netflix which I think will do something
similar to Amazon in the near future.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Reed Hastings mentioned recently they don't view Netflix account sharing as a
big enough problem worth addressing:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-
probl...](http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-problem-for-
netflix-2015-7)

~~~
CamperBob2
He has incentives to downplay the problem in public, though. He doesn't want
the studios who license their content to Netflix to ask too many questions.

~~~
toomuchtodo
As a studio, you need to ask yourself: Do you want people paying Netflix and
possibly sharing accounts? Or would you rather they just pirate it and digital
content continues its swan dive to zero value?

Looking forward to see what happens when microSD cards can carry entire studio
libraries.

~~~
tracker1
doubtful, I think that if anything the 4K push will _really_ take hold because
the media companies want to end sharing as much as possible. A typical high
quality movie at 1080p will be 8-15gb in size, and 4x that for 4K... given
that HDDs are still looking in the 6-10tb range, I wouldn't expect to _ever_
see that on a microSD card...

We're getting to where there are physical limits to go much smaller as it is
in memory, I don't think we'll really see a 10x improvement or more in
portable memory to be honest.

~~~
_up
Intel says otherwise:
[http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015/07/28/intel-
and-micron-produce-breakthrough-memory-technology)

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timdorr
It appears you can still share just your free shipping and create a
"household" separately. I've have my friends on my Prime account separately
from the Household with my wife.

Free shipping sharing is here:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/primecentral](https://www.amazon.com/gp/primecentral)

Household settings are here:
[https://www.amazon.com/mn/dcw/myx.html#/home/settings/paymen...](https://www.amazon.com/mn/dcw/myx.html#/home/settings/payment)

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brudgers
Prime is a sign that Amazon has to some degree given up on the simple business
model of just selling stuff with a margin. It's gone from chasing Walmart to
chasing Costco, and that's a much smaller market.

That's not to say it doesn't make business sense. The problem is that
monetization is now tied to walking the fine line between positive experience
and pissing people off...e.g. they have made Prime worse from the customer's
perspective. New ways to suck is not a good kind of innovation.

~~~
res0nat0r
I've had Prime for a long time and was surprised to realize I could share
shipping with up to 4 people. That just seems to be a big money sink for
Amazon, so if they cut back on this I wouldn't call it sucking, I'd call it a
smart business move IMO and wouldn't fault them for it.

~~~
brudgers
I think your _weren 't using; won't miss_ case may be about as good as it gets
in terms of customer satisfaction. It's hard to imagine a customer seeing the
change as a new feature and getting excited. It's easy to imagine someone who
sees the change as an unfavorable alteration of the value proposition.

~~~
res0nat0r
Most customers are unreasonable and hate it when you take anything away, no
matter what it is. Just look at when Netflix dared to raise their already low
prices and the hell it caused.

The customer is not always right...

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jrs235
I think in a few years they might limit the free shipping benefit even more.
The free 2-day shipping will only be allowed for one, maybe two, shipping
addresses. All other addresses would be ineligible. How many people buy for
personal and business reasons (two separate shipping addresses) and for family
and friends who reimburse the prime member offline (more shipping addresses)?

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skywhopper
Prime hasn't let me share the Instant Video feature in a while, if it ever
did, so I was sort of confused by this article.

