Amazon is raising the price of Prime to $119 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is raising the price of Prime to $119

money.cnn.com

Well, I guess I won’t be renewing after this year.

Walmart just recently started doing online ordering with next day pickup, and my wife loves it. We never shopped at Walmart before, but it’s so convenient now that we don’t have to go into the store that they’ve lured us back.

I find there’s fewer and fewer things I need from amazon, and video seems to have more and more upsell movies mixed in with the actual content you’re getting with the price of admission. Not to mention that I can’t filter “I want real books only” now that I bought a Kindle.

Once you’re not using Amazon anymore, it’s amazing how you can get great deals from whatever the number 2 website is that sells whatever you’re looking for. For example I was looking at buying some Pemmican bars today, they have “free” shipping on Amazon but are ~$2.60 apiece. The second site on Google has them for ~$2.00 apiece with free shipping on orders over $30. Starting to feel like less and less of a good deal.

We are also switching over to walmart.

The increased expense along with the increase of counterfeights and some competitors gaining some steam made quitting a no-brainer for me this year.

Same here. Canceled my Prime membership after about 5 years as a member for those exact same reasons. Amazon is rapidly becoming the internet equivalent of a slumlord.

The only thing keeping me around at this point is Twitch Prime; that's half of the Prime cost right there that I actually would be spending otherwise. But I certainly agree; there are often better online shopping options, the product quality has declined tremendously, and I find myself valuing 2-day shipping less and less.

The one thing that I do still enjoy is the simplicity of most of my online shopping occurring at one place. Looking through old orders is surprisingly useful; you can easily see how long an item has lasted, be it consumables or to assess durability/quality.

I could see value in a service that scrapes your inbox and records confirmation/shipping email information for you to try to recreate that.

How much actual stuff (as opposed to downloads) does the average person buy from Amazon, or other online retailers?

I wonder if I'm unusual in making perhaps one online physical purchase per month (not just from Amazon), but then, I don't think I've known anyone with a Prime subscription. Saving a day or two in delivery time also seems of very marginal value.

I usually don't care about the delivery time (although it is very nice when you're on a trip), the big thing is I used to wait until I had enough things to buy that I would qualify for no additional cost shipping, and with prime for most things, that's not needed. So if there's a nice movie on sale for $3, I don't spend a bunch more money to get the deal.

I think the biggest selling point for me is not just the delivery time but also the returns process. It's easy and painless to return things.

I didn't think prime affected the returns process, though?

My office has a mail shelf that overflows with Amazon packages every day (medium-size tech company). Similarly, my local news agent is now mostly an Amazon depo with a HUGE stack of Amazon parcels behind the counter awaiting collection.

I myself spent over £6000 on Amazon last year. I also use AWS at work...basically Amazon is my life.

I last purchased from Amazon in summer 2016, I think after reading about how they treated their warehouse staff, but I still use other online retailers.

I made 7 online purchases in the last 12 months. eBay got about €60, the other €rather_a_lot went to local electronics and furniture stores.

Otherwise, unless the price is unreasonable, I buy from local shops. I don't like the overwhelming choice online, and find it faster to compare things like books in a shop.

Lure them with low prices and raise it when you've got the market cornered.

But in all seriousness, my wish is they have a two tiered system: One for shipping only (with a lower PP) and One with all the other stuff I don't use --I don't watch programmed shows/movies, and I don't want to subsidize that.

That's why I only use the 30 day free membership and then cancel it.

That's an unfair move

Not going to happen. Product bundling is a much more profitable pricing strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_bundling

Sure, but at some point they will begin to shed subscribers.

Just checked how much I’ve spent on Amazon last year. It was about $4500. Cost of Prime is 2.7% of that. Most purchases were more than $35 anyway. Maybe I’ll pass on it for the next year. $10/mo is a significant psychological barrier for me.

If you spend that much on Amazon you should look into their 5% back credit card. There is an inherent "annual fee" in that it requires a prime membership, but you spent enough that it would more than pay for itself.

Take a look at customer reviews for that card. I did, and I noped right outta there.

Amazon has over 100 million prime users, thats 10 billion in revenues, but US shipping cost is around 16 billion, and with Trump pushing for rate hike on US postal service the cost will go up. So raising prime rates is a good move.

Prior to this, it was increased from $79 I believe.

Good, let the dumb suckers pay. It makes sense for a small amount of people.

The same broke dumb people crying about not having money and being poor are often that ones that have it.

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