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Comment by ChildOfChaos | Hacker News Reader

Yeah the text is confusing too when you have the free trial, it makes it sound like your benefits stop immediately, making you want to wait till the last minute to cancel, when you can cancel straight away and keep for thirty days.

As a non prime member they make it hard to buy things too, with extra screens trying to offer you another trial for a week for 99p and always defaulting to offering that and paid delivery.

For me, Prime is way too expensive, i don't want there crappy video streaming service.

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I wish they had prime delivery without the video for the old price. I really don't care about that.

Don't worry a competitor will quickly swoop into the market and offer such an alternative, forcing Amazon to decouple these services, improve their video streaming or reduce bundled costs. They are in no way in a monoplistic type situation with such high barriers to entry that competition doesnt regulate them. /sarcasm

Reading that resulted in a rollercoaster of emotions. Yeah, government action will be needed for above to happen, but Bezos already seems to have bought them off...

Walmart will deliver to your door today, for free, or send things two day shipping. No video service that I'm aware of, cost is 98/yr.

Target, Home Depot, and Costco are currently upping their delivery game as well.

Amazon is huge, no doubting that, but has nothing close to a monopoly for online shopping. Competitors have really amped up in the last year or two.

I kind of wish the inverse - they have some really good shows on Prime video, but I don't buy much anymore on Amazon (local stores have really stepped up the same-day delivery game).

Odd. Since you get free delivery on Amazon for all orders over $25 without Prime, the delivery is the less interesting part of the bundle for me.

This is why I don't have it anymore, now I just wait longer until i have the 29€ (Germany) total.

But sometimes I want to order something for less and I just put it in the cart or get it elsewhere.

It doesn’t make it “sound like”, at least in Canada.

I sometimes get the trial to ship something to my parents. It literally tells you that your trial will immediately end…. Only for it to not.

It’s like they considered it at one point then decided not to but forgot to remove the wording.

> I sometimes get the trial to ship something to my parents.

So you're abusing a trial to get something for free that actually costs the company money.

But then you complain that the company tries hard to keep you from cancelling the trial? How does that make any sense?

You are well within your ethical rights to take advantage of a trial offer. And the company is well within their ethical rights to try to convince you to stay. Three clicks online to cancel is hardly a burden.

If they offer me a trial, I am going to take it. If I'm not going to use said trial, I will cancel it.

It is not "abuse" to use the offer as stated. If they keep offering it, then that's on them.

And regardless of my use, they are not "well within their ethical rights" to outright lie to their customers in an attempt to convince them to stay.

I think I agree that Prime by itself is not worth it. But if you get the credit card, the extra cash back on $4,500 worth of purchases on Amazon makes it pay for itself. This is being extremely generous by pretending you can get 2% with another card. Personally, even comparing with local stores and buying the cheaper option, it pays for itself. Then there is cyber Monday where I basically get all the Christmas gifts which add up real quick. Plus, I really like not having to minimum spend to get free delivery.

I doubt many people can buy 400$/month of stuff from Amazon without regularly getting screwed over by fake or expired products.

I easily buy that much on Amazon on average. I spend $100/mo on Amazon just on sugar free Red Bull.

Yes, I may have a problem.

"May?"

that's not Red Bull that you're drinking..!

If Whole Foods counts (no idea what the specifics of the card are), it's not too hard at all. It's very easy to spend over a hundred a week there if you're feeding more than one person.

Worth checking out, but it’s possible to get much higher rewards on a single category like groceries.

“6% Cash Back at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 per year in purchases (then 1%). ” Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express which Whole Foods accepts.

That card has a $100 annual fee -- Prime is not much more per year.

"(superstores, convenience stores, warehouse clubs, and meal-kit delivery services are not considered supermarkets)"

Which is to say most Walmart stores, or a more liberal interpretation "plebs need not apply". Though I found out it does work with the pick-up option, but I absolutely loathe not being able to look at what I'm buying.

The credit card comparison space is incredibly lucrative-- that is why Bankrate/Red Ventures bought ThePointsGuy. But it isn't really that objective anymore when it comes to comparisons, since if you're an affiliate for a bank, they heavily dictate how you can include their products on your site. There needs to be a simple tool for users to plug in their spending and easily see the best options based on sign up bonuses, rewards, annual fees and rates. The problem is that by being overly objective, you end up alienating the banks who are paying the referral fees.

> This is being extremely generous by pretending you can get 2% with another card.

At Amazon? No. But with two cards I get:

Grocery: 3%

Gas: 2%

Restaurants: 3-4.5% [0]

Travel: 3-4.5%

And I'm not even trying all that hard... There's entire groups dedicated to min-maxing this stuff that can probably blow the above right out of the water.

[0] Depends on how I redeem the points.

Yea, I would put myself in that group. Most of this obviously comes down to personal spending habits. The only category that is really applicable to Amazon is the grocery category. For the purposes of the Amazon website, I would counter that the subscribe and save is often much cheaper than the store. I'm a little surprised that my original comment got downvoted that Prime + credit card makes sense if you spend $4.5k on Amazon. I don't eat meat and so my protein purchases alone through Amazon equal $500/year. People on HN I guess think that spending $4,500 per year on food and other essentials is unreasonable.

Ah, I see. I misinterpreted your comment. You meant the 2% base vs the 5% with Prime. And were making a conservative calculation based on the 3% difference, even though it's not likely you could get 2% back with a different card.

$139 / .03 = $4,633

I mean, this is exactly the type of math you should do to evaluate options like this. No controversy here. If you're spending more than that anyway, it makes sense to get the Prime card. Anything you spend beyond that amount is earning you more than the non-Prime card, and that's even just flat out valuing Prime at $0 and treating it as a fee.

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