AfterDawn: News

Amazon Prime membership going up to $99 per year

As implied earlier in the year, Amazon has raised the price of their Prime membership.

Reads the email I received as a Prime user early this morning:

We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99 when your membership renews on xxx, 2014.

Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same for nine years. Since 2005, the number of items eligible for unlimited free Two-Day Shipping has grown from one million to over 20 million. We also added unlimited access to over 40,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video and a selection of over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

For more information about your Prime membership, visit our Prime membership page.

During a recent earnings report, the company had suggested the price of Prime would be going up and there have been rumors that a price hike would also include a new unlimited streaming service for subscribers (think Google Play All Access and Spotify) although this has yet to be confirmed.

Amazon also noted that Student subscribers will see a price hike to $49 while the Prime Fresh membership fee will remain unchanged at $299.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 13 Mar 2014 19:34

• Previous article

• High fidelity Pono portable music player crushes Kickstarter funding goals in less than a day

• Next article

• Google slashes the price of Google Drive storage to as low as $9.99 for 1TB

• 7 comments

• sternrulez

  Well, the other shoe finally dropped on this. I read the email in my inbox this morning before heading over here to comment. Despite the great benefit that I get from the free Kindle books, I'm really not sure if I'll be renewing come next February. I guess I'll have to calculate my savings on the books, my free shipping from my Prime purchases, and perhaps finally get around to viewing their instant video content before deciding on whether it's worthwhile or not.
  

  14.3.2014 07:03 #1

• bhetrick

  Naw, not renewing either.
  
  Prime was never really free shipping because without Prime you could still get free shipping with a minimum purchase.
  
  It was merely faster free shipping.
  
  
  

  14.3.2014 09:44 #2

• Scaldari

  YEs, Cost of Fuel etc has gone up. Wages have not. Amazon just priced itself out of a few more wallets..
  

  Account Created Saturday 12 January 2008. After 5 years I consider myself a Sr. Member no matter WHAT my post count says.

  14.3.2014 12:47 #3

• bhetrick

  Amazon's using the reasoning that fuel costs have gone up, thus a membership increase is needed.
  
  That would seem understandable if the merchandise prices had remained the same over the years.
  
  But naturally they haven't. Amazon adjusts prices on a daily basis and part of that is due to their operating costs. That includes the cost of shipping.
  
  They also point out the free services of their video and ebook library.
  
  Well, it's OBVIOUSLY not a free service if people are paying a membership fee, and even more so if they're raising the cost of that membership.
  

  14.3.2014 14:50 #4

• Mrguss

  No thanks. I'm not on any rush to get my stuff deliver ASAP.
  On the another hand I'm up to date on "all" movies, TV shows & music streams.
  

  The rule above all the rules is: Survive !
  Capitalism: Funnel most of the $$$ to the already rich.

  14.3.2014 15:59 #5

• mscritsm

  I could never justify Prime before because I never bought that much from it. The added features like videos were never enough because I could do better in terms of choice with a separate Netflix account. Prime is a hodgepodge of services, none of which ever justified the cost, even when taken together.

  14.3.2014 17:23 #6

• getanacct

  Someone else has found a way to gift yourself the Prime Membership at the current price for another year:
  
  http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.p...6&postcount=166
  

  16.3.2014 18:31 #7