Here is a big heads up for all of you. On April 17th, Amazon will be raising the price of Amazon Prime to $99 (instead of $79) and Amazon Student Prime to $49 (instead of $39). It’s a hefty price increase.
If you are already a member of Amazon Prime or Amazon Student Prime, you will get charged the new rate on your renewal date.
If you have wanted to get the benefits of Amazon Prime, but have been waiting to sign up, I would do it right away. You will get a 30-day free trial so you can see if you like it. After the 30 day trial, you can then decide to get the lower annual price this first year. It will save you $20! (You must sign up for the paid subscription BEFORE April 17th or you will get charged the higher rate)
With Amazon Prime, you get 2-Day Free Shipping on your purchases and Free unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime Instant Videos!
**If you have Amazon Prime, please comment and tell other readers what you do or do not like about it. Your comments really help other people out who wonder if they should do something like this.
Mandi
I’m so addicted to it now that I’ll have to pay the extra $20!
Erica C
I LOVE Amazon Prime! I live in a very small town, and the closest super store is 45 mins away. Usually Amazon’s prices are the same if not better than the store, plus with Prime I get free 2 day shipping and I don’t have to drive! I also love that I can get the Unlimited Videos, a lifesaver with 2 kids. If you’re like me and order from Amazon a lot, then the fee for Prime is totally worth is, especially to get your things in 2 days!
Paul Larsen
I LOVE my Amazon Prime. My wife is a teacher and winds up ordering a ton of books both for her first grade class as well as the ongoing classes she is required to take. I also enjoy ordering things off of Amazon, and the free two day shipping has been a huge benefit. Additionally, I use the unlimited Prime video streaming even more than I use my Netflix. Yeah, $99 may seem like a lot of money on the service, but when you break it down, you are really only paying $8.25 / month for the services I mentioned plus more.
Paul Larsen
Gah! No edit button. I meant “a lot of money on the SURFACE.” NOT on the SERVICE. Is it Friday yet?
Amy
We have a family account that we split with all of my siblings and parents. We can choose to leave our cards on the account or just enter them each time. We have several addresses entered and then just have to remember to select which card/address the item goes on. It’s great to share the cost!
Bethany
That is a great idea!
Sammie
Love amazon prime! They haven’t raised the price since 2005. It pays for itself for us in shipping and we love the free movies and shows!
Soozee Carmichael
I, like many others have commented, love Amazon Prime and use it all the time. I’m currently getting it at the student rate, which is fantastic. I love it. I order all of my books for school from them as well as enjoy the amazon prime video selection. I have a kindle fire and love that I can stream movies and TV shows on it. Yeah, it bites that it’s going up, but it’s still a pretty good deal. If you don’t have it and you like getting fun things in the mail at a really good price, DO IT. DO IT NOW.
Corinne
I share the membership with my sister. $50 a year each will still be worth it to me. Shopping online has saved me so much time and gas money! It’s easy to be tempted to buy the “can’t pass up deal” on things I really don’t need or haven’t planned to buy when I go to the store.(and let’s face it, there’s always a deal out there) I avoid that by online shopping.
Meredin
I just got an email from Amazon about this. I don’t renew until august and the email said I’d get the $39 price this year and next year it would rise to $49. I think $100 a year is worth it. I do wish they offered a pay it by the month plan though so I didn’t have to pay the full amount all at one.
Shantelle
I signed up when they had the $7.99/month promotion. Do you know if that price will be raised as well?
Michelle Leifson
My mother-in-law signed up for that promotion, but they ended up charging her the $79 because not very many people signed up for it so they canceled the promotion. That is what they told her anyways.
Shantelle Ericson
Interesting. I still get charged $7.99/month and have ever since that promotion. I guess I’ll have to wait and see if it changes.
Beth
I love Amazon Prime as well. I have used it for the last 5 years or so. It has most of the videos and movies that netflix does and I share the free shipping with family members. It’s really a great service and so much more convenient than running to the store every time I need something. I love the two day shipping.
Amy
How does the selection of movies compare to Netflix? Are they all streaming or do they ship them to you like Netflix? Besides 2 day shipping and movies, are there any other benefits of Prime?
Michelle Leifson
They only do streaming, no DVD’s. You can also borrow a book once a month with prime (kindle). Other than those things I’m not sure.
Celestina
We love Amazon Prime. I have three small kiddos at home and we share one car. Running to the store when we are out of something is not always easy. It’s so much easier having it shipped to the door, plus with the subscribe and save items you can even beat costco prices and have more of a variety to choose from 🙂
John Baker
To Amy: The movies are are streaming (except, of course, when you buy DVDs/Blu-Rays, which arrive in two-days). When it started, I would’ve said that Netflix had a better selection — not so now. Amazon has really increased its selection, while Netflix has had its decline. Right now, I’d say they’re comparable.
Amy
Thanks John! It seems that it may be cheaper to get Prime instead of paying for netflix especially if the selection is about the same.
andy
First amazon raises their minimum amount needed for free shipping from $25 to $35,which is a 40% increase and now they are increasing amazon prime from $79 to $99,a 25% increase.Both of these increases are excessive.
Rebecca
Does anyone know if we can renew early and beat the increase?
Mandi G.
I love Amazon Prime so that I can grab good deals on Amazon when I see them (or you post about them :)) and not miss them because I’m waiting to save up for free shipping. It’s nice to be able to buy gifts for family members that live far away and have it shipped straight to them for free instead of us paying to ship gifts to them.
We are in the middle of a free trial of the student version of Amazon Prime (we didn’t know about the student rate until fairly recently). The email I got this morning said that when we sign up for the full version in June we will be charged $39. Then when we renew in 2015, it will be $49. It sounds like it may be different for non-student accounts, but check the email closely to see!
Andrea
We love the free two day shipping! It’s so convenient. But $99 is a lot! A couple people have mentioned a family account, how does that work?
Michelle Leifson
When you sign up for amazon prime, you are able to put in 3 different email addresses (other family members emails) and they are able to use prime as well. The only problem with that is that when I did this with my mother-in-law, she was the only one that could stream movies because she was the original email address. I was not able to watch movies, but I was able to get the free two day shipping.
Rebecca
I have loved Amazon prime for just over a year (ours renewed last month, so I won’t have to worry about price increase for a year). I have saved tons on shipping, I love that I have no minimum order for free shipping. I did all my Christmas shopping online this year, mostly through Amazon. Prime gives me a great discount on diapers, wipes, and tons of household items with subscribe and save. The streaming videos is great… Just be aware there aren’t Disney movies or TV shows available through prime. Also, Netflix auto starts the next show in a season, Amazon doesn’t. That can be annoying when you turn on a kids show (some of them are only like 10 minutes), but maybe it’s good because it doesn’t allow me to leave my daughter in front of the TV for an hour. 🙂
Amy
Andrea: There aren’t family accounts. It’s just a normal account and family members choose to share their login information so anyone can go on and order with the same account. Amazon doesn’t limit how many credit cards or addresses you can add so it’s possible for everyone to pay for their own orders. I do think there’s a limit to 2-3 simultaneous streaming of the videos though. So if you had people who wanted to stream videos you might run into error messages with too many users. (it happened to me one day when our internet was having trouble and I’d started a show in a couple different browsers in a short period of time trying to troubleshoot- I was only trying to watch one but it took a few minutes to clear and realize that was the only computer actively watching.)
We love Amazon prime. Melea often posts great deals on Amazon and it’s harder to pad your order if you don’t have prime since they increased their free shipping minimum to $35. Before we got prime I found myself looking through my wishlist to order stuff I would order eventually and always spending $25 etc to get the $5 deal I wanted. I haven’t streamed a lot from prime for myself but they have a huge selection of kids shows for my son. His favorites have been curious george, little bear, calliou, and super why. Also I helped my mom do all of her shopping that had to be shipped on Amazon this year. It’s a little bit of a pain to enter all the gift recipients addresses (they have you verify your credit info I think to show that it’s you adding new addresses) but sooo much cheaper than buying a gift and going USPS. Also you can attach a gift message. I haven’t found many books that I wanted to read in the free kindle rental per month so it’s not of much use to me. All in all I’d still definitely renew even if it’s $100.
Amy
Oh and I just checked my email. We’ve been on a student membership and it was set to renew in early May. It said our renewal fee would be $49. It’s interesting how some people still get the $39 to renew. This has been our first year on prime. We’ll have to pay the $100 to renew because my husband is no longer a student.
Michelle
I used prime more for the shipping than streaming, but now we use it for both, and stopped using netflix, so yes, I would recommend it! I’m glad they aren’t increasing to the $140/year like I heard about recently, the $20 increase is a bit easier to take, especially knowing how long it has been the previous price.
Melissa
I LOVE amazon prime! LOVE. Yes…an all caps kind of love. I order 95% of Christmas presents and birthday presents when my prime. Dvds, diapers, clothing… there are so many great deals. I am completely spoiled with the 2-day shipping. I am incredibly impatient when I have to order from another site now and have to wait for an order to arrive. Who would have thought 3-5 days for shipping would feel so long now? Prime all the way!!!
Tara
I signed up for Prime awhile ago, but was unable to get the streaming video to work with my TV or Blu-ray player (both are newer models). After much troubleshooting, it turns out they are just not compatible with Amazon streaming. So I cancelled, bummer. But it was easy to cancel and get a refund, so that’s a plus.
Tina
I think that the $20 increase at one go is too much. I have netflix so the movies don’t interest me. And you can’t borrow more than one book a month with Prime membership. Shipping is the only feature I use. I’ll have to work it out and see really how much I order from Amazon to decide if I should continue using Prime.
Shantelle Ericson
How is Amazon Prime Streaming better than Netflix? I’ve had Prime for almost 18 months and every time I check to see if a tv series I want to start is offered, it says I have to pay per episode? On Netflix they are all free. Am I missing something? I absolutely LOVE Amazon Prime for shopping, but for the streaming I don’t know that I’ve ever actually watched something on it. We use Netflix on multiple tablets daily.
Michelle
I agree. I have yet to see how Amazon streaming is better than Netflix. Anytime we want to watch anything it says we have to pay for it in addition to our membership fee. And the library is subpar. You can only check out one book per month, and it has to be on a Kindle, and they don’t even have the newer things available that I want to read. I will stick to getting books for free from my library, and more than one per month. The only thing I like about Amazon prime is the free two-day shipping, but I don’t think it’s going to be worth the extra $20 per month, unless we share it with other family members, or if they make all books available and movies available for free. If not, I guess we are going to cancel.
Michelle
* $20 per year, not month
Sarah Gardiner
How does the Kindle borrow books work?
Michelle
You can borrow one book per month from the Kindle owners lending library. You have to access it from your Kindle, the link will show you how.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000739811
Not all books are available though. Only the ones that have a checkmark and “prime” next to them
Holly
I’ve had Prime for 3 years now. I started as a student and last year they put me on the regular. I hesitated on the $79 price then, but it’s been well worth it. The shipping is the primary thing we usr, but we do stream shows occasionally, and I get my free kindle book rental every month in addition to they started kindle firsts where you get to pick from 4 pre-order books and buy it free before its released. I don’t recognize most books or authors but have read some good ones. My library doesn’t support Kindle so I only get the free books or the 2 from Prime. I will probably keep my membership when the time comes, seeing as it’s less than $10 a month.
Regarding Netflix, I had trouble streaming Netflix and haven’t had trouble with Prime. I do wish some of the shows were available without extra fees but those weren’t available on Netflix when I had it either. I think I can get as much use out of either subscription, but why pay for a second stream when I have access to a comparable one.
Bethany
I got an email from Amazon the other day and it said the rate increase takes effect on March 20 (today). This Freebies post said it would be going up on April 17th. So I went to Amazon today and sure enough it is already increased to $99 per year if I sign up today. Do different accounts have later rate increase dates?
Melea Johnson
Bethany, the date I had was off of Amazon’s site that I linked all of you guys to. So I am not sure why they would say it starts now… unless they are taking into account that new members get a free 30-day trial. And after 30 days of it being free, it would cost $99 since it was past April 17th?
Bethany
Ok, thanks Melea! Wish I could have done it when it was $79 for me!