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 ... [ read the full article ]
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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.
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.
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.
