Love prime and our family shares it. We just have to be careful to check which credit card and address are being used. By and large, I think the prices are great and, as others have said, if the price difference is minimal, it’s more than worth it to just shop from home and have it two days later. I also like the ability to see lots of options and pick among them. And, having dog food, TP and other either heavy and/or bulky items delivered to my door is very much appreciated. A little annoying to see the increase right now as fuel prices continue to go down but they are, after all, a business and are meant to drive profit.
At one point, Amazon didn’t collect sales tax if they were shipping from a supplier/outlet that didn’t have a physical presence in the state where the product was being shipped. They would source a sale in the way that minimized sales tax. But states changed their laws so that now Amazon is collecting sales taxes on pretty much all purchases in some states.
As an aside, in many states the purchaser owes the sales tax. So even if its not collected at the point of sale by the seller, the purchaser still owes it. Some states have line items on income tax forms for sales taxes not collected at point of purchase. My guess is they do not collect much in the way of revenue from that line item. 
I typically order books on Amazon, especially as gifts for DH. Lowering the amount for free shipping on books from $35 to $25 is good, but I’m not thrilled about having to spend $49 to get free shipping on everything else. I’m not sure we order enough in a year to make Prime worth it.
"Apparently they couldn’t make as much money as they wanted with it at $25 or $35. I’m surprised that’s the case, what with lower gas prices and higher online sales numbers, "
According to my cousin, who is President of a clothing manufacturer and who does a lot of business with Amazon - they do not make any money -even after all these years. I was shocked when she told me (just last week.) she also told me they ordered thousands of pieces too many just from her company and are going to take a big loss. She told me this is not an isolated issue at Amazon.
The conversation only came up because I told her that they had sent a feeler to my son about a job and she told me to tell him not to go work for them.
@emilybee:
They are making some money, but given the size of their revenue, it is pretty small. Amazon has always been something of a weird duck, the stock price always seemed to reflect more what they thought Amazon would become, rather than what it was actually doing. Amazon started as the marketplace of marketplaces, then they moved into streaming video and music, they started selling more esoteric stuff like car parts, their model was on doing more and more.Now the big move is not overnight or 2nd day selling, but rather, being able to ship stuff same day (hence the talk of drone delivery and their rapid response trucks). The problem is with the low prices, and the cost of logistics, the profit margin just never seemed to come there. For one thing, brick and mortar stores still are competing, in part because with Amazon for some things, you are buying a pig in a poke. For things like clothing, unless you know for certain something is well made and fits (usually by trying it on at a retail store), you are buying something unknown, and if you don’t like it, it costs to ship it back. Amazon sometimes reminds me a bit of Milo Minderbinder with his syndicate in “Catch 22”, where he buys eggs for 6c a piece and sells them for 4, yet everyone makes a profit lol. I think the real problem is that with their mandate to have low prices, and with the cost of warehouses and the cost of shipping (for their own products), they just can’t create a margin, in theory video streaming would be fed by people buying items on Amazon, and video streaming would be a lot more lucrative for them, so merchandise would be a loss leader. Likewise, the third party people listing on Amazon would be a lot cheaper for them to handle and the fees from that would be gravy…but that isn’t working.
Corrected. The growth of the invisible side of Amazon, its cloud data storage, is what keeps Amazon investors excited.
“Put another way: AWS generated almost as much operating income during the third quarter ($521 million) as Amazon’s entire North America e-commerce business ($528 million).”
http://qz.com/531278/amazon-web-services-is-now-a-7-billion-a-year-cloud-computing-machine/
@shellfell, if you don’t use Amazon often, Prime isn’t worth it. OTOH, every Christmas I’m shocked how expensive shipping is, whether you do it by UPS or through the post office. It doesn’t surprise me Amazon wants more of a profit margin to cover the shipping costs.
If I want to order something and it does not meet the free shipping number, I often have added on a gift card ( for something I use anyway) to bring it up to the free shipping level. That has worked when I am ordering something that I am having sent to my home.
It seems that Amazon is raising all of their fees. I have an online business and sell on Amazon. I will probably close it after this year, because its getting harder and harder to make money. Amazon takes 15% of the sale, in addition to storage, pick/pack and fulfillment fees. I use Amazon for my fulfillment and they have gone up on storage costs and fulfillment fees every year. They also started charging extra if you wanted all of your merchandise to go the same warehouse. It has become too hard to make any money.
I have also found that when you use Amazon’s free shipping–sans Prime–then your order is put to the back of the queue and it can take them 5+ days to even ship it out! So they are definitely servicing their Prime customers first, which makes sense since the promise is 2-day shipping. When that happens to me I usually contact customer service and complain that my item still hasn’t shipped, and they will often upgrade me to the 2-day shipping. But I have to admit that since DS started college and we have used the free and then half-price Prime deal, I’m sold on it!
“They are making some money, but given the size of their revenue, it is pretty small.”
Not according to my cousin and I asked what she meant by “nothing” and she responded, “zip, zilch, nada.”
According to Amazon, its net income was $596 million for 2015.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2133281
Amazon’s financial goals are to establish market dominance and to make a little money on a significant number of transactions. It’s my understanding that so far they have only generated a profit in a few fiscal quarters. Brad Stone’s book “The Everything Store” details their history and strategy and is a very good read. I suspect we will see a jump in the cost of Prime next. They are like a drug pusher hooking us into addiction with Prime deals (such as student discount on Prime and occasional discounts on Prime subscriptions) and then counting on us to pay more for shipping, whether individually or through renewing Prime. I only got Prime last fall and I confess that I’m somewhat addicted to both the shipping convenience and the streaming service.
We also have Prime, and share it. I got it originally for the shipping but honestly we probably use it for streaming TV/movies more, and I’ve just gotten Amazon music on my phone and I much prefer it to Pandora for streaming “stations”. No commercials, and you can download or save any song that plays. I run to that now, use it in the car, etc.
I like Amazon but the increased amount to get to free shipping will reduce my purchases. I also get annoyed because they ship many of their things to me with Surepost, which I hate…I can see the item at my local UPS center at 5 a.m. and I’d get it that day with regular UPS. However, it always seems to add 2 days using the post office. Annoying. We don’t stream so I’m not that tempted to pay for Prime.
How does the sharing work? Can you ship to three different addresses? Can you have three credit cards listed for payment? Can everyone stream? I would be interested if we could have a “family account” that I could use and additionally my kids who are in college in different states could use.
You can have lots of addresses (I have mine, my mother’s my kids at college, and a number of other addresses I’ve sent gifts too). You can have several credit cards and other payment options saved as well. I think some people just share the same account when they say they share.
Here is the official way to share on Amazon:
This is actually a newer policy (about a year old). Old policy allowed you to share with 3 other accounts (but shipping only, not streaming)
^^Thank you - my kids had the student Prime memberships and I never even thought of sharing. One student Prime expired and the other will expire in September, so a shared account would be ideal. Thanks for the information Claremontmom.
A new program I just found with Prime: Kindle First - a free not-yet-published book each month from a selection they choose.
A note about the Amazon Household account, I don’t think that people using a student account can share. In other words it’s only for adults who have regular Prime accounts.