<p>Well, I’m an idiot. My free amazon prime subscription expired, and I was looking at the sign up page trying to figure out how to get it to register that I’m NOT a student anymore and DON’T have a valid .edu so I could see how much it would ACTUALLY be for me to renew sometime in the future, and apparently sign up is only one click with no information collection page or confirmation page and it signed me up for another student account despite not having a valid .edu. And now I have to wait with an empty bank account until Amazon refunds me and thank my lucky stars that it didn’t overdraw-- because it charged the money for the student account I am not eligible for immediately.</p>
<p>The kicker: I still don’t know how to tell it I’m not a student. Apparently you don’t need to have a valid .edu to renew.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Amazon Prime know that some universities allow their alumni to keep their university e-mail addresses (which end in .edu) for the rest of their lives?</p>
<p>Thanks for the Amazon info. Sounds like I need a Roku for happy viewing regardless. I don’t know where those thousands of streaming Netflix options are hiding out–maybe I just don’t know how to search properly? </p>
<p>A part of me (the old geezer part) is fondly thinking back to the day when my evening choices were the three major TV networks, the local “educational” channel, actually getting up and going out to a movie, or reading a book. Think of all the time saved not having to fret over choosing Netflix vs. Amazon vs. Redbox or parsing through a few thousand options of what to watch!</p>
<p>As for Redbox getting by on those $1 rentals, it’s a far more organized and disciplined person than I who will rent a movie, get around to watching it that evening and remember to return it within 24 hours. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve discovered an unwatched Redbox DVD hiding under three days of mail or a watched one half stuck under the car floor mat. They make a fortune off me.</p>
<p>We’re on the one dvd at a time with free streaming and my kids stream all the time. I don’t know how it works, but we watch streamed movies on our tv through x-box kinect. Our library (where I work) has a decent selection of movies so we will probably drop the discs. I’m not happy about it, but darned if I’ll pay $16 a month. I don’t think it’s worth it to do the Amazon Prime $39 student deal. My son got a college Prime account last year when he took a class at Penn State and Amazon just sent him an e-mail saying it will expire in September. However he now has a new edu address at his upcoming college so I think he can get a new (free) account with that one.</p>
<p>We’re paying $11.99 month for one disc and unlimited streaming right now I think.
(includes the extra $2 for blu-ray)</p>
<p>Inclined to drop the discs and use Redbox for the ‘must see now’ new stuff.
We actually turn around about 6-8 discs/month…but if we redbox, it would be fewer just because it WILL be a bit more annoying to have to pick up/return.
The streaming works well for us…through our roku box. Son also streams through his
Playstation and D through her Wii. So, that $8 streaming deal will probably be what we stay with.</p>
<p>Red Box is incredibly popular at the supermarket close to our home. The supermarket may be almost empty but there’s almost always someone in front of the two Red Box machines. I generally prefer to own my content (I like to watch things multiple times) so I usually buy stuff on iTunes or Amazon.</p>
<p>swimcatmom, hulu (hulu dot com )offers tv shows and some movies. Regular hulu is free (Doc Martin is on that) and hulu plus costs money. I don’t do hulu plus because I am cheap.</p>
<p>In reality, it probably is a good deal. It is just such a huge jump % wise that it is probably a really bad marketing move as far as existing customers are concerned. Especially customers like me who really don’t use it that much (not enough to really get my moneys worth at the current prices) but were happy to stay with it at the current prices.</p>
<p>I think they have handled this all very badly.</p>
<p>I have a roku box and absolutely love it. Steams my hulu, my netflix, as well as a bunch of other free services. I have watched movies on a few other streaming services on there that I don’t pay anything for.</p>
Exactly. That’s why we’ll keep the netflix streaming but switch to another free Prime account. I’d rather not pay for the free shipping feature through Amazon and pay for streaming from Netflix.</p>
<p>I very much agree about bad marketing. I probably get two, maybe three movies a month by mail but we stream movies daily and they got paid a pretty good fee for that, IMHO.</p>
<p>My understanding is that if you pay the $39, it’s the same as a regular membership, only discounted for students. Okay, found the e-mail from Amazon that my son forwarded to me:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My thought is to let that ^ account expire and have son start a new free trial account with his other edu address.</p>
<p>We will be discontinuing Netflix. We don’t watch a lot of movies, but what I liked about our current Netflix plan was that we could order a movie (by mail) and have it sitting around for a month if that was how long it took for us to have time to watch it, without incurring late charges. We very occasionally watched a streaming Netflix movie, but the selection is extremely limited, so that will not be something we want to continue either, given how infrequently we use it. Redbox it will be, for us.</p>
<p>We cancelled out Netflix acct this morning. It would have gone up to $20 a month for 2 Discs and streaming. With our d1 starting college this fall we have to watch expenses. We also were like others and have left movies sitting around for quite a long time and never watching them. We will go back to Hollywood Movies or Blockbuster when we want to watch something.</p>
Can you do that? I have the student account under one email address, but have since transferred to a new school so have a different edu address. I assumed the account was linked to me, rather than my .edu address (my regular hotmail email adress is what my correspondence comes to. If I *can *do that, I will for sure.</p>