<p>Someone bumped up a 2 year old Amazon thread, quite timely as I’ve had problems with my last 3 amazon orders. As DS graduated from college, he no longer has the free student account. I paid the $79/yr , and there is no way on the website to remove the auto renew option. Amazon is considering a 50% increase in their Prime membership rate <a href=“Amazon considers $40 Prime price hike”>http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/03/technology/amazon-prime-price/</a> No way will I pay that. Some prime items seem to roll the shipping cost into the item, and are more expensive than the non prime options.
I called them to get my auto renew removed (the have to manually do it). Given the 3 recent problems I had with Amazon orders, as much as I like them, I will not be renewing the Prime. Thoughts?</p>
<p>And this article says the Prime in Europe could go up by 64%, to $131. <a href=“Amazon Prime Price Goes up”>Amazon Prime Price Goes up;
<p>I probably will as I split the account with my kids and we all use it a lot. I live 30 miles from the nearest Target, bookstore, etc. so it makes life easier. One thing to do with renewable charges is to put them on a virtual credit card. We do this with magazines and we set the card to only be good for two months. Thus, they can’t submit a new charge.</p>
<p>I used to use the discovercard virtual credit card but they discontinued it (or are about to this month).</p>
<p>What’s a virtual credit card? Sounds intriguing.</p>
<p>And yes, I probably will continue with Amazon Prime. I really like it.</p>
<p>A virtual card is a temporary card # that you can use for a purchase. Its linked to your regular account #, but its not as safe as we’d like <a href=“http://creditcardforum.com/blog/temporary-credit-card-number-not-always-safe/”>http://creditcardforum.com/blog/temporary-credit-card-number-not-always-safe/</a></p>
<p>I will still use amazon, and will probably pay for 2 day shipping, whatever the few dollars more are, but I dont think I would run up $119 worth of shipping charges to justify the annual fee. Would rather “pay as you go” and let my DS pay his own shipping charges, or he can put the account on his credit card. We still pay his phone bill (its on a family plan). He can pay the Amazon account.</p>
<p>*typo</p>
<p>It’s an interesting marketing ploy that Amazon is using with its Prime membership. Here I’ve gone and paid extra for something, so I feel that I should use Amazon for all my purchases. Brilliant.</p>
<p>However, I like being able to access certain movies and Kindle books for no charge as well, and that’s something I couldn’t get without my Prime membership.</p>
<p>Have found the choices of movies underwhelming to say the least.</p>
<p>Good point about the marketing though. I am beginning to like the idea of the flexibility in choice. And when I shop on Amazon, I tend to select “prime eligible” only, as I’ve paid shipping already in the membership, which cuts down on the item selection. Oh, and I really don’t need to be paying for shipping for my DS’s office mate, for whom DS periodically orders stuff!! 
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<p>Well, as someone who is about 25 years behind in watching the latest movies, I appreciate all of Amazon’s oldies!! (Somehow when S2 was born, we stopped going to movies!!)</p>
<p>Not happy that the price could go up that much, but we’ll probably go with it. We’re about 30 minutes from big box stores and use it a lot. </p>
<p>Yes, I will pay that much if necessary, though I wouldn’t pay much more. We do a lot of ordering (I hate shopping in stores), and even $119 is less than the amount we’d pay for 2-day shipping in a year. The free streaming movies and TV shows don’t offer a great selection, but it’s a decent little bonus.</p>
<p>^^^ we are as well. It’s so much easier to order from Amazon and receive it in two days vs. making the trek to the strip. We also share our with our two boys in college.</p>
<p>Makes sense for people who live far from stores and who are high volume users, though there are other options. These are interesting graphs. Surprised the student account usage is so small <a href=“Amazon Prime Pricing: A Sensitive Subject | HuffPost Impact”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
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<p>I’m not sure if I will or not. We used to use amazon every week and it made a lot of sense, but a lot of it was discretionary spending that we’re not doing anymore-- I bought a lot of books, nail polish, gifts, things like that. The free shipping is still important for a lot of our amazon purchases, which are usually either VERY heavy or the item is VERY inexpensive and the cost of shipping would be more than the cost of the item-- the latter happens with almost every one of my current purchases, like the nail polish I buy. But, I’m not sure if we use it enough anymore to justify $120. The end result will be that items we buy on amazon because they are cheaper than in the store will no longer be cheaper without free shipping, so we won’t shop there.</p>
<p>I am pretty offended that they’d raise it so much at once. It would be nice if they offered a different price for people that don’t want all the video streaming and crap. I never, ever touch that and don’t want to pay for it, if it would make any difference. I am one of the customers Netflix lost when they did this kind of thing.</p>
<p>Dont you still qualify for the student account, ema?</p>
<p>Right now still working on the free amazon student prime with my daughter’s account - don’t know if I would pay for prime - definitely not at $99 or $119. The $35 minimum for free shipping is also annoying (used to be $25). </p>
<p>I have a business that ships small packages and with the recent increases in shipping rates I can fully understand why Amazon has increased the Prime rate. It is still a bargain for me, since I use it at least four times a month and watch their streaming videos at least once a week.</p>
<p>I think I’m going to keep a close eye on how much I am saving on free shipping and how much video streaming we are actually using, but will probably renew even if costs increase. At some point it would not make sense for us to keep paying, however.</p>
<p>No I don’t still qualify for the student account, I haven’t been a student since 2011.</p>
<p>I don’t remember there being any minimum for free shipping, kiddie… I guess maybe it’s been a while since I can recall a specific example, but I know I was buying $5 bottles of nail polish with free prime shipping last summer, that was why I was buying them on amazon instead of going to the store. Without shipping it made them the same cost as going to the store with better selection and convenience.</p>