<p>My husband and I share a debit card. It has the same number. We don’t share an Amazon account. He has his, I have mine. My daughter lives elsewhere and has her own Amazon account. We all use my Amazon Prime and get free shipping, but that’s all we share. I don’t know what he or she are buying, I don’t know if they are buying. He has stuff sent to our house, she has stuff sent to her house. I don’t see it on my account. I get no notifications except for the stuff I order. But we all get free 2 day Amazon Prime shipping. If I remember correctly, I got the option to name family members as participants in my Prime account when I first signed up. There is no crossover of information from one account to another.</p>
<p>I will have to look into it further, that sounds promising wellspring. If there is a limited number of people we can share with, fiance might have to give his mom the boot! Sorry, mom.</p>
<p>I don’t remember if there was a limit but I have three or four other people on mine (don’t know if son-in-law uses it.) If you dump one of your Prime accounts you and I can have lunch on the savings.</p>
<p>Student Prime memberships are now free for just 6 months, after which it costs $39/yr. I found out today when I noticed an unexpected charge on credit card that turned out to be for D’s prime membership. Apparently they continue the service and charge automatically. I hate those deals, somehow hadn’t noticed it was of that sort, also hadn’t noticed it was only free for 6 months. Had some idea that it was free so long as she is in school. You can cancel membership through account services online and they prorate, for us refunding all but $2 of the membership fee.</p>
<p>wellspring,
we can have several lunches on our savings!!</p>
<p>I am on my s’s account. My other s got his own account. He used to be on ours. No more.</p>
<p>You can put 4 people on the account. If you have more than 4, you just put their cr card on (I think) and purchase it for them, and put their shipping address on the iist. We have a gazillion new and old addresses in the account.</p>
<p>celeste- you have to call amazon to have them disable the auto renew. I did it. I also got an extra free month (big whoop) for one of the many hassles I had with a recent order. Got a discount off a prime purchase for another hassle too.</p>
<p>I have never had a problem with an order and will renew Prime when the time comes. When my H signed up to use my Prime account, the limit was 4 people who could share the benefits. I do not see his purchases and I do not get notifications of any of his transactions. Between us we easily save more than we’ll spend even with the increase. </p>
<p>I saw a story on the news last night about many online retailers beginning to penalize customers who order many items, try them on at home and returning all but one item. I had not heard of this until coming on CC, where I’ve noticed that many of you do this. Might be worth checking if you’ve been labeled a “serial returner” by some of your favorite sites.</p>
<p>I’ve found that the free shipping that comes with ordering $35 worth of items is pretty fast, anyway. Usually it’s here in 2 days. If I want something quickly that is cheaper, I just pay the $4 to ship. Sometimes I put things in my cart and just wait until I have enough for free shipping.<br>
I have Netflix and more movies than I have time to watch. I don’t really see the advantage of Prime. I guess I just don’t buy enough from Amazon, as we have a lot of stores in my area. So no, I wouldn’t pay the $79 much less $110.</p>
<p>As others have said: My son has Amazon Prime and shares it with me. I don’t know how many others he shares it with. I don’t see what he buys and he can’t see what I buy. If my parents or a friend of mine want to buy something, I buy it on my account using their credit card and ship it to them. That way any number of people can share the same Prime. So yeah, I think we would probably still pay the new fee. Actually, I guess I should offer to pay my son for at least half of it.</p>
<p>I pay $299 for AmazonFresh prime, which includes the regular Prime. I know it seems crazy, but I like having stuff delivered to my door, including my groceries, while I sleep. Its so much easier adding stuff to my cart at home. Usually if I order by 10PM, they will have the groceries at my door by 6AM the next morning. I know, I am the ultimate in lazy but it helps me plan meals and make healthier choices (in my experience).</p>
<p>I just checked my Prime Account and under manage the account is a link to quit membership. I haven’t checked it to see what it does since I don’t want to quit yet. It also shows that I was charged $79 to renew and will be charged $79 again in the date indcated. I guess I should just check that spot again before the date to see what $$ it says. </p>
<p>The rise in price for the Prime account is inevitable and is still one of the best values, especially considering how liberal and generous Amazon has been with shared family accounts. In a perfect world, the increase in price could have been lower if Amazon had policed the freeloaders and “student” accounts a bit better. All they had to to with students accounts was to enforce a strict one or two delivery addresses to curb the use by third parties. People who played fast and loose and did not see the value in buying a full fledged account for the entire family are partly responsible for the increase in price. </p>
<p>As far as the price, I would gladly pay 15 dollars a month, if I could select my delivery carrier and refuse any delivery from the brown perennial liars aka the UPS men. My only issues with Amazon Prime, which I have had since the day they started offering it, have been the incredibly poor service by UPS with unexplainable delays, phantom deliveries, and an unending series of planned lies regarding attempts to deliver. </p>
<p>Lastly, I never had any issues with the renewals evenwhen my credit cards had changed. It would be a cinch to cancel or suspend the service before its renewal. But again between all the services I buy, dropping the Prime account must be dead last on the list. I probably save the value of the membership fee within 6 to 8 weeks of shipments, and this does not even account for the streaming and other benefits.</p>
<p>Sometimes, if you simply chose the option to not to renew, you can get harassed by the service provider. This is what happened to us with Sirius - remember that co? They kept threatening to send the bill to a collection agency even those we asked them to disconnect the service to a radio installed in a car we no longer owned. So beware .</p>
<p>Again, it is pretty simple to not renew a membership at Amazon. You simply hit the quit button:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118030”>https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118030</a></p>
<p>Just did a quick check and Amazon is showing that I’m up for auto-renewal next month at $79. I wonder if there will be an increase before the actual date and, if so, when Amazon will tell me? </p>
<p>I’m wondering if all the Prime lovers out there live in states that charge sales tax to Amazon purchases or not. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if I will continue with Prime if it goes up that much. </p>
<p>Just looked at mine and it says that I will be automatically billed $79.00 in June. For $79.00 I might continue. I’ve never used the video streaming, I have ordered a few books for my Kindle and I do buy books and gifts but not as much as I used to. I won the Kindle as a door prize, so while I enjoy it, it hasn’t replaced actual book reading at least for me. I still have a huge backlog of books that I bought when Borders closed, we have a very good public library in which I we pay zero for dvd’s, and I can put anything I want on reserve either from my own branch or any in my county with no problem. I do have Overdrive available from my library… so I find less and less that I use it for. I did read the other thread and actually I’ve never thought about ordering drugstore items or groceries from Amazon. </p>
<p>Everything costs so much in NYC and BarnardGirl was trying to stock up on things when she was home at Christmas and then couldn’t fit it all in her luggage so I had to ship it to her. Shipping costs wiped out any savings. I suggested she tell me what she wants and I’d order on it the Amazon Prime and then we would save money. She uses it for streaming too. </p>
<p>I suspect people who have gotten rid of cable,etc. are willing to spend a lot more for Amazon Prime. I’m not one of those people. My renewal is up in April and it still shows me at the student rate. (grad school- yay!). If I lose that rate, we could switch it to BarnardGirl’s account I guess and I can pay her the 39.99. </p>
<p>Luckily I get the student rate for the next two years. I wouldn’t pay $119 to Prime. Not worth it to me but I definitely know people that it would still be cheaper for.</p>
<p>OK – I just logged in to check – you just need to sign into your account and then choose the link on the “Manage Your Prime” membership. Renewal is still $79 (but last year I was charged Calif. sales tax on the renewal, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it wasn’t worth the money to me to research or question it. )</p>
<p>My own account won’t get renewed automatically because I changed credit cards and so I have to actually take an affirmative step to connect the new credit card to to the renewal link. There’s is also a very clear “Quit Membership” link on the page., so I think it would be easy enough to quit the day before the renewal.</p>
<p>There’s link toward the bottom of the page that says “Invite a Household Member” and says you can share the benefit with up to 4 household members. You have to provide your birthday (month and day), their birthday, and tell Amazon their relationship to you. From a marketing standpoint, that is a valuable set of data for Amazon to get – I don’t know if if they use or it or not, but it certainly would make sense for them to keep track of birthdays and relationships and remind their customers of the upcoming special occasions by email or when they log into the site. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much about the price increase. It’s an idea that Amazon has floated without any deadline for implementation, and they have (appropriately) taken surveys to get a sense as to how that impacts sales. Of course they need to look at the big picture – they will make the move if they feel it will help their bottom line, if not they’ll hold off – or find other ways to tweak the arrangement. They also know who their customers are and extent of usage. there are a lot of people who answer “no way!” to a survey who might think differently if they got an email near renewal time that says, "Did you know that you saved $285 last year through Amazon prime – along with a list of how much they would have paid in total shipping and streaming costs… and those people might think twice. </p>
<p>In any case, I’m thinking a lot of people who say they won’t renew at a higher cost will end up renewing anyway. I haven’t noticed people abandoning cable tv en masse every time the rates go up. People protest, but then they end up paying for stuff they are using. </p>
<p>–
I’d note that in addition to shipping, I use the video streaming when my grandson comes to visit – they have a pretty good selection of kid-vids. So does Netflix, but it’s the selection is somewhat different on each. </p>
<p>I was about to post, asking how I link my D’s prime account (she’s in college so student prime) to family members’ accounts so we can all get the benefit without using her account but Calmom just shared the info. Still, D is a junior and, for some reason, has never needed to pay so I’m not going to do anything to potentially flag her account. Great to know for the future, though – D3 starts college in the fall.</p>
<p>Also, what we’re doing works for us–dh and I both have accounts and so does D1 (D2 has the prime account). We have all added our addresses and credit cards and just have to be mindful to make sure we click the right ‘payment’ and ‘shipping address’ and then there’s no need for any reimbursing. We only use D2’s (prime) account when the free/expedited shipping is needed so we do still use our own accounts sometimes. Initially, D was getting too many emails so she turned off the email notification feature. Thus, the only way surprises are spoiled is if any of us need to go into her account to research an order – not something that’s needed very often.</p>