In an earnings call to investors Amazon has announced that they will be increasing the cost of Amazon prime to $119 ($59 for prime student) on May 11th for new users. Starting June 16, 2018, existing Prime members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $119/year. Prime Student members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $59/year. Currently Amazon offers a prime membership for $99 annually. Amazon last raised the price of a prime membership back in 2014 where the price went from $79 to $99. Earlier this year Amazon increased the cost of a monthly prime membership from $10.99 to $12.99 It isn’t clear how discounted memberships (e.g low income/medicaid recipients) will be affected by this change. According to Amazon they have over 100 million prime members world wide, although keep in mind that some international subscriptions are significantly cheaper and effectively provide access to prime video and nothing else.
There are numerous ways to save on an Amazon prime membership. We’d recommend reading our full guide to saving money on Amazon purchases, but currently you can save on prime memberships by doing any of the following:
- Low-income households can pay $5.99 per month
- Amazon: $79 for New Prime Membership with Alexa
- Students can get six months free thanks to Sprint*
- Ibotta offering $20 Amazon gift card
- Topcashback is offering $15 cash back
- Swagbucks is offering $15 Amazon gift card
You can also lock in the $99 pricing by purchasing a gift of prime (these can be purchased with gift cards). You’ll be sent an e-mail to active your membership, if you’re an existing customer and click this link then you receive Amazon gift cards for the price you paid for the gift of prime membership. Click the link after your membership expires and it will enroll you in another year of prime membership. Keep in mind you’ll need to turn off auto-renew for that to work.
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Could someone please tell me how to deactivate the auto renew? I cannot seem to figure it out. I only have the option to cancel prime …
The post says not to set to auto-renew, but it doesn’t seem like you can avoid auto-renew, you can only set your reminder to tell your 3 days before Do you have to quickly cancel your prime subscription and then use the gift of prime?
On Amazon I have a screen shot showing my renewal on June 16 will be $99.00.
Any idea how long I can keep a gift of prime? I’m thinking of buying a gift of prime, but first I can utilize the $79 Alexa one. I just don’t want the gift of prime to expire 1.5 years later if that makes sense.
I wonder why Amazon charge sale tax on membership fee but Costco doesn’t.
Probably because Prime includes services that a warehouse membership doesn’t. Amazon is taxing it in any state that told Amazon they want it taxed (Amazon doesn’t want to piss off the state tax officials anymore after finally getting on all their ‘good sides’ in the last few years). Not all states tax it, but many do. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201571830
Tax on Costco membership here in NY
Tax on Costco membership (and Sam’s Club) in NM.
No tax on costco and sam’s club in CA.
Depends on how tax law is worded. Since Amazon contains additional products, like streaming, your state may tax streaming services but not club membership.
I wish Amazon had a cheaper option for two-day shipping without any of the other Prime benefits. I really have no use for Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime etc. I don’t want to pay more to subsidize Amazon services I will not use, when all I really care about is the two-day shipping. Will be reevaluating Prime membership once this change is made.
‪I think it’s worth complaining when you don’t get your package by stated delivery date which for mainland customers is part of the package. Not for Hawaii, but I complained once and they extended prime membership by one month. ‬
They’ve tightened up their policy on late-package extensions like that – only 2 per account per year, now.
Are you sure? Used to be once a month, 12 times a year. Going to search for that in the faq for Prime.
How do I know if I am grandfathered into the old Prime sharing ?
Am I considered grandfathered If my credit card is not shared between the accounts ?
There is no grandfathering into the old pricing, you need to prebuy the gift of prime to lock in the old pricing.
If you are sharing Prime with 2 or 3 family members (with each one having a separate email/login for Amazon so that as you say CC details as well as orders and addresses cannot be seen by the others) and only one is paying for the annual membership fees, then you are grandfathered. You cannot add or remove any of those members though even if you are grandfathered. Also only one of the 3 get the Prime Video..the rest get only the shipping benefits. This grandfathered setup ended some 2 years back and at that time they just allowed who ever was enrolled to continue. There is a newer version of the family prime that is not as good where you can share within real family but all of those people can see your stored payment info we well as order info.
If we let Prime lapse for a few days (or months), will we lose the shared Prime?
yes, the grandfathereed Shared Prime is very very delicate and all DPs indicate it will be lost if Prime lapses.
Damn. $119 is really expensive. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t care about 2 day shipping (which must be the bulk of the cost). All I want is free shipping. Can I have unlimited free shipping for $10 a year?
Don’t they already have free shipping for orders over $25 without paying any membership fees?
Yup I use amazon all the time but I would never pay for prime when you can get free 3-5day shipping. Anything I need sooner I’d rather go get it at a brick and mortar. 2 days is an eternity compared to 30m to run to a store. You can even price match to amazon if you need to.
If you actually used amazon all the time with prime and don’t care about the shipping speed most of the time, you can get tons of no rush credits and cash it out. it easily pays for the membership
I didn’t know that was a thing. Can you profit from it? Or will it only credit up to the cost of the membership?
This would really depend on how much you order from Amazon, no? I only order a few times a year, much less than once a month, so I don’t really see credits adding up to more than $5-$10 and certainly less than $120.
One important thing to note:
The gift membership does not automatically renew and is not eligible for promotional offers.
What are some examples of these promotional offers you’d be excluded from?