Amazon is increasing the cost of annual Prime memberships from $99 to $119 - Sensationalist Headlines

They claim that the costs of the other prime services and increased shipping justify it. We don't know if that's true, of course, but that doesn't necessarily mean jam in your assumptions or that what they're doing is a horrible thing. Prime is a pretty simple luxury product as well, you don't need it to buy from amazon even. If 2-day free shipping is not worth $120 per year, don't buy it. I probably wouldn't even buy it at $100 per year if I didn't have my student discount.

People never organise in a way that keeps these corporations in check. As far as the individual is concerned it's just something they have to put up with

If you're going to jack the twice $20 bucks a month at least include amazon music you hack frauds.

And as they make more and more money, and buy more and more companies, costumers will have less and less alternative choice

Not if more and more companies are owned by huge conglomerates with their companies posing as competition

That's the job of the FTC, in retail we're nowhere near that point. Also Amazon hasn't really been spending much time buying super-hard into retail, they've largely been diversifying into a lot of industries with their purchases.

And when the FTC is owned by governments bought by corporate donations

That's a sentence fragment Without even much proof (tho the FTC is a bit outdated)

I thought it was fairly obvious. When bought by corporate donations, the ftc doesn't do shit

The whole "this company is doing well, they don't need anymore money" is such a ridiculous thing to me. Do you think that perhaps the reason they're doing so well is because they're constantly pushing the envelope and never settling? Companies that settle become obsolete, that's the world we live in. Look at companies like Sears, they used to have "they don't need more money" money, but they stuck with an obsolete model and now they're dying a slow death as a result. I will admit when I see stuff like this I always see it through the eyes of the company. This makes sense for Amazon as a business, doesn't seem predatory at all (unlike pharmaceutical price hikes for example), the service they provide is unique and effective and therefore I don't see the big deal. I want to reiterate that Amazon has lost billions of dollars on prime, I doubt they're profiting off it even with this hike.

The whole point is to force you to bundle all the services together. They know that not everyone is going to use all the services.

Changing their model =/= raising the prices. This isn't some random company. This is Amazon, the CEO being literally richest person in humanity. This is literally who we're talking about here. They do make enough money. They aren't doing well, they're the top. They aren't striving, they're ruling. And just by the pure fact that Amazon is cruel to its employees is evident enough that they're predatory. The people deciding this decided they want $1.2 million a year compared to $1 million. This price raise is literally them seeing if they can make more money out of it. Not because they need it, or times call for it, et cetera. But because they want to have more money. Show me executives making a drastically smaller salary that's more comparative to their role in the company in the same way lower ranking workers' salaries do. Show me those lower ranking workers having decent working conditions. Only then will it not be blatantly obvious that a price raise like this is driven by greed.

I mean that kind of counts for prime itself It's a lot like a costco membership, they bank on most people not actually using it much (if you actually use prime a lot, you are costing amazon money shipping-wise.)

antitrust amazon

many universities allow you to create aliases for your .edu email, i got a year and a half by making a new account every time the old one expired: for example first email was svinnik, second svinnik1, third svinnik2, etc combine this with the fact that you can often keep .edu emails if you are an alum and you can keep doing this for a long time

They need to be unionized or have public outcry focus harder on them. Amazon gets away with it because the workers have no bargaining power, and the jobs pay relatively okay for the skills required and plentifulness (you really don't need anything at all to be taken.)

So it was $80, then $100, now $120? They're raising the price quite quickly. I'm considering cancelling.

I know the two aren't correlated but this gave me a sensible chuckle https://puu.sh/Ab916/4d5dbfdc4c.png

US Prime always seemed like a rip off. They don't only pay more then like Germany but they also get less or at least used to. Like they had to pay extra for Anime when it was all free in Germany. Prime was actually only 49€ a year here (now 69€). Prime Student is half of that and we get basically everything US does. Actually a few better things due to smaller size of Germany, free 1day shipping is standard basically. Free same day shipping available for things over 20€. And of course all the Twitch Prime stuff.

Yes, businesses sole goal is to make lots of money and profit. I take no issue with that, however I take massive issue with companies who do it at the expense of their employees, the environment, and do unethical things. When you see nightmare stories coming from their distribution centers and hear about the way they treat their employees it is disgusting. It is bad enough that a small population of the world owns more wealth then the rest of the population combined. People are going to bitch when a membership they are accustomed to using gets another price hike, they don't feel as if it is a good value for what they've been getting. Consumers do not have much power to change companies or anything, but they little power they do have they should use it. With the amount of people who use prime and the amount of sales amazon gets the price of membership will be pretty stable... It is pretty amazing the amount of people who will come out and defend such a flawed and fucked up companies while having the same boot on their throat.

If they added: "We're also planning to let prime users set their preferred carriers." then I wouldn't mind paying 119.

Could someone link me some articles on Amazon's working conditions? This is news to me.

From a quick google search: https://www.thestreet.com/story/14312539/1/amazon-warehouse-employees-discuss-grueling-work.html http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/we-are-human-beings-not-slaves-and-animals-brutal-conditions-inside-amazon-warehouse/news-story/a7f9168efbe2b901f3c06f3efe503303 https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/04/18/2026220/amazon-employee-explains-the-poor-working-conditions-of-an-amazon-warehouse

Amazon found a way to force customer loyalty AND have them pay for it at the same time, this is just amazing.

Well I guess we'll be cancelling prime when that rolls over. Between that, prime video being fucking useless, and prime shipping only resulting in actual 2 day shipping about 2/10 times, they've pretty effectively lost their appeal to me. Seriously, I'm goddamn tired of seeing Prime 2 day shipping!* *ships in 3-5 days Want it by (2 days from now)? select one day shipping at checkout!

Prime would be a great deal even at $200 a year to be honest. Two day free delivery on literally every single thing I want to buy, which comes with nearly infinite coverage for warranty shit if you're nice to the person on the phone (I just got a GPU replaced through them that I bought ayear ago). Also, if you're in a major city area, you're looking at extremely cheap deliveries within two hours, to pretty much anywhere within the entire city area. It's a really good deal and saves me an insane amount of time (and money) when looking for anything that isn't big ticket.

Amazon US really sounds like they let down on their shipping, never had any of the problems you guys are talking about over here in the UK, and saying that because we're a smaller country its always next day delivery with prime. Its pretty crazy and they've never let me down with prime shipping so far. I do wonder why they're increasing it only for the US market though, it doesn't make much sense.

Georgia, just east of atlanta. Its really only started happening the past year or so but every time a listing says "fulfilled by amazon" I just have to come to grips with the fact that "prime shipping" is going to be a bald faced lie.

I'm east of Atlanta and It's never failed me, but I'm probably in a larger town.

Yep same. Still a great deal. Never had any problems, it's super fast, sometimes my deliveries arrive before I've even purchased them.