Items tagged with Amazon Prime
If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, then we've got some bad news for you. Amazon is once again raising the price of its yearly Prime membership. Starting May 11th, a Prime membership will cost $119, which is $20 increase from the current $99. Renewals for existing customers will stick to the same $99 price through June 16th. After that date, you’re be paying the higher rate along with everyone else. The last time Amazon raised its yearly Prime subscription price was back in 2014 when it increased from the original price of $79 to $99. Shoppers complained vigorously at the price hike,...
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Most of the massive companies in the tech and online worlds hold things like subscriber and member numbers very close to the vest. Amazon has always done this with numbers for its Prime service. This lack of hard detail directly from Amazon has meant that analysts in the past had to infer how many Prime members Amazon might have from surveys of customers. We no longer must infer anything, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos clearly stating in the annual shareholder letter Amazon sends out that the company has 100 million paid Prime members. A Prime membership costs $12.99 monthly or can be paid in a lump...
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In the summer of 2017, Amazon announced that it would offer a low-cost version of its extremely popular Prime membership program for customers on government assistance programs. The program was offered to U.S. residents with a valid EBT card, which is used by people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC), for example. Today, Amazon announced that it is extending its discounted Prime memberships to Medicaid recipients, which is the latest tool in its arsenal to battle low-priced retailers like Walmart. Medicaid is yet another...
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Back in June 2016, Amazon introduced its "Prime Exclusive" phone program, which offers Prime subscribers attractive smartphones with budget pricing. The catch, however, is that you have to put up with lockscreen offers and ads to take advantage of the favorable pricing. For example, the fourth generation Moto X has a suggested MSRP of $400, but it is offered for $280 unlocked as a Prime Exclusive. Likewise, the LG Q6 falls from $300 to $180 as a Prime Exclusive. Luckily for those that have already purchased a Prime Exclusive phone, or those that are looking to purchase one in the future, there...
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If you're a subscriber to Amazon's popular Prime membership service, we've got some good news and bad news for you. The good news is that if you pay the yearly $99 rate for Amazon Prime, your out-of-pocket costs aren’t going to change one iota. However, if you pay the monthly rate, your costs are about to jump. The monthly price for Amazon Prime is climbing from $10.99 to $12.99, which represents nearly a 20 percent uplift. Amazon has offered its monthly subscription pricing for the past two years, and it was primarily aimed at lower-income Americans that couldn't swing paying $99 all at...
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Another holiday season has come and gone, though not before Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, hit a new shopping record. That seems par for course these days, which itself is pretty remarkable. The holiday season was also a boon for Amazon's Prime membership program. More than 4 million started a Prime trial or paid membership in just one hectic week of holiday shopping. The massive influx of Prime memberships (trial and paid combined) during the past week is proof positive that free two-day shipping on millions of qualifying items continues to be a major draw, though far from the only...
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Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Whoever said it was full of you-know-what, as Apple just proved by adding support for Amazon Prime Video on its Apple TV streaming set-top box. At long last, Amazon Prime Video is available in the tvOS App Store, joining the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and many other apps. So, what took so freaking long to get to this point? Call it a case of clashing titans. While the Apple TV has long supported popular streaming services such as YouTube, HBO Go, and others, Amazon Prime Video was not invited to the party, even though Apple wanted to bring as many streaming...
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If you are an Amazon Prime member (which costs $99 per year), one of the perks of the service is unfettered access to Prime Video. Prime Video gives you commercial-free movies, TV shows, and Amazon original programming to keep your occupied for hours at a time when it comes to binge-watching your favorite shows. Now, however, it looks as though Amazon is looking for an even wider audience for its streaming video services according to AdAge. This new, free variant of its streaming service would be available for anyone in a supported region to access the content. However, the big "catch" is that...
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Over the past two decades, Amazon has grown to become the dominant force in the online retail space, and has changed our expectations for how fast we receive items with 2-day Prime shipping. That has expanded with services like Prime Now, which can have a package on your front door within 1 hours of placing an order. Now, the retail giant is taking those efforts one step further with Amazon Key, which is a new service that allows couriers to deliver a package inside your home while you are away. The benefits of such a service are readily apparent. If you have a high-dollar item like a flat-screen...
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Amazon stock has been on a winning streak over the past month, and that upward momentum means that there is a shakeup afoot when it comes to the ranking of the world’s richest people. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has consistently been at the top (or near the top) of the list, thanks to his [still] heavy investment in the company’s stock, for the past three decades. However, Amazon’s stock performance — capped off by another surge this morning — means that CEO Jeff Bezos is now ranked as the world’s richest person. Amazon shares are up over 2 percent this morning (to $1,078 as of this writing),...
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Late Monday, Amazon kicked off its annual Prime Day celebration with 30 hours of deals aimed at providing its loyal subscribers with discounts on thousands of products. Well, the numbers are in, and Amazon says that this year’s Prime Day was its biggest to date, with sales growing 60 percent year-over-year. According to Amazon, “tens of millions” of Prime members purchased at least one item during Prime Day. Although the online retail giant didn’t give a specific number for the subscribers that participated yesterday, it says that it increased 50 percent year-over-year. In a show of strength for...
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The world's largest online retailer is giving low income individuals and families a reason to skip the lines at Walmart and shop on the web instead. We're of course talking about Amazon, which today announced that customers participating in one of several government assistance programs can sign up for its Prime membership at almost half price. Customers with a valid Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card are eligible to subscribe to Amazon Prime for $5.99 per month for one year. That is a 45 percent savings over the regular membership price of $10.99 per month, and members can can cancel anytime....
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One of the best decisions Amazon ever made was creating a Prime membership program. Any argument otherwise is shattered by the numbers—according to data collected by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, LLC (just CIRP from here on out), there are now 80 million Amazon Prime members living in the United States. Not only is that remarkable figure, but they're outspending non-Prime members by almost a 2:1 ratio. CIRP figures that Prime members spend on average around $1,300 per year, compared to about $700 per year for non-member customers. That is a big disparity and it goes to show the value...
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Amazon is the undisputed leader in online retail, with the company offering customers access to just about any product imaginable under the sun. Many of those products can be delivered to your house within a few hours’ time, or at most two days, if you subscribe to the $99/year Amazon Prime subscription service. Needless to say, Americans’ penchant for ordering anything and everything from Amazon means that the company also burns a lot of cash to pay shippers like FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service (USPS). So, what is a company like Amazon to do? For starters, the company is looking to build...
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