Amazon Prime has announced the following price increases (note that some links will show up if you are viewing this via e-mail newsletter, please read online):
- Starting February 18th, 2022, new members will be charged $139/year for an annual Prime membership and $69/year for an annual Prime Student membership.
- Starting March 25th, 2022, existing Prime members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $139/year. Prime Student members with an annual membership will renew at a rate of $69/year.
You can still buy a Gift of Prime Membership for $119 (plus applicable taxes). It is unknown when this will increase in price. Here’s the rundown.
- You can cancel the auto-renewal of your Amazon Prime membership in your account. You may have to go through a lot of “Are you sure?” prompts. They make it feel like you’re canceling your membership right then and there, but again you’re just canceling your auto-renewal. Your Prime membership will still continue through your anniversary date.
- Buy a Gift of Prime Membership for $119 (plus applicable taxes) and send it to yourself or alternative e-mail. Note that if you try to apply the Amazon Gift of Prime when you have an active membership, it won’t work. You just get the exact value paid (including any taxes) in the form of an Amazon gift card. The goods news it that you can’t ever lose any value.
- Set a calendar reminder of when your Amazon Prime year expires, and keep that e-mail with the gift membership link (perhaps in a special folder). If you apply the Amazon Gift of Prime the day after your current membership expires, then it will renew you with one year of Amazon Prime. You don’t need to start a new Amazon account or change your e-mail, everything will carry over from before. You’ll simply not have Prime for a day or less. Easy.
You can also choose to buy multiple years of Gift of Prime membership. Again, the worst case it that you redeem it for Amazon credit in the exact amount paid initially.
I also did this when Amazon hiked the price of Prime in 2018:
Note that if you have an older grandfathered Amazon Prime that lets you have 5 household members share the benefits, you may not want that to expire.
Amazon Prime has a bunch of features beyond the faster shipping that are useful to me, including the Amazon Video and Amazon Music apps. There are also Prime-only deals throughout the year that try to take advantage of in order to offset the annual membership cost. On the other hand, it has been almost too easy at times to buy things on impulse.
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So can spouses no longer share one Prime membership for their individual accounts?
I was wondering the same since I’m on a grandfathered account as well. It’s now Amazon Household. Here’s their summary of the program: https://smile.amazon.com/myh/households/147-2026360-3435328
One thing to note is that the gift membership is not eligible for promotional offers, not sure if that matters to most people.
Not sure what you mean by that?
Does that mean when Amex/Discover/Chase has promotions when pay with points? Like Discover has one now for $10 off $50.
It’s in the bottom text of the link you shared.
“On the other hand, it has been almost too easy at times to buy things on impulse.”
This is why I canceled Prime. I was buying too many things that sat unopened. I can still get free shipping by padding order with cereals and toilet paper. S&S offers free shipping anyway.
It seems like a strange time for Amazon to be raising the price of Prime. Their 2-day shipping is more often 5-day shipping (at least for me). Also, the content on Prime Video is a shadow of what it was three or four years ago. It seems like any decent TV series is farmed out to IMDb TV which has all of the annoying ads at twice the volume of the program itself. I started wondering what I was even paying for, so I canceled. I figure I can always re-join if I miss it.
If you ordered something and it was supposed to be 2 days and it takes longer.. even by a day. Complain and they will give you some free $$
I tried this. But Amazon’s Order Confirmation implied the gift was immediately applied to my current membership (I did used the same email address). The confirmation email did not show anything about how (or when) to apply for the membership at a later time (in our scenario, this would have been the day after my annual Amazon membership lapsed).
Also, I could not find how to terminate auto-renewal on Amazon – eventually I had a chat session and the agent (after many back-and-forths) claimed to have terminated my auto-renewal.
by the way, you can pay for this with Amazon GC
Tried to get a prime membership gift card and they have the price as $139.00 i waited to late to get cheaper membership gift card.