As an active subscriber, I find Prime very frustrating, the plethora of different benefits on offer sounds amazing. However, in practice Video doesn't have the shows and movies I want to watch, Reading doesn't have the books I want to read, Music doesn't have the music I want to listen to and shopping still takes two days to arrive (to one of the biggest cities in the UK). It seems every time I want to watch a movie or a tv show or read a new book I go through a ritual of checking if it's by a stroke of luck available on Prime and only to end up disappointed.

It looks to me like they went with something very similar to the 24h gym model - all these benefits which you don't end up using.

This is exactly why I am no longer a Prime subscriber. I rarely order from Amazon anymore because they deliberately delay shipping because I am not on Prime, and I can order from ebay or Walmart and get my stuff within 2-3 days usually, for the same price or less. Prime has a few shows I might watch, but it filtering what I can and can't watch free with Prime is impossible (or at least was the last time I had it). Netflix has a lot more interesting content to me, and I don't have to worry about ads for paid content in my search results.

It’s not so much that they delay shipping, it’s that they can deprioritize your order because you didn’t pay for shipping (through upgrading the shipping method or using prime)

Either way, I can get my stuff faster and just as cheap or cheaper from their competitors.

You're not the target. You're "on the fence" with prime, and you're probably not spending that much with amazon. It's for the heavier shoppers with prime who double down on their spending.

It's ok, you're probably not the market for vegas casinos either.

As a fellow UK customer I very much agree with you. So much so that I just cancelled my Prime membership. These days I buy most of my books second hand (very few marketplace sellers do Prime) so I'm having to pay for postage anyway. Amazon have also introduced "Channels" (MGM, Starz etc) so there's a bunch of content that's now silo'd off in these channels that you need to pony up for on top of the Prime subscription.

I'll use Amazon to rent movies now and again. When there's a new season of something like "The Man in the High Castle" or complete seasons of other stuff I like become available then I'll pay for just a month to watch these then cancel the sub again.

I also find it slightly annoying when Prime deliveries go from "Next day" to "Two days" randomly, especially around holiday seasons. I queried this with them giving examples of SKU's that two days before were available Next Day and then suddenly change to Two Day delivery despite being in stock, but it's like talking to a brick wall.

Perhaps in the US it's a different story where due to licensing there's a much larger selection of content available, but the UK Prime is a bit meagre.

The average HN user it's an outlier in Prime's user base. I do know a lot of people that user Prime Video a lot. As much or more than Netflix.

They just stratified online shopping. Everything is becoming more and more stratified, from airline cabins to online content to education.

I'd argue that copying this trend and tweaking the spreadsheets to extract money in a more fine grained manner while just cutting every dime on the lower tier is not exactly innovation. Holding this up on a pedestal as the great moment of triumph and creativity in tech is not really on the mark.

Not sure if you actually read this article. It’s excellent, especially its narrative stitched together with first-person, you-are-there, accounts.

Rather timely also since Amazon announced this week that it’s working on one day deliveries for Prime customers.

And those in the know will tell you that same-day (even 2-4 hours!) deliveries are on the roadmap for Prime customers in major metro areas.

What shocked me was that after I let my Prime membership expire and ordered something to be shipped, I got the usual 7-10 business day ETA on my package.

The package came the next day, and no extra cost to me. I've made two other orders since then, and they both arrived next day despite the order confirmation telling me 7-10 days.

I'm sure that there's some shipping infrastructure slack that allows them to do this, but I find it super strange now that I get prompted to pay an extra $10 for next-day shipping only to get it anyway.

I’ve never had Prime and often get fast service anyway like you describe. It’s not totally consistent, though. I assume their logistics are so good that they can usually fulfill an order quickly at no extra cost because they have it in a nearby warehouse, but sometimes you hit cases where the closest item is still on the other side of the country. In that case, Prime would get you fast shipping and the free, slow shipping won’t.

Meanwhile, I pay for prime and experience extremely unreliable shipping.

If you don't normalize for where you live I think it's an apples to oranges comparison.

That's pretty much our points. Shipping speed is mostly about factors other than Prime membership.

We already get 2 hour delivery in London with Amazon Prime Now

Yes, lots of countries have long had next-day and same-day delivery, next-day is just new to the US.

Prime Now has been around for quite some time in quite a few locales in the US. (est. 2014)

And one day delivery nationally with Prime.

Is that a new announcement? If I order before (I think) 8pm I'll almost definitely get the order next day. In the UK if that helps any, Midlands

New for the entire US (some areas/cities already had it). Not sure about this article, but another article about the announcement that I read mentions that the UK has already had free one day delivery for a while.

Ah gotcha. Yeah it'd make sense that the US has had a harder time rolling it out, being that the entirety of the UK can fit into many of the states!

I'm not used to us getting things before the US I guess :)

In the UK I find that most stuff can be ordered as late as 11pm for guaranteed next day delivery. Some cities get the same day delivery too(without using Prime Now).

I think they're extending that. The one day service has been available in some areas already depending on proximity to their distribution centers.

> Rather timely also since Amazon announced this week that it’s working on one day deliveries for Prime customers.

> And those in the know will tell you that same-day (even 2-4 hours!) deliveries are on the roadmap for Prime customers in major metro areas.

In Seattle we already have next day and same day shipping for a lot of merchandise. It drastically reduces the amount of time I spend in physical retailers.

> Not sure if you actually read this article.

Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In a way, The prime videos alone now is worth the price. Get access to wide range of movies and exclusive TV shows for 79£ (coming to 6.7£ per month - less than netflix). + Prime reads, magazines, prime music etc. One day and same day shipping is already a side benefit.

Prime videos has by far the worst UX of any streaming service. I rarely even open it because of how frustrating it is to use.

It's a pretty aggravating experience using Prime video, but I agree they have some decent stuff on there now. It's annoying to watch a season of something for free, then have them only selling the next one though.

Prime really was a stroke of genius. The free shipping was just the lure. Once you’ve signed up, you’re now invested in using Amazon first for everything “because I’m paying for the membership”. Then they started adding video and the other benefits, and it became such a great value even if you don’t use most of the benefits.

Isn't that exactly what Costco and Sam's Club did?

My dad was a member back in the 80's (and still is). Every time we wanted something, we would wait until he could get it at Costco -- which was further away than Walmart and K-mart -- "because I'm paying for the membership".

Amazon Prime is of course a lot more addictive because of the one-click, not-leaving-your-house thing. But the idea of retail memberships has been around for a long time. I think that psychology was well understood in the retail industry.

Not exactly, no. With membership stores you need to be a member BEFORE you can shop there, which means you need to really sit down and make a decision if you want to sign up. It’s a very high cognitive cost of entry. With Amazon, you’re ALREADY shopping there, so you “might as well” add Prime for the shipping benefit. It’s a very low cognitive cost and it’s not until after you’ve joined do you realize the effect of the membership is to make you always go there first, because that’s not why you signed up.

Some may think that is a subtle difference, but I think it’s huge and the effect is clear.

Amazon Prime is such a great value in India, where netflix costs like 12$ a month, Prime comes for 12$ a year. And Netflix does not have that big of a catalogue in India, Prime having an almost similar sized catalogue.

I let my membership expire, I often find items cheaper at local stores that offer in store pickup.

So far whenever I’ve wanted something from amazon I’ve been able to qualify for the free super saver shipping.

I think the trick for Amazon is that people just want a one stop shop for all online stuff. No more messing with different, random e-tailers who might or might not have a good reputation. I can't remember the last time I ever looked at reseller-ratings.com

I let mine expire because of counterfeiting.

Amazon Prime in Japan is such a great value. It's about $40/year (was $30 until recently) and almost everything I want has next day, if not 2 hour delivery. Prime now (2 hour delivery) started 2 years ago here. The combination of dense neighborhoods and non-car culture in Tokyo means that the delivery companies have enough distribution centers that last-mile delivery is often done by bicycle or foot. It must have been a good place to trial 2 hour delivery with this infrastructure in place. That being said, it's via a different app which feels like a way to hide the premium price, rather than as a natural extension of the normal prime service. The video selection is also pretty good, but the UI and platform lag far behind Netflix. But, it and the other benefits are just a bonus. I'd be interested to know if for other people/regions, video content is the main value with free shipping being the value adder.

Back in 2005 or so, I had a friend who was working at Amazon. When he told me he was ordering things like toothpaste, I could hardly believe it. His apartment was in easy walking distance of a drugstore, and I thought him ordering toothpaste from an online bookseller instead was insane. Little did I know he was living in the future.

Yes, in a horrid future we find ourselves in right now. And it's just getting started.

what's horrid about it exactly?

The additional resources to send your toothpaste many miles by plane, truck, etc in additional packaging because you don't want to travel to the local grocery store to buy it.

The toothpaste still has to travel from A to B, and it's probably more efficient for a single truck to deliver 200 items than for 200 people to get in their cars and go to the supermarket.

I'm pretty sure nobody goes to the store just to get toothpaste.