The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastating membership program

Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by omega3 on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:09PM (#19819633)

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.

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Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by ensignavenger on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:16PM (#19819686)

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.

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Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by colejohnson66 on Friday May 03, 2019 @04:14PM (#19821857)

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)

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Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by ensignavenger on Friday May 03, 2019 @05:07PM (#19822285)

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by m463 on Friday May 03, 2019 @10:43PM (#19824032)

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.

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Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by teh_klev on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:35PM (#19819875)

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.

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Re:The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most devastati... by whoisjuan on Friday May 03, 2019 @02:34PM (#19821025)

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.

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