More often than not, your renewal date approaches without you even realizing it: A notification from your credit card pops up on your phone, reminding you that you’ve paid another $139 to the Seattle-based online retail giant.
But last year, when I once again let auto-renewal get the better of me, I set up a calendar alert for 2024 so I could take a good look at my Amazon Prime subscription and see if I was really getting my money’s worth.
After taxes, my membership cost of $151.34 comes to $12.61 per month, less than what you’d pay for services like Netflix, Max, Spotify, etc. Let’s take a closer look at the Prime perks I use (and don’t use) to see if they’re worth sticking around for another year.
Amazon’s free two-day shipping guarantee isn’t as great as it used to be, since other retailers offer similar shipping speeds these days. But the convenience of being able to find and receive most of the products I want to buy in a timely manner is still of great value to me. Without Prime, I would have to reach a certain order minimum to qualify for free shipping, and it would take an extra day or two for my items to arrive.
I also like how Prime encourages you to delay your delivery date in exchange for digital credits to use toward movie rentals and Kindle purchases. When I don’t need my package in a hurry, and to be honest, I usually don’t need it to arrive early. that It’s urgent. I love the digital cash I can accumulate and the ability to rent books and movies for free. It’s a perk that’s hard to put a price on, but it goes a long way towards recouping the annual fee. feel worth it.
But what’s even better than Amazon shipping is how easy it is to return something. I’m conscious of my environmental impact and try not to return anything unless I have to. But when I do need to return something, few companies make it as easy as Amazon. Walking down to your local UPS store or Whole Foods and dropping off an item is a lot less hassle than printing out a label and packaging it yourself.
Unit price: $8.99/month, $107.88/year
Unless there’s a new season of Reacher, Amazon’s streamer isn’t the first app I pull up when looking for something to watch. Probably not the third or fourth, and I wouldn’t be paying $8.99 a month for the service if I didn’t have Prime.
But as it stands, I use Prime Video a lot, paying an extra $2.99 per month to avoid ads when watching movies and shows. Plus, as a Yankees fan, 21 of my team’s games this season are available exclusively on Prime.
Unit price: 100GB of photo storage costs $1.99/month or $23.88/year
All Amazon customers get 5GB of storage for photos and videos, whether they pay for Prime or not, but Prime members can store as many photos as they like in Amazon’s cloud.
While it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a membership, I have an archive of photos that go back over 10 years, so I’m happy to not have to pay extra for digital storage space.
Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photo | Getty Images
In theory, there’s value in being a Prime member that I’ve lost. I have a Spotify subscription, so I don’t use Amazon Music. Similarly, I don’t do my grocery shopping at Whole Foods, so the “exclusive” perks available only to Prime members are meaningless to me.
Prime Day is billed as a shopping extravaganza for Prime members, but to me it feels like it’s just designed to get me to spend more money on deals that aren’t actually that great.
I get most of my Kindle books from the New York Public Library, so having access to Prime Reading’s rotating collection of books isn’t something I consider when estimating the cost of a yearly membership. I love the new Grubhub+ membership, but the extra money I spend on takeout because of Amazon Prime makes the membership feel more expensive, not cheaper.
Between the free shipping, easy returns, fun Prime Video perks, and photo storage space I need, I feel the value I get from the membership is worth the annual fee. I will renew my subscription for another year.
That said, I’ll be closely monitoring how often I use the above perks over the next 11 months, and while a Prime subscription this year may be worth it, I’m no longer letting auto-renewal be my decision.
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