Retailers offer annual membership schemes for boosting their revenue and for providing customers with heavy discounts. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is also offering something similar, called Amazon Prime. Just like any other subscription scheme, it also has its fair share of pros and cons.
“Recreational shopping is the shortest distance between two points: you and broke.”
―Victoria Moran
Amazon Prime is the holy grail for all frequent Internet shoppers and netizens. It costs USD 99 a year and offers many benefits to its subscribers. This Techspirited article focuses on the pros and cons of getting a Amazon Prime membership. It’s always good to know if you are going to get the best bang for your buck, isn’t it?
Pros of Subscribing to Amazon Prime
Free Two-day Shipping on all Goods Marked as ‘Prime’
Yes, you read it right. Now, you don’t have to add unnecessary items to make your shipment quality for free delivery. You can even buy a USD 5 product (marked as prime), and get it delivered within two days for free. How cool is that? This doesn’t apply to products sold by third-party vendors on Amazon.
Prime Instant Video
There is more to Amazon Prime than just free 2-day shipping. You also get access to Prime Instant Video, which enables you to watch over 41,000 movies and videos for free on all Amazon devices linked with your account. The Prime Instant Video library doesn’t have all the movies, but it does have most of the popular movies and TV seasons. You can also download selected videos for offline playback on your Amazon-branded device.
Kindle Firsts & Kindle Lending Library
With Amazon Prime, you can read up to 2 books for free every month. Kindle Firsts allows you to download (and keep it forever) one ebook every month from among four available options, before they are released to the general public. You can read your second book for free via Kindle Lending Library. You are allowed to borrow any book for free every month. You can read it leisurely and keep it for more than a month, but you won’t get the next book until you return the previously borrowed book.
Prime Music
All Amazon Prime subscribers are entitled to listen and download over a million songs and hundreds of playlists from Amazon for free.
Summing up the Pros
Amazon offers quite a lot of perks when someone signs up for Amazon Prime. So, to help you make a sound decision, here in a nutshell are all the benefits of Amazon Prime:
â– Your package will be delivered within 2 days, so you save significant time and gas for visiting a nearby retailer, unless you want something urgently.
â– If you have a DTH connection only for enjoying movies and TV soaps, then you can say goodbye to it. You can watch those movies and TV seasons on your Amazon Fire TV for free, provided you have a good Internet connection.
â– You can also download songs from Amazon Music app on your iPhone and Android phone without the need to buy them again.
â– If you love to read, then Amazon Prime is worth every penny. You will be able to read 24 books in a year. Do the math, and you’ll know why book lovers subscribe to Amazon Prime without thinking twice.
â– You can also add accounts of others living at the same address as yours to make them eligible for free two-day shipping.
Cons of Amazon Prime
Only Made for Shopaholics
If you shop fewer than 12-15 times a year, then the service will never pay for itself. You are better off paying for shipping on each package rather than subscribing for Amazon Prime.
Forced to Shop from Amazon
Don’t get me wrong, Amazon will not force you to shop from them, but the fact that you paid USD 99 for a service will make Amazon your first preference when looking for products online. In worst cases, you will even make compromises with the quality of the product, because you wouldn’t want to pay for shipping while shopping from some other e-tailer.
Bad for Local Retailers
Local businesses will suffer because you will order even a USD 3 product from Amazon and get it delivered to your door within 2 short days. This is bad news for the local economy.
Amazon Prime membership is great for shopaholics, and has its own set of plus points and minus points. So, choose carefully.