Comments on: Amazon Prime Ripoff - Or Not?

By: Cat

Cat — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:57:28 +0000

Thanks for all of these comments– I spent a week or so figuring if I should sign up for Amazon Prime, ultimately decided to, and still have not bought anything (partly because I’m living off $3 for the next week). I’ve been wondering about the same questions, so thanks for answering.

I bought five books at the beginning of the year, (Jan. 1), and one package just showed up yesterday. The two-day shipping sounded a lot more attractive when I realized my books took fourteen days as opposed to two to arrive.

By: Karl Quist

Karl Quist — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:39:06 +0000

I love amazon prime. Use it all the time. I’ve found it frustrating that Amazon doesn’t give you a way to filter search results to only show prime-eligible items. Instead, I use http://www.iprimr.com which searches ONLY for amazon prime eligible items.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:39:28 +0000

The right thing is what some companies do…send you an automated email a week before the renewal saying “Your account will auto-renew on xx/xx/xx unless you click here to turn off auto-renewal settings.” If you are still getting value out of the product, you’ll leave it alone and will appreciate the advanced notice, leading to more brand loyalty warm fuzzies.

Also, if you had caught the charge within 3 days (I think that’s the time limit) of hitting your card, you could have called Amazon and had them take it off. I’ve done that on a couple of “auto-renew” memberships I had forgotten about.

Part of the problem is that you’re not checking your credit card statements carefully, which is really, really dangerous if you shop online. :-)

By: Jim Lindley

Jim Lindley — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:49:45 +0000

Yeah, you can definitely take off the auto-charge the instant you accept the free trial, don’t wait and try to remember down the road. I fell in love with it though, and it makes me a much happier Amazon customer.

By: Corey

Corey — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:24:48 +0000

I signed up for an account a while back, and never used it past the initial trial, so I forgot about it. I did notice when they billed my account, so I canceled it, grumbling about how I was dumb for losing that money.

Within a day or two Amazon sent me an email saying that they noticed I hadn’t made any purchases with it, so they were refunding the price - without me even asking for it. I was pretty impressed.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:40:32 +0000

I’ve been doing “Prime” for a while now and I do enough business with Amazon so it’s a great deal for me. Of course it also pulls me into doing more business with them as I know I’ve got free fast shipping on many things. Like flat rate land line calling with phones, not thinking about shipping is a nice thing. I’m in my 2nd year of it and my wife and I both love it. And, even big, heavy stuff comes in two days.

However, I had a similar run in with Amazon over their credit card which I picked up when United went through their first bankruptcy and my mileage plus card’s value was in question. They made it near impossible to stop using their card for my orders on their site. I didn’t want to cancel the card, just change the credit card on my account and it took a few months to get it right.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:22:19 +0000

When you’re enrolled in Prime, it says so on every page when you’re on the Amazon site. It tells you when you buy something. You can tell it not to renew at any time, you don’t have to wait till the last minute. And, well, frankly, if two years went by without you actually looking at your credit card statements, any residual sympathy goes right out the window there… :)

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:24:17 +0000

I also did the Prime trial and made a calendar reminder to cancel. However, I forgot about it & ignored the reminder. When I was charged, my wife almost immediately asked, “hey what the heck is this $80 to Amazon for?” — wives can be useful like that.

So I emailed Amazon and said, look, I realize I missed the date to cancel, but I haven’t used any Prime benefits since the membership kicked in, so can I cancel and get a refund? And they did so. YMMV.

By: Ryan Ballantyne

Ryan Ballantyne — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:16:26 +0000

Whenever I see the word “free”, I try to follow the money. What does this company get out of giving me something for free? How “free” is free, in other words?

With Amazon Prime, it could be that they just want to remove the barrier to entry and let people who may be on the fence about it to try it out and hopefully get hooked. That’s the charitable explanation. The uncharitable explanation is that they’re hoping you’ll forget to cancel it.

There may, actually, be elements of both, but I know that I don’t order enough stuff to make it worth my while, so I just didn’t bother even signing up.

I know that I don’t owe Amazon my support, but I think they’re still one of the less-shady companies out there. They probably deserve to be on your “essentially trusted” list. Maybe you should send this post to their feedback group, maybe it will prompt them to make changes so as to avoid misunderstandings such as this one?

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:51:09 +0000

You don’t even need to set a reminder: there’s a big button in your Prime preference page that says “Don’t autocharge my card” you can click the minute you sign up for your free trial.