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Amazon Has 150 Million Prime Members (engadget.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the one-step-closer-to-world-domination dept.
Amazon's latest earnings release reveals the company now has 150 million Prime members around the world, a substantial increase from the 100 million it announced back in 2018. It's also quite impressive considering the Prime membership fee increased from $99 to $119 a couple of years ago. Engadget reports: "We've made Prime delivery faster -- the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime's free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year," said CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Members now have free two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market in more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns." On top of that, Bezos said that Prime members have also watched twice as much movies and TV shows on Prime Video than last year.

Prime membership just one of the many positive news to come out of the company's earnings report. It also recorded $87.4 billion in revenue, which is a whopping 21 percent increase over the same time last year. Company profits also increased by 8 percent to $3.3 billion during the holiday quarter. Amazon's earnings beat estimates by over 50 percent, causing its price to surge by over 13 percent after closing. [...] Still, things aren't perfect. The move to one-day shipping has been costly to Amazon due to an increase in warehouse and delivery spending. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is one of its biggest money-makers, has also slowed thanks to competition from Microsoft and Google. According to reports, AWS has an estimated growth of 32 percent, which is fairly weak in comparison to previous years.
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Amazon Has 150 Million Prime Members More

Amazon Has 150 Million Prime Members

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  • Not everyone's paying (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mononymous ( 6156676 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @12:15PM (#59678970)

    I'm halfway through a 30-day free trial. I agreed to it in order to get free shipping on one order, but I've certainly been taking advantage of the streaming service (which works great in Firefox on Linux).

    • I've been a member for several years and all in all I think it's a fair deal.

      Fast shipping (usually) and more streaming content than I could watch in 5 lifetimes. For $10 a month I think it's worth it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mrsam ( 12205 )

      Amazon's very deceptive ordering process tries every trick in the book, and every possible misleading UI to get you to click the button that automatically adds their "Free Trial" of Prime to your order. In the last two years my dad accidentally signed up for Prime twice. Fortunately, we've caught it and cancelled it before the free trial ends, ended up paying nothing.

      Although our initial impression was that it wasn't ethical to intentionally take advantage of the free trial period, that impression faded qui

    • "Prime membership continues to get better for customers year after year. And customers are responding - more people joined Prime this quarter than ever before, and we now have over 150 million paid Prime members around the world," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO."

      https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazoncom-announces-fourth-quarter-sales-21-874-billion [aboutamazon.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I've noticed that they try to trick you into selecting the one week free trial when you order anything now, so I wonder how many of those subscribers didn't mean to actually pay for it.

        I've heard it's a better deal in the US but in the UK it's not worth it unless you want the streaming service. Most of the items that come with "free" Prime shipping are more expensive than the ones with non-Prime free shipping. Suspiciously the price difference is usually the same as the cost of express shipping.

        It seems lik

    • If you do the math, Amazon spends about $2 per package delivering it. (Just under one dollar of this goes to the driver to deliver it. Yes, Amazon Flex might want you to deliver 120 packages and pays you $60 or so for it.) And of course, ordering more than one things per delivery lowers their cost because they both go into the same package typically. I'm not saying I won't continue to use them, just understand: 1) how cheap their costs are because of sweat labor 2) how much fedex/ups/usps are charging in co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jimbo ( 1370 )

      I'm reconsidering my membership. They're not cheap anymore for most household items here in Canada as they once were, it's better to go to a store. Prime items have better shipping but usually elevated price now. They're nice for electronics and computer parts because they'll take returns no questions asked for up to 3 months, even paying for shipping it back to them. Newegg on the other hand are picky and require restocking fees.

      Their video library is growing and they have some good originals, so that's on

    • I'm halfway through a 30-day free trial. I agreed to it in order to get free shipping on one order, but I've certainly been taking advantage of the streaming service (which works great in Firefox on Linux).

      I almost took advantage of that during my trial, but of at least 10 things I wanted to see, 0 were actually included, the rest they wanted additional payments for.

    • I'm sure you're in the absolute minority considering that number has been quite stable with a steady increasing trend and no massive spikes up and down as people's 30 day service expires.

    • I'll do you one better. Every year they offer me some incentive to take their free trial, usually something small like free shipping on an order that normally wouldn't qualify. Every year up to this one I've taken their free trial and cancelled it immediately -- you used to get all the benefits for the full month even if you cancelled. Starting this year, it looks like they cut off benefits when you cancel rather than when it expires, but they now have an option to remind you before it expires so you can ca

  • Whole Foods (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @12:32PM (#59679024) Homepage Journal

    If you shop at Whole Foods, then a Prime membership with the Prime Visa makes sense, as you get 5% back on all your Whole Foods purchases. If you buy all your groceries there for your family, that will easily pay back more than the cost of your Prime membership. (Yes, I know we could save a lot more by simply going to a different store, but I don't want to argue food quality, our personal choices, and all that here.)

    Other people find the Prime membership worthwhile for other reasons.

    And regardless of your reason for joining Prime, once you're in, Amazon has you as a customer, since the free fast shipping is really compelling.

    • If you shop at Whole Foods, then a Prime membership with the Prime Visa makes sense, as you get 5% back on all your Whole Foods purchases.

      So, that makes it only 25% more expensive than the local health food stores?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        Yeah, I figured someone would have to make an obnoxious comment like that, even after I had written "(Yes, I know we could save a lot more by simply going to a different store, but I don't want to argue food quality, our personal choices, and all that here.)"

        • No, you blathered about "food quality" which is why I said "health food store." You wanted to virtue-signal about your high priced food and imply the quality is higher, and that the "other stores" you referenced were Wally World, or something.

          If you want your caveat to have value, don't add misdirection.

          • Just like other stores whole foods has loss leaders, particularly good ones for prime members, on top of a standard 5% discount. Personally, I get to factor in significant efficiencies in transportation costs and time. Can easily compete with whatever food trough you visit.

            • If you think loss leaders save you money, you don't understand shopping.

              • I'm sorry you don't have the discipline to stick to the deals on your regularly consumed items.

                • No, it doesn't work like that. You're changing what you buy, in the way they want you to. You don't have access to enough information to know if saves you money, and the amount of time it would take to collect that information would be a huge loss compared to the pennies you would save.

                  They understand the psychology. You feel exactly the way they were trying to get you to feel. Maybe it is a cooincydink, and you're actually so much smarter than them, but it isn't likely.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by radl33t ( 900691 )
                    Sorry to be you. I have a meal plan, that varies by in which leafy greens or fruits are available based on pricing and seasonality. You should try planning.

                    • So you're saying your whole argument was marginal and irrelevant, and you know I was right, but you want to feel right because you're being misleading?

                      No, you're full of shit. You're not saving money by buying loss leaders, and you're not only buying leafy vegetables at this store. And if you were, it would mean you shop somewhere else and it was never even relevant.

  • For Amazon Canada, I wish there was an option for not-the-fastest-shipping-technically-possible. Many items I order do not have to get to me particularly quick and I would like the ability to help the boxes, shipping containers, trucks, planes, and other transportation components to be used in a maximal efficient manner.

    Surely Amazon could benefit from being able to delay my small item for a couple of days to group it with other shipments? Even if they change nothing else, having the ability to select "take

    • No-rush shipping is/was quite real, typically offering a buck in credit towards electronic media. Sometimes they'd bump it to two during high shipping periods, sometimes they'd replace it with utterly crap coupons you could get from a billion other places.

      I probably got a hundred dollars a year from it...but they were kind of random as to what the credits could apply to, at least for books. Technically it says in the fine print it was only good for stuff published by Amazon. Which basically means an ocean o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by j-beda ( 85386 )

        What I want is an option to keep whatever shipping price they have for my order (ie free for Prime members, or free if your order is above whatever the current cutoff is) and just don't rush. I don't need any bonus for that. Right now, I am not even offered the options that a non-Prime member has - I just get "super speedy free or even more super speedy free" if I get any options beyond "supper speedy free".

    • There is free slow shipping. Did you know a prime membership is not required to get subscribe and save discounts, and they still ship for free? Did you know you can wait until your cart has $25 of stuff and they ship for free, just slower? Of course, this is all in the USA.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by j-beda ( 85386 )

        There is free slow shipping. Did you know a prime membership is not required to get subscribe and save discounts, and they still ship for free? Did you know you can wait until your cart has $25 of stuff and they ship for free, just slower? Of course, this is all in the USA.

        I did not know that, but it does seem to be limited to the USA.

        In my experience, in Canada at least, when buying a large enough amount, there is never an option for anything slower than "FREE Standard Shipping", and over the past year or so, when using Prime Canada, there are only options for "FREE Prime Delivery" and faster, never a slower option (one used to be able to select the slower "FREE Standard Shipping", but not recently).

    • In the U.S. I get the following Prime shipping options:
      • Regular Prime 2-day shipping
      • Sometimes Prime 1-day or even same-day shipping (came in handy when a projector bulb blew)
      • Prime day shipping. Designates one day of the week as my Prime day. Queues up my orders for a week, and ships them all on that day in one box.
      • Delayed shipping in exchange for $1 credit for digital services (MP3s, movies, games) or Prime Pantry, sometimes $5 for Prime Now (grocery delivery service). The delay is supposed to be up t
  • Amazon is making way better picks at what they have than Netfix is. Almost all the best shows I have seen by steaming are prime. It seems that Netflix has a lot of shows that I never wanted to see, and prime has shows that I wish I had seen. Also seems to have good new shows as well.

  • Super money saver for rural living (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Where I live, you're going to burn serious gasoline to get to the nearest store - the general store is 13 miles away on twisty mountain roads. An errand loop takes all day long to hit the usual suspects. So it's a time thing, too.

    A hardcore shopper can find prices the same as, or in bulk, less than the local stores, often much less. You do have to pay attention and not use things like the dash button which will switch vendors and prices on you - and never in your favor.

    I live on a fixed income now, and m

    • Additionally, it may be 120 miles to a store that actually has what I need. Even then, sometimes not. And I live in a college-town area, not real sticks.

      If I need a specific graphics card, it's coming mail order. There is a local computer store that will get it from Ingram in two weeks for 50% more than Amazon, but it's still 10 miles away, they'll tell me I don't really need it (they have one "just as good" on their shelf with some dust on it), and I'm really not that masochistic

      • I keep spare computer parts on hand because driving to buy a part costs me at least half a day and a hundred-plus miles each way -- if the thing that I need is even available in the nearest burg of <60k souls. If it's (as usual) not available there, driving to the that thing is four and a half hours each way. Either way, I'm risking mountain two-lanes for the first forty miles, dodging around livestock, big game (antelope, deer, elk, moose), Frackwater Jack the burned out diesel dummy, flatlanders who th

    • I do my best to find things elsewhere first. Rockauto, Newegg, eBay, whatever. Often they are cheaper. If they don't have what I want or Amazon has it much cheaper, well... Amazon it is. But I actually find that they rarely have the best deal on anything that isn't incredibly common.

      However, local retail can for the most part bite my crank. They don't have what I want, and they charge too much for what they do have. The only exceptions are discount stores, and for one thing (work pants) Wally world. I can g

  • Yeah, nice, but no thanks. I prefer the integers, which has an infinite amount of prime numbers.

  • So, pretty much everybody (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @01:36PM (#59679274)
    Consider most of these memberships support an entire family.

  • Prime value (Score:5, Interesting)

    by imperious_rex ( 845595 ) on Saturday February 01, 2020 @01:59PM (#59679342)
    I've been a satisfied Prime member for the past seven years, and Prime certainly gives the customer the best bang-for-the-buck when compared to other entertainment streaming services. Two-day shipping, free movies, free music, photo storage, etc. What's not to like about Prime? Obviously, there will always be haters [money.com], but they're a minority. Until a competing service offers comparable or better features, I'll stick with Prime.

  • with Prime's free one-day and same-day delivery...

    When you have to pay for it, it is not free. This is free as in "pay $20 and eat as much as you can - FOR FREE". Or free as in "you pay $99 yearly and some items marked Prime are delivered without extra delivery charges, but often with a surcharge that includes what would be the delivery rate -- particularly in low-cost items"

    It should be forbidden to announce a part of a subscription service as "free" instead of "included".

  • I have a yearly Amazon Prime subscription that routinely expires yearly. I don't always watch videos and I certainly don't order daily, nor always need it in 2 days.. So when my year is up, it's up. "No fee paid" until I need something from them either quick and/or cheap. And when so I just resubscribe.

    During my self-imposed "outage" I'll bundle until I get free shipping and don't need fast delivery. I figure I "pay" for 12 months but "get" maybe 15 months for the money. Keeping $30 for doing almost n

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