Lock in Current Price of Amazon Prime
Amazon is set to increase the price of its Prime membership for the first time since 2018. The company revealed the price hike in its latest earning report, citing the continued expansion of Prime perks, higher wages and increased transportation costs.
The price of the annual membership in the US will soon go up to $139 (previously $119). The higher rates kick in February 18th for new customers, but they won’t take effect for existing customers until they renew after March 25th. Prime’s price is not changing in other countries for now.
But for more than half of Prime members in the US, the price is actually going up to $180 per year. That’s because the monthly Prime membership rate is rising to $14.99 from $12.99. The company introduced the monthly subscription in 2016 to attract more low- and middle-class shoppers. Now 52% of subscribers pay the monthly price, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. There are cheaper membership available for students and those with government assistance.
The price increase comes after Amazon’s net profit jumped nearly 57% in 2021 to $33.4 billion. The company has done quite well during the pandemic, as more people stayed home and turned to delivery services and home entertainment.
Lock In Lower Price for Amazon Prime
If you were thinking of trying Prime, you might want to sign up now (affiliate link) to get the current price for a year and save $20.
But even if you are a current Amazon Prime subscriber, you can lock in a lower price now for at least another year. If your Amazon Prime membership renewed recently, or will renew before March 25th, then this works best for you. If you’re not sure when your renewal date is, you can find it here (affiliate link).
You can lock in the current price by gifting someone a Prime Membership, or just gifting it to yourself. Just go to “Give the gift of Prime“ (affiliate link) and you can lock in the current price of $119 for your next renewal. You will be charged for the gift of Prime gift plus applicable taxes when you place your order, but you can set the gift date to a later time, just before your membership expires. Amazon will send your gift recipient an email on the day you choose along with redemption instructions. You can also send it now, but just make sure you don’t lose it or forget about it.
You can purchase more than one Gift of Prime as well. But you can only purchase one at a time, and each one must be sent to a separate email on a different date.
Make sure you have auto renew off so you don’t get charged the new $139 annual fee, or $14.99 monthly fee automatically. Once you current Prime membership ends, you can then use the gift of Prime. However, you should probably purchase Gift of Prime before February 18th. The price could go up to $139 after that.
Student and EBT Prime Memberships
Amazon also has two discounted Prime membership options. One is for students and the other for EBT/Medicaid and select government assistance recipients. These prices will go up as well, but they are still much more affordable.
- Prime Student (affiliate link)
- Annual membership: $59 now, going up to $69
- Monthly membership: $6.49 now, going up to $7.49
- EBT/Medicaid Prime (affiliate link)
- Monthly membership only: $5.99 now, going up to $6.99
With these memberships you get the same access as regular members of Amazon Prime. EBT memberships actually also receive additional, tailored perks and discounts including discounts on groceries and essentials like baby food and diapers. But although unlimited two-day shipping is available on eligible items, same-day or next-day shipping is not an options for the discounted memberships.
If you don’t want to pay anything at all, you can get started with a 30-day free trial (affiliate link). You are eligible for the tree trial if you haven’t been an Amazon Prime member in the last 12 months. You’ll be enrolled in the free trial of Amazon Prime and have access to FREE Two Day shipping, Prime Video, and Prime Music.
Amazon Prime Benefits
Check out all the Prime benefits below (affiliate links):
- Amazon Prime Shipping Benefits – Your Amazon Prime membership includes a variety of shipping benefits, including several shipping options if you need to expedite your delivery.
- Amazon Music – Listen to over 2 million songs, including thousands of stations and top playlists, plus millions of podcast episodes.
- Prime Gaming – In-game content for your favorite games, free games to download, and a free monthly channel subscription on Twitch.
- Prime Reading – Enjoy unlimited access to a rotating catalog of free eBooks, audiobooks, magazines and more.
- Amazon Photos & Amazon Drive – Store your photos and more.
- Prime Video – Stream movies, shows, award-winning Amazon Originals, premium channels, sports & more.
- Prime Try Before You Buy – You can try eligible items from women’s, men’s, kids’, and baby clothing, shoes, and accessories before you buy them. You have seven days to try the items at home and we’ll only charge for the items you keep.
- Amazon Household – Allows you to share Amazon benefits with another adult, teens, and children.
Guru’s Wrap-up
This is a big price increase of almost 17% for the annual Amazon Prime subscription. But at least you can lock in the current price of Amazon Prime through the Gift of Prime. You can purchase Gift of Prime with your Amazon gift card balance. And, if you decide not to use it to renew your membership, you can always cash it into your Amazon gift card balance.
This is also a good time to look at how much value you actually get out of this subscription. If you have been using Prime for more then a year and continue to do so, then definitely switch from monthly to an annual membership.
Amazon Prime offers fast, free delivery on most orders, thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime Video, millions of songs, free Kindle e-books, unlimited photo storage, exclusive access to deals, Twitch, and much more. That’s a lot of perks, but they’re only worth the price tag if you actually need them and use them.
Will you continue paying for an Amazon Prime subscription even at $139 per year? Let me know in the comments.
I get charged tax in my state. Do you know if you get the tax back if you decide to cash out the gift or prime into Amazon GC balance? Or do you just get the $119?
You get the full amount, price plus tax.
If your recipient is already an Amazon Prime or Amazon Student member, or doesn’t want to use the Prime membership, they can exchange their gift for an Amazon.com Gift Card. The Amazon.com Gift Card will have a value equal to the original cost of the Prime membership gift (including sales tax).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G99UKDNNS49783KE
Lol they have record profits in last 2 years. This price hike is just Amazon extracting every little penny out of us just because it knows it can. There’s no need for bs reasons. Meanwhile Bezos is making a yacht so big that he can’t get it out of Rotterdam.
You can turn off auto-renewal but they INTENTIONALLY make it a very daunting task. If it is overwhelming to you, you can chat to explain and they will do it for you.
Basically, you go to manage your Prime Settings, click on Cancel Prime, next you have to confirm you want to lose all of your Prime benefits. So scary looking that even tough I have done this before, I chose to have a rep do it this time because it has been since the last increase that I used the Prime Gifting method and had to disable Auto-renewal. Amaxon’s own help page is too vague to explain this process properly. I asked the Chat rep to pass my complaint up the chain that this is still so confusing and scary and should be changed to be more intuitive. BUT you and I all should know that this is on purpose and is unlikely to garner anything but snickers from the powers that be. Maybe if more of us complain it would help. Yeah, right!
Good tip on chatting with a rep, thank you!
For everyone else, you can see more details here about ending your membership https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ref_=hp_left_v4_sib&nodeId=GTJQ7QZY7QL2HK4Y