- The author canceled their Amazon Prime subscription on a whim and realized they didn’t really need it.
- Leaving Prime meant slower shipping but the author was happy to wait and still found the selection and delivery speed satisfactory.
- Many people love Prime for its fast shipping and convenience, but some readers expressed ambivalence and considered canceling.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/3M27c
You’re kidding right? Are there actually people thinking they just can’t live without Amazon Prime? Seriously? Fuck even if you HAVE to order something off of Amazon, which you absolutely don’t HAVE to do, you don’t fuckin need prime just for… what… slightly faster shipping?
Free shipping, but at that point you should question why you are buying so much from amazon in the first place
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It’s the Walmart problem. People buy from Amazon because they can’t afford some necessities at MSRP when going to a local store.
Some of the stuff I can get in bulk on Amazon are as much as 50% cheaper than getting those same things in bulk from a restaurant supply (which is cheaper than buying them at a grocery store). And that’s before Subscribe&Save’s 15% off. Coffee (for example) costs would drive me into the poor house if I didn’t get my beans from Amazon… and I end up getting higher quality beans than my grocery store at that lower price.
Do I NEED coffee to live? No. But it’s not exactly a luxury in the modern world, and beans are much cheaper than going to Dunkin. There are things I buy that I need; there are things that I buy that I want. And as much as I hate it, most of them are not available locally or are FAR more expensive locally. I never go to Amazon first, but I very often find myself landing at Amazon last.
And yes, that doesn’t justify Prime on its own. But because I have Prime, I get those things that I couldn’t find cheaper elsewhere the very next day. Prime will never be necessary when there’s free shipping options, but boy have they packed it out with more features than (for example) Walmart’s subscription model.
Here’s what I get with Prime that I appreciate:
- Free games every month, some of which are pretty awesome
- that fast shipping
- A fairly average TV service with a few of the best exclusives out there (imo THE best but I’m a WoT-head).
- Tons of included books and I live in a family of readers
I mean, a lot of it I could get on the High Seas as it were, but it’s the law of convenience. They make it easy and there’s a value prop there for me.
If I JUST wanted free shipping, Prime would be a complete waste of money to me. But I’d still end up giving Amazon my damn paycheck because the alternatives are just not there where I live.
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The games are on their app (nope, thanks) or epic (no thanks).
Their app is surpisingly fair. No inherent DRM, just click “download” and it downloads. Epic… well, I have 100+ games I got for free, so I have it anyway. I probably have a $1000 collection of “free” games on Epic at this point.
The tv stuff is the worst I’ve seen back when i actually paid for my series/movies
With all the subscription services, I think that’s the rule. If you like what they have, you love it. If not, you go elsewhere. At least Prime is cheaper than some of them, but at the end of the day it’s about the stuff you enjoy.
For me, it’s WoT, Reacher, Good Omens on top, along with a few of their FreeVee partnership shows. But I have to respect they also have The Boys, which I’ve been meaning to get into.
I mean, to me they beat Apple+ and Hulu, lose to Disney+ and Netflix. At $11/mo, I get all those things along with the expedited shipping and the books. Convenient, but also not overpriced.
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But i doubt it just downloads and that’s it. No tracking? No phoning home? No play-statistics? Hmm
I can’t be positive. I’ve never run any network traces on it. But it doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of service DRMs. No “connecting” popup or login prompt. I’ve played Amazon-downloaded games offline. If there’s a hidden DRM, it’s more-or-less obscured.
Let’s be honest, though. Amazon gives the games away for free in an app that will never be used to sell products; and they do it as a bullet-point for Prime and to nudge people towards Luna. It’s obviously the games they get for free that they give away. I see no reason for them to do more work than they have to, plugging in a DRM.
But i never heard of anyone actually using the app instead of maybe even playing one of those freebies and then quitting the app again 😁
It’s hard to remember what games I got through Amazon vs Epic, but I clearly remember a few times I was excited about an Amazon Games offering added an Epic game.
In Amazon Games natively, my happy games are Autonauts, Terraformers, Close to the Sun (recently), and a few of those short adventure games I completed that nobody wants to spend $20 on but everyone loves to play.
I tried watching like 3 things. And one i could rent, the others pay extra and i was like “wtf? This is prime? Fuckit”
Their rent thing sucks, but I *never *see rentals in front of me when I use Prime Video on my TV. I named 3 of their big exclusives, but there’s plenty more either exclusive or just licensed. It’s never the most awesome shows of any service, but I could still find a few hours per day of video if I tried.
It just sucks that you’d need like 5 services and still can’t watch EVERYTHING
Yeah, I’m with you 5000% on that. That’s where Gabe Newall is right. I’d probably be willing to drop drop $100/mo or more on a service if it had EVERYTHING on-demand, convenient, with no DRM of any kind. And I’d never once think to download-and-unsub or distribute or anything.
…as for your experience, I say wave that damn Jolly Roger. Gimme convenience or give me death. I pay because things are convenient for me. If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be paying either.
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