Is Amazon Prime Worth It?

Is Amazon Prime worth it?  Or more accurately, Is Amazon Prime worth it to me?  This is a personal question.  What I think is worth what I paid may not apply to anyone else.  And that is perfectly fine.

I signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime.  The offer sounded good enough not to pass up.  As Amazon is increasing their subscription price from 79 to 99 dollars a year, they were offering to lock in at 79 if I sign up today.  And I get 30 days to try it out before they charge me the 79 dollars.

What does one get with Amazon Prime membership?  A lot of it is highlighted on their website, and as of this writing, they are:

• Free Two Day Shipping on millions of items
• No minimum order size
• Unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows
• Read free books each month

Let's examine the first two together.  First, I will take a look at my purchases in the last two years, and then see how much I would have spent for two day shipping if I chose that option every time.

In 2012 and 2013, I had roughly 35 orders each year.  This excludes Subscribe & Save orders.  If two day shipping costs $10 on average, I would've saved $250 dollars just by subscribing to Amazon Prime.  But the flipside of that is I don't NEED two-day shipping.  I plan ahead enough to not need something I purchase from Amazon in the next two days.  I always choose Free Super Saver Shipping.  This option, of course, has a minimum order value.  It was $25 last year, and it is now $35.  Either I wait until I reach that minimum threshold or I add something I've been looking at but was not ready to buy at that time, just to increase my order value.

So, in summary, if I really cared for two-day shipping, $79 or even $99, which is their new price, is worth it.  But right now, I don't.  It's great.  But I probably won't miss it if I went back to Super Saver Shipping.

Let's then take a look at unlimited streaming.  I can only compare this to Netflix, as I have had experience with that service.  I have not tried Hulu Plus or any other similar service.  Netflix charges $7.99 for theirs.  When it was still bundled with their DVD rental, I tried it out, and what I found was that there wasn't really any show or movie I would watch from their selection.  That was three years ago.  I don't know if I would like House of Cards, or whether I would have the time to watch yet another show.

Amazon's selection is also limited.  They may say thousands, but there are very few that I would watch.  There are old movies I've seen before and like, but I don't like them enough to watch them again.

I watched Skyfall the other night.  There is The Avengers as well.  But I've seen both before and I didn't really want to watch them again.  Also as I alluded to in another post about Netflix, streaming service is at the mercy of bandwidth.  As I was watching Skyfall, there were a few times when it stopped to buffer the movie.  And I wasn't even skipping chapters.

This service alone can be priced the same as Netflix, which is $7.99 a month.  So ninety six dollars a year out of the $99 goes to this service, if we were to compare Netflix and Amazon.  But I wouldn't pay $96 to either for such limited content.

Moving on to the free books, I'd like to highlight that these are Kindle books which can only be read on a Kindle, or through their Kindle reader app on an iPad.  I have only read two books on my Kindle.  While it is very convenient, I still like the tactile feel of turning pages.  As I said, this is a personal evaluation.  Others may like the convenience over the tactile feel, in the same manner that I finally ripped all my CDs into MP3s. It's just more convenient.

I also have only briefly checked the selections available for free.  If the movie selection is any indication, I don't know if there is anything that I would necessarily read.  For me, at least, this is probably worth five dollars a month, or sixty dollars a year.  And I wouldn't pay sixty dollars a year for the current selection.  I would rather buy real books with sixty dollars, also through Amazon.

So, overall, is it worth it to me?  I don't think so.  I would rather save my $79 dollars, use Super Saver Shipping, and buy more stuff with $79.  But I can't stress this enough: this is my own analysis based on my own situation.  Anyone can put in the time, do this themselves and find it is worth it to them.