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What is with this "Exclusively for Prime Members" BS Amazon has been pulling lately?

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Holy shit I hope this doesn't follow to Amazon UK. They'll lose me as a customer if they try to pull that shit.

Prime Prices are one thing, but to keep stock of an item exclusive for Prime members? Ridiculous
 
Or just pay 40 cents more from a different seller; Amazon Prime not required.

6T4AZum.png
 
Don't have prime or don't intend to get one anytime soon. Three of us sublings use my brother's for free shipping and prime video on many different devices. So suck my dick Amazon.
 
I've never seen that before OP. However I love prime.
I just preordered Fallout 4 and received a "Prime Savings $9.50 off" of the game. Frick yeah.
 
Wellington said:
OP: Sign up for free month trial, cancel when you're done with it. Problem solved.
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This is probably why they're doing this, actually. People sign up for the trial and cancel, and then Amazon loses money for providing Prime services for free.

Marty Chinn said:
Wow, what? They're going to do this right before the biggest shopping period of the year? They're either going to get hurt in sales, or they're going to have a surge in Prime subscriptions. I'm not sure which way it's going to go yet.
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The timing is no coincidence, with it being exactly a month from Black Friday. I think what they're backing on is people signing up for the trial, seeing the exclusives they have access to, and then parlaying that into a paid subscription.
 
ginger ninja said:
Don't have prime or don't intend to get one anytime soon. Three of us sublings use my brother's for free shipping and prime video on many different devices. So suck my dick Amazon.
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you know that family sharing prime benefits is explicitly permitted within their terms right
 
I find myself using amazon less and less these days now they've scraped free postage under £20 and started pushing prime prices and delivery

you can usually find a better deal anyway if you can be bothered to look
 
stump sock said:
you know that family sharing prime benefits is explicitly permitted within their terms right
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Ofcourse, that's basically my point. I ain't paying amazon a penny on prime and intend to keep it that way. I use to feel a bit cheap about it but this news helped. Also this isn't like one prime per household because we are in different household.
 
The games actually irritate me, despite being a prime member. If they just advertised the cheaper prime price right up front, I'd buy a lot more shit. Why hide a better price?
 
My purchases from Amazon have been dropping steadily for 2.5 or so years now. Stopped subbing to prime when the prices started to jump and it's been all downhill since. I still use them for some things, but they used to be our 100% goto spot. Not anymore.
 
love prime

on-demand stuff is sweet

free 2-day shipping is never not awesome

lots of options, subscriptions, payment services, so on

sleek design, easy on the eyes

awesome filters

amazon is my shit

soon < 7 hour shipping will be available every where, any time, yolo
 
Love Amazon and Prime; it's overall a great service. Buy all my music on Amazon (and it auto-downloads and then imports into iTunes for my iOS devices which then auto-download over wireless as well.)
 
FlyStarJay said:
do you mean its not happening in uk? cause it is. sometimes on their deals of the day, if your not a prime member you have to wait a while before you can buy the product
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Deals of the day is different then a actual item being locked behind prime.
 
freenudemacusers said:
why?
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Amazon has been around for ages without being a membership-only store like Sams/Costco etc, so introducing that aspect at this point seems insane to me. Offering discounts on stuff if you have Prime is awesome and is actually a potentially compelling reason to get Prime, but locking stock at ANY price completely behind a $99 a year membership is crazytown. $99 is pretty steep to folks if you're not going to be buying stuff all of the time from them (A Sam's Club membership here is less than half that, although it's not directly an apples to apples comparison). I dropped my Prime 4-5 years ago before the price increase because we just didn't order enough from them to really justify it, and we'll still buy stuff from amazon now and then but it's usually slightly off the wall stuff or maybe a game that they're price matching another retailer on that I don't feel like going out to physically get. Locking things behind Prime doesn't mean I'm going to get Prime, it means I'm just going to get it elsewhere.

If you're already using Amazon all the time this is a moot point, but if you use Amazon only occasionally or aren't spending that much there the cost of entry for Prime is too high to justify just to buy an item there, people will just go elsewhere even if it means paying slightly more. I'm sure there's a group in the middle there that this will push over the edge, but this only pushes me away as well as most of the people I know. I'm already expecting this to completely lock me out of buying things on Black Friday now, so instead of waiting to see what Amazon does on Black Friday I will be hitting up local retailers instead.
 
I buy like 80% of my shit on Amazon. What you do is buy Prime and get family members to join and circumvent the cost there. I pay 50 bucks cause I have 2 others paying for half. The video stuff is nice although not as good as Netflix. It's just so damn convenient for them to take my money.
 
Jazzy Network said:
I buy like 80% of my shit on Amazon. What you do is buy Prime and get family members to join and circumvent the cost there. I pay 50 bucks cause I have 2 others paying for half. The video stuff is nice although not as good as Netflix. It's just so damn convenient for them to take my money.
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See for me Prime is better then Netflix generally. Being from the UK Netflix only has a few exclusives I like as Sky buy up most of their stuff. Were as Amazon air programmes far before normal TV does. The only annoying thing is the UK get ripped off again by having to pay £79 a year.
 
I mean despite that I have Amazon Prime, and I do use it quite often, I am considering not renewing for another year.

Not because of this, although it adds another bullet point. I don't really get the same benefits as most people (2 Day shipping) because of where I live, but I went whatever. Should be nice for the older game and games recently released, but don't want to play quite yet in order to stagger the time between one game and another. I do feel like it has gotten bad for me on my second year though, what with one package ending up taking a month to deliver to me (post offices fault though), and the more recent lingo changes, where a delivery date doesn't mean when it's actually being delivered, but more like when they feel like shipping it. And they've really mucked up some of my more recent orders by shipping games later than the release date, regardless of when I've preordered. Meanwhile, I could just pay an additional 5 on like gamestop.com for a nintendo game, and actually get it the day of release. 2 Day shipping by just paying for their cheapest option. Of course, standard shipping on Amazon (which is what I get for free on Prime) would be 10 dollars for the uninitiated.

I feel like that moment was when I finally decided I want to look into other options for my gaming needs, as it's clear that Amazon isn't cutting it for me recently. Although my mother recently decided to start using my Amazon Prime video, a feature I personally don't care about, so I guess I need to see where that goes.
 
alr1ght said:
F4NJov4.png


Tried looking for an external HDD, found one I wanted, can't buy it due to it only available to Prime members. The kicker is that it was available for all us unwashed heathens a few days ago. It's not even an amazing price. It's only $1 more at BestBuy.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W8XXYSM/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Want John Wick on Blu-ray but don't have Prime? Too bad.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OV3VGP0/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Home Alone Blu-ray
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0145JUW0E/?tag=neogaf0e-20

I probably spend ~$500 a year on amazon, so no I'm not dropping an extra $99 so I can get the privilege to buy something from them.
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Sorry OP but...can you use that External in the PS4?
Oh yeah amazon etc but I need answers lol
 
Yep, noticed this when I was looking to buy The Wire seasons 4 and 5. I could buy season 4 but season 5 was behind Prime. Made no sense to me really. I decided to just hold out on getting them for now.
 
I am very annoyed by this. It screws me, as an international customer, over. I don't live in the USA but I do get free shipping above US$125. As such. I prefer buying things directly off Amazon as opposed to a marketplace seller which won't grant me free international shipping. The thing is though, Amazon Prime doesn't benefit me much since there is no free prime shipping across the globe and I can't access any of the digital media that they offer due to regional locks. They are basically asking their international customer to subscribe to an expensive service that does nothing except let them access things that they were supposed to already have been allowed to buy in the first place.

I just want to buy some fucking ghibli films. Totoro and Howl's are exclusive a lot of the time.
 
I treat Amazon like I do my Costco membership. Spend a little, save a lot.

Except Costco doesn't give me free movies, music, and data storage.

Prime is a good deal, fam.
 
I don't even get why they do this. Most people sign up for Prime for the shipping and the steaming junk. Anyone really going to sub up to Prime for a few exclusive deals?(Deals which you could probably find elsewhere) Just seems like a way to annoy customers and lose out on sales. But what do I know.
 
I used to buy all my games at Amazon way before they used that Prime discount for games. I now use Best Buy with Gamers Club and get them for $48 and $10 giftcards/certificates.

These days Amazon barely has good sales of their own *cough* Prime Day *cough* and just price match Best Buy, Walmart, and Target.
 
I stopped buying games on Amazon (switched to Best Buy for GCU), and still ended up having 80 different orders so far this year for various items.

I couldn't even imagine using Amazon without prime, and it's kinda ruined online shopping in general for me. I balk if I ever have to pay for shipping online.
 
Prime exclusive products suck:( Especially so since I'm not from the US and all those Prime benefits don't do anything for me.
 
thegreatchamp said:
I used to buy all my games at Amazon way before they used that Prime discount for games. I now use Best Buy with Gamers Club and get them for $48 and $10 giftcards/certificates.

These days Amazon barely has good sales of their own *cough* Prime Day *cough* and just price match Best Buy, Walmart, and Target.
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Yep almost every Amazon gaming deal now is just them matching someone else, and matching a Best Buy sale is pointless since anyone with GCU can already get the sale price plus an additional 20% off.
 
PeskyToaster said:
Prime is amazing why would you not have it.
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For me, I'm not really interested in their streaming options, don't care about their online storage, and I don't order from them nearly enough to get the most value from free two day shipping, nor is anyone else in my household. If I do order something, I just eat the shipping cost, or get free standard if the price is over $35 anyway.

I can deal with ordering from third party sellers, unless it gets to a point where there are no sellers for a particular item, but sometimes I prefer to order directly from Amazon, especially when I'm ordering more than one item at the same time. It's one thing to have Prime exclusive discounts, which I don't mind, but having Prime exclusive products (unless you go third party) doesn't sit well with me.

If it ever gets to a point where all of their good Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals are Prime only, or game preorders turn into Prime only, I'll just buy elsewhere.
 
Honestly, using Amazon without prime hasn't been worthwhile for some time now, especially since they have been collecting sales tax in most states. Outside of the occasional deal, their everyday prices have not been significantly different than the competition. I place lots of orders so for me, the convenience of fast shipping and hassle free returns is worth it. Splitting the subscription with my sister makes it a relatively trivial fee for those benefits. If you don't want to pony up for Prime, there are plenty of other places you can buy those "exclusive" items for similar prices, including 3rd party sellers on Amazon. This seems like a non-issue to me.

Also, while this one purchase may be cheaper now using jet.com, eventually you will need to pay them a membership fee also. That's kind of the basis of their business model.
 
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