6 Months Later: Amazon Prime

I was able to get a free 6 month trial of Amazon Prime thanks to the fact that I'm a college student. I figured I'd talk about it, and whether it's worth subscribing to. The short answer is I think it's stupid. I don't recommend getting Amazon Prime at all. For me, the main things I wanted Amazon Prime for was the two-day shipping and Prime's version of Netflix. Neither are necessary for me, so paying for a subscription is not worth it. Honestly, I think Prime overpromises and underdelivers on the benefits. It's not that it's cracked up to be.

I'll talk about the video service first. Prime's video service is honestly kind of lacking. The only show I wanted to watch that was a Prime exclusive was the Man in the High Castle, but after reading the book, I decided against it. Prime has some original content, but it's not nearly as good as Netflix's shows. They've got some movies too, but again, not anywhere close to the selection of Netflix or Hulu. Prime's actual video site is nowhere near as good as Netflix's either. Netflix wins in every category when it comes to video streaming. Prime is not worth it just for the video service. Though I doubt people get Prime just for the videos. If you've been on the edge about what video streaming service to get, Prime is not the one. Go with Netflix or Hulu.

The big thing people want Prime for is two-day shipping. Two-day shipping is honestly so wasteful. It helped me when I needed a few last minute things for my apartment before I moved in. Other than that, there's not many instances when I absolutely must have two-day shipping. I thought it'd help me with my textbooks, yet all of the cheaper textbooks aren't sold by Amazon of course. If anything, it spoiled me for all the other times I order things online. I had one issue with something not shipping with the two-day shipping, so it doesn't work 100% of the time anyways. If you're that impatient that you need two-day shipping, you really ought to go to a physical store. I notice that once people get Prime, they tend to buy a lot more things since they think it is more convenient. That was not the case for me. I didn't feel like I needed to buy a bunch of things knowing that I had faster shipping. It's not really free two-day shipping, since most people have to pay the subscription fee. I don't know the exact fees, but I do think they just raised the normal subscription price.

There's some other benefits, but I think these are the two most well-known. Being a Prime member gets you access to exclusive deals on Prime day and other times. Again though, it's just encouraging people to buy things they don't need. There was a controversy that sellers were setting prices higher right before the sales and then discounting them to the normal price to make it look like a better deal. This is not an Amazon exclusive business practice by any means. Just know that sometimes deals are not as good as they seem. They've got some sort of Kindle deals, but I could never figure out what they were. They weren't clear and made it seem like an additional service you had to pay for.

All in all, I would absolutely NOT recommend you subscribe to Amazon Prime. It's overhyped and not worth the price. I'd much rather wait a little longer for shipping and pay for Netflix or Hulu for better shows/movies. I'm happy I got to take advantage of some of the benefits for free. I can easily survive my life without it. If you thought it might be worthwhile to get, it's not. Save your money every month and buy yourself some nice new gear. Thanks for looking!