[JadeNB]

> More specifically, the total revenue of ads + the people willing to pay $3/month is greater than the revenue lost when people cancel their service due to ads

The bundling makes cancellation particularly unlikely: you can't (or at least I don't know how to) cancel the Prime Video part of the Prime package alone, so there's no way to show your dissatisfaction with this short of cancelling the entire Prime membership. Which this latest push, however small on its own, has been enough to get me finally to consider doing, but it's still tough.

[drtz]

I consider myself lucky to have discovered how little value Prime has for shipping a few years ago when Target had a free Shipt promotion. I learned a couple things pretty quickly after I dropped Prime:

1. In most cases my Amazon orders took about the same amount of time to get to my house as they did with Prime: 3-4 days

2. Amazon has some terrible dark patterns. For example, on the product page you always see the lowest priced shipping option (usually free), but at checkout it defaults to paid shipping. It's really easy to accidentally pay an extra $5.99 for shipping, often with the same estimated arrival it would've had with free shipping.

[neogodless]

Personally I find the shipping benefits of Prime vastly overrated. I just got a free trial of Prime, and they promised 2 day shipping... but it took 4 days. Why would someone pay for that? I tend to let items accumulate to hit the free shipping minimum and then order. Still tends to come in 2-4 days regardless.

[sgc]

Where I live Prime is 1-2 days on almost everything. It is a pretty compelling service for many people, of course.

[al_borland]

I canceled Prime over this ad thing, and what I noticed was they seem to ship packages as the same speed, but they let the order sit for a few days before fulfilling it. It makes it seem like they find the efficiencies from treating every package the same during packing and shipping worthwhile, so they just hold the order in a queue for a few days before releasing it as a punishment for not being a Prime user.

I could be reading that wrong, but it was sure how it looked with my first few non-Prime orders.

[brewdad]

I have a warehouse serving our entire metro area five miles from my house. Shipping takes two days after Amazon sits on my order for 2-3 days.

Their drivers are also the worst. The driver that covers my area tends to throw packages a good 10 feet at my door. Needless to say, Amazon is pretty much my last choice option these days.

[rrr_oh_man]

> The driver that covers my area tends to throw packages a good 10 feet at my door.

You don’t want to know what happens in warehouses…

[int_19h]

Efficient market™ is efficient.

[johnnyo]

Amazon shipping in my area used to be 2 days, but no longer.

Now it’s generally 4 working days, sometimes more.

Almost all the services I’ve used Amazon for in the past keep getting worse. Prime shipping, video, Amazon music, etc

[gknoy]

I'll just watch even fewer things on Prime, I guess. Everything about the UI and watching experience seems worse than Netflix, but then ... that's been worsening recently as well in ways I can't quantify.

[avitous]

Same here. I had an additional cable channel subscription through Prime, which I've now cancelled, as I don't wish to tolerate any advertising in my video stream, so I will simply stop watching any video on Prime. And as you pointed out, the quality of Prime video offerings has been in decline of late.

Why won't I leave Prime (yet)? Because I have an "Amazon" visa credit card, with an admittedly serious 5% permanent discount on all purchases from Amazon (as well as companies they own, such as Whole Foods.) I won't stop purchasing products through Prime just yet; am simply careful to avoid anything that looks problematic, price-gouged, or needing aftersale support, and the discount lock-in is too attractive to me to ignore for now. But video? I can always find it elsewhere. Same goes for "FreeVee" because "Free with ads" isn't free.

[brewdad]

FYI, if you cancel Prime but want to keep that card, they will downgrade you to a blue Amazon branded card that still gets 3% back at Amazon. I don't know if you still get any discount at Whole Foods since I might only go there about once a year at most.

So if Prime is failing you in other ways, don't feel like you need to keep it to keep your discount.

[Corrado]

I'm in the same position. I originally subscribed to Prime for the shipping benefits. We also started using the Prime Photos platform for our photo storage and sharing. Then I got an "Amazon" CC and I really enjoy/use the 5% cash-back program. I even have a FireTV Cube and outfitted several people with FireTV devices.

However, I'm seriously reconsidering my choices. Almost my entire family is in the Apple ecosystem and we recently purchased an Apple TV device to replace a FireTV, and I must say that it is a much better experience. And iCloud is a better photo/video sharing platform for us than Prime Photos ever was. Really, the only thing keeping me subscribed to Prime is the cash-back program.

As for Prime Video, it has always been the most crappy of the video streaming options. It's always frustrating when the things that I want to watch are not included with Prime and require a purchase or rental. And now that there are ads and lower quality, the chance that I'll watch anything on that platform is steadily declining.

[neogodless]

Don't forget that even without Prime you get 3% back on all Amazon purchases. So Prime is just a +2% on that discount.

[PaulHoule]

I canceled my Prime a while back when AMZN's started quoting 5 day delivery to my location, though on the rare times when I do order something from AMZN it often takes 7 days.

The thing is I live less than 3 hours from a big warehouse (people who live in the same ZIP code as one of those warehouses often get 5-day shipping) but it seems that the residents of Upstate New York and New England are frequently treated as unpeople when it comes to facilities and infrastructure.