[codegeek]

For a heavy amazon user such as myself, not much difference. Still very happy to continue using amazon. The math is simple. We probably have 5-10 shipments on average a month coming in. Most of it is for our kids (newborn/1 year) and includes subscriptions for milk, diapers etc. Just recently, my wife added another subscription for stuff like toilet paper, napkins. Without amazon prime, you might end up paying $3-5 on average. So that's almost $30-50 per month. So over a year, you might pay almost $500 in shipping if you use amazon like we do. So really a no-brainer. Not to mention the super fast shipping (many times next day) and hassle free returns for the most part.

I hate driving to a store just to buy household items that require no brain or thought process. Actually wait, I lied. I have even bought my TV, computer desk on amazon recently. So our visit to the "stores" is now pretty much limited to grocery. If I could, would buy everything online. Thanks Amazon Prime, you have a long term member. Please continue to do the great things that you do. Really waiting for the amazon grocery delivery service /fanboy

EDIT: I got curious and checked my last 6 months order history [0]. We had 73 orders in just last 6 months. For entire 2013, we had 85 orders.

[0] http://imgur.com/5IvQtQG

[icefox]

You get free shipping with orders over $35. After I heard they were going to increase the price I did a quick check on last year and found that I buy more than I thought on Amazon and if I just let stuff accumulate in the cart for on average less than a week I would have a cart that had free shipping. The vast majority of orders did not need to get to my door in two days. (A common example was sure it was nice to get a book quickly, but I wasn't able to read it until the weekend anyway.) So I won't renew my subscription and just let things accumulate for a few days at a time. The other thing I have noticed is that the last year I have been finding things cheaper on other sites, but continued to buy from Amazon only because of prime, now that reason goes away and I can support other on-line purchasing options. The most amusing thing about this was that it was only because of the price increase that I looked into my purchasing history. If they hadn't said anything I most likely would have let it continue auto renewing.

*The other two benefits both don't benefit me: video (I have netflix which last when I compared last fall is better) and the cheap upgrade for overnight (both times I have used this and really needed something it failed to get there overnight).

[odonnellryan]

Many times next day is right. Amazon has no reservations with speed. Even if you say 2-day, it might be there the next day.

[mhb]

I'm considering whether it's worth it. I thought that, for orders over $25, shipping was free anyway. With the amount of ordering you do, wouldn't there be little advantage to having Prime, especially if you tried to aggregate your items?

[codegeek]

You will be surprised that my wife buys items worth $2.99 from amazon at times. Sometimes, it is not possible to bunch orders together because it is all "on demand". Because we have prime, we don't care about whether it is 1 item or 5 items in same shipment. So our orders could look like ($2.99, 1 item )on one day while it could be ($40+$6, 2 items) another day. Other than fixed subscriptions, our buying pattern is very random.

And Prime is not just about free shipping, but it is a lot more about "fast" shipping. I am not sure about non prime but I doubt that free shipping will be 2 day or less like Prime.

[caw]

It's nice to not aggregate your items. I looked at my prime history, and it's a combination of books, music, and household items that don't always meet the $35 free shipping (used to be $25 until Q4 last year). For example, my most recent purchase was a $15 book that I got on 2 day shipping.

Also the way free supersaver shipping works is that you wait 3 days or until the warehouse is low on work, whichever comes first, before they pick your order. You then have to wait for 3-5 day ground shipping. You can pay for shipping at any speed to avoid the product picking delay.

[dbpatterson]

Just as a side note, the over $25 shipping is the slowest they can find. So if it is all books, it is media mail (which is _really_ slow), and otherwise it is whatever the slowest that UPS does (3-5 days), vs two day shipping on everything.

[tzs]

And if the slowest they can find is not slow enough, they will insert a delay.

It used to be that when you ordered something with free shipping, they shipped it fairly quickly, so how long it took you to get it mostly depended on the speed of the carrier. I would often get free shipped items in one or two days if they came from the Amazon warehouse in my city.

Then they changed that. If I ordered something with free shipping that was going to ship from the warehouse in my city, they would wait several days before shipping it, and then the carrier would deliver it in one or two days, just ensuring that the item would not arrive earlier than the advertised arrival window.

[schrodinger]

The free shipping isn't 2 day I don't think