To Prime or not to Prime

time for me to put up or shut up

This is a reminder that your Prime membership will be renewing soon. On October 03, 2022, your account will be charged $139.00 (plus any applicable taxes) for another year of Prime. You’ll keep enjoying your Prime benefits, including unlimited FREE Two-Day Delivery, unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes, exclusive savings in all US Whole Foods Market stores,ad-free access to over two million songs, unlimited photo storage, exclusive 30-minute early access to Lightning Deals, Kindle books, and more.

Yeah. I’ve been on the fence for the past few years. In 2019 (2020?) I renewed because they had a reduced price for veterans; easy call. Let’s look at their benefits list above:

• unlimited FREE Two-Day Delivery - LOL, I can’t remember the last time I got something from Amazon in two working days. It used to be that way, and getting things quickly is useful when one is traveling. Now they wait for a week or so to even ship the packages. WTH?
• unlimited streaming of thousands of movies and TV episodes - I have watched some of this, but most of the content is not restricted to Amazon. I’ll watch the last few episodes of Scrubs I have downloaded and will delete the Video app.
• exclusive savings in all US Whole Foods Market stores - LOL, 5% off at Whole Foods almost gets it down to the prices of the most expensive supermarkets. After COVID gutted the bulk foods sections there isn’t much reason to shop at Whole Paycheck.
• ad-free access to over two million songs - I don’t use it
• unlimited photo storage - I don’t use it, and don’t trust any online photo storage after the Photobucket fiasco.
• exclusive 30-minute early access to Lightning Deals - never used it
• Kindle books - I have downloaded some of the free Kindle books each month, and have found exactly one that was worth reading.
• and more - in this case, more includes 5% cashback on Prime purchases instead of 3%. Not a big deal for me since I rarely use the card there, using Amazon Rewards credits instead.

the math, according to them

$139/21 shipments = $6.62 per package (none of which were delivered within two business days). Or $1.28 per show watched. Neither of those sounds like a winner to me.

my decision

I cancelled.

my suggestions to amazon

1. respect the “fewer packages” option. This would also have knock-on effects on Locker availability
2. when a second package for the same customer arrives at a Locker use the existing slot rather than taking up two.
3. auto-credit each time a Prime package takes >2 business days to be delivered <– this would get Jeff’s attention
4. offer a choice of shipper, maybe a dollar or two per package? That way we travelers could receive at `General Delivery.
5. allow orders to be queued up on hubs/counters that are currently full. Wait for an upcoming open slot and ship.

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