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posted by janrinok on Sunday November 13 2016, @11:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-just-want-your-money dept.

Maybe some of have already seen this, but I hadn't seen it until it bit me in the ass today. Amazon is listing some of its standard products as Prime only, meaning only Prime members are allowed to buy it. Prime is an Amazon subscription service that gives you free 2-day shipping (to your local post office, not to your door), streaming services, and a bunch of other 'benefits'. They have gone to great lengths to push this $99 a year service on people, including delaying normal shipments and preventing you from buying what you want. I no longer qualify to reorder a SSD I bought last week since I'm not willing to become a member (nor can I try the 30 trial as I did that back when Prime was new). All that SSD research time wasted.

We were worried about net neutrality. It seems in the future we'll have to worry about subscribing to every store we want to do business with just to have the privilege of buying from them. I'll bet money within a couple years you won't qualify for sales like Cyber Monday unless you're a subscriber. I can easily see that spreading to every store: "Pay $10 at the door for big savings on all our in-store, on sale items." Stores used to give you discounts for going to them, now you'll have to pay for the honor of shopping there.

Here's an article about it.


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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday November 14 2016, @02:14AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Monday November 14 2016, @02:14AM (#426411) Homepage Journal

    The anonymous poster assumes that Amazon is the only place you can buy an SSD. Guess what? THEY AREN'T THE WORLD'S ONLY STORE. It makes me think of an illustrator I met at Worldcon who asked me to review a book he had illustrated at Amazon. It already had thirty reviews, so I went to B&N. Not a single review of the book was there.

    Sam's club has been operating like that for decades and the sky hasn't fallen yet.

    I came to say something similar. Amazon doesn't meet your needs? You can usually buy it for less elsewhere -- especially if you have Prime. This is because Amazon prices their "Prime" (Read: free 2 day or faster shipping) at right around the price+fast shipping of other sellers on their site who will ship quickly. Given that Amazon will generally bend over backwards if there's a shipping issue, buying from them often becomes the preferred option.

    Given that pricing dynamic however, it almost always ensures that there are other sites that will be less expensive.

    tl;dr: Don't want to join Prime? Then don't. You can buy it elsewhere for less anyway.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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