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Click to Buy? Sorry, Amazon Prime Membership Required.

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

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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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Original Submission

• what if they do? what if they do? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:28AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:28AM (#426417)

  > I think this is a good thing for competition. And I don't mean "Now everyone will have to offer a premium membership service".

  And what if they do? What if the ten biggest stores all do the same shit. And the remaining stores don't have anywhere near the inventory capacity to compete?

  What then?

  Parent

• Re:what if they do? Re:what if they do? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:56AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @02:56AM (#426424)

  Then it dropships from the distributor or you have to wait a week or two for your shipment. Of course, there is the chance that kids aren't that patient today. I remember the days you mail-ordered and had to wait a minimum of a month to get your shipment. There were times where I would order things, get it two months later and literally not remember having ordered them to the passage of time.

  Parent

  • Re:what if they do? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @03:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @03:55AM (#426431)

    > Then it dropships from the distributor

    Oh great, another literalist retard. Name one online store with a large catalog of items that drop-ship.

    Parent