shoppers were Prime members, after more than doubling its subscriber base in a little more than two years. The research also indicated that 47 percent of Amazon’s U.S. That implies that those who had shared benefits with multiple others ahead of the changes will remain grandfathered in until they take action (like removing the additional accounts), or until their Prime membership comes up for renewal.Īmazon doesn’t detail how many subscribers it has in the Prime membership program, but the most recent estimates put it at 44 million. And some said that when they removed one of the four people they were sharing their benefits with, they could no longer add them back. On the Slickdeals forums, for instance, members have noted the updated terms appearing on their accounts. It’s how I first came to join Prime, in fact, and since then, I’ve shared Prime with friends who were on the fence about paying the $99 annual fee for Amazon Prime’s membership program.Īmazon didn’t make an official announcement about the changes to Prime benefit sharing or Amazon Household, but Prime customers are figuring it out for themselves. Over the years, many Prime members took advantage of the sharing feature as a way to introduce others to the benefits of using Prime. It seems that businesses will instead have to join the Amazon Business program, introduced earlier this year, which provides free, two-day shipping on orders of $49 or more. The updated text doesn’t mention anything about sharing Prime memberships among co-workers at a small business.
If you purchase a Prime membership for a small business, you may invite up to four co-workers to shop with this corporate account.”įree trial or paid Amazon Prime members can share certain Amazon Prime benefits with one other adult by forming an Amazon Household. “Free or paid Amazon Prime members can share their shipping benefits with up to four additional family members living in the same household. Or more simply put, Amazon Household has replaced Prime Sharing for anyone who had yet to set up this option.īefore the changes, this is how Amazon Prime sharing used to work (via ): (Clearly those requirements were intended to limit sharing to just family, but asking a friend for their birthday was easy enough, many realized.)
And households could share their shipping benefits before, too.īut now that “Amazon Household” program is basically absorbing the other Prime shipping benefit sharing option, which before allowed any Prime member to share access to Amazon’s free, two-day shipping with others, provided you knew their email and birthday. The company in September of last year introduced “Family Library” as a way for household members to share their content purchases. The concept of “Amazon Household” itself is not new, we should point out. They’re both able to configure the family’s shared library of books, apps, and games, too, and can manage parental controls on Amazon FreeTime for the children associated with the account. The two adults will also need to authorize each other to use the credit and debit cards associated with their Amazon accounts, which can then be used to make purchases on Amazon in the future. But Prime members with Amazon Mom can share their 20 percent diaper and 15 percent Baby Registry discounts. Meanwhile, explains Amazon, Amazon Student Prime members and other invited guests of Prime members can’t share their benefits. In addition to the two adults, each household can also have up to four “child” profiles, which makes it easier for family members to share Kindle books across devices.
Following the update to the rules, two adults can now share their Prime benefits, which include the free, two-day shipping, Prime Instant Video streaming, access to Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Prime Early Access and Prime Exclusive deals.