Regular customers of the online giant Amazon found an unpleasant e-mail in their inboxes on Tuesday morning: The Prime subscription service will be 29 percent more expensive, costing all customers who pay for it annually in advance from September 89 instead of the previous 69 euros. From September, Prime will cost EUR 8.99 instead of EUR 7.99 for customers who pay monthly.
Compared to US customers, German users get away relatively cheaply. In the US, Amazon recently raised the price to $139. Nevertheless, Amazon is still pulling the prices up well above the inflation rate: the group last adjusted the prices at the beginning of 2016, since then the consumer price index of the Federal Statistical Office has risen by 16 percent.
Accordingly, many customers are not very happy on social media - and publish, for example on Twitter, the screenshots of their Prime cancellation - and comment accordingly angrily.
If you want to cancel, you can do so at Amazon at any time – there are no deadlines like there are with mobile phone contracts. Those who cancel directly now remain a member until the next payment is due and continue to enjoy the benefits of the program.
But especially with Prime, it is worth calculating the termination precisely despite the price increase - and possibly saving money with a trick: If you are currently still paying monthly, you should immediately switch to the annual payment for August and thus pay the old annual price of once again 69 euros, so it will not be affected by the increase until September 2023.
Another way to save on Prime fees is to take out the little-known discount offer for students, trainees, and people who are exempt from broadcasting fees or have a social pass. They all only pay half the annual fee.
Anyone for whom these tips are of no use must now carefully calculate whether Prime is still worthwhile for them at the new price. However, this is difficult to assess, since Prime combines different services and discounts like no other online offer.
The calculation is easiest for those users who use Prime solely because of the shipping waiver on Amazon. Without Prime, you would have to pay either 2.99 or 3.99 euros for all orders below a value of 29 euros.
For express deliveries one day after shipping, which are included in the Prime subscription, Amazon charges 4.99 euros per delivery. So if you order a lot of odds and ends, you will have recovered the subscription fee from the 23rd order on Amazon, and correspondingly sooner with express delivery.
But the hidden costs of Prime may be even higher: Since Prime customers tend to always search Amazon's website first, especially for smaller purchases, they compare prices less often - as market research from the USA shows - and therefore tend to pay more for their purchases.
According to a study by the American University of Beirut, they are also more impulsive in their purchases and click the buy button more often. Amazon's Prime may cost customers more than they realize or think.
But Prime not only offers advantages in terms of shipping costs, but also provides a whole range of other digital services and discounts with cooperation partners, which make the calculation significantly more difficult.
This includes the Prime Video streaming service, which competes with Netflix. Although Amazon has recently been able to deliver fewer hit series than Netflix, the service more often delivers Hollywood films, also because the group was able to buy the Hollywood studio MGM with all its film rights a year ago. But if you still have to work through an overflowing Netflix watch list anyway, you can do without it.
In addition, there is Amazon Prime Music, the music streaming service included in Prime: The service has a significantly limited music catalog compared to full music streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music.
Most streaming users will already pay for their own subscription for music somewhere else or maybe even with Amazon themselves, so they can ignore this offer when calculating their personal benefits.
For book lovers, there is also a range of e-books included in the Prime service, but the selection is very limited. Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themselves whether this is worth 89 euros to the user.
The calculation is further complicated by cooperation with other platforms. Anyone who is a customer of the hotel booking portal Booking.com in addition to Amazon Prime currently receives a ten percent discount in the form of travel credit, depending on the booking.
So if you are currently booking a two-week summer vacation on the platform, you should quickly link your Amazon account beforehand – and then often get the Prime costs back for several years. You can of course always cancel afterwards.
If you want to turn your back on Amazon completely, you can look for alternatives at other online retailers. Some German providers have followed suit with their own loyalty programs. These can be particularly worthwhile for customers who do not want to use streaming offers.
At Otto.de, the program is called "Up Plus": For ten euros a year, there are no delivery fees. The dealer also promises a ten-euro voucher for his birthday – the loyalty program is therefore mathematically free. However, customers bind themselves to a provider that has significantly fewer external dealers on its platform than Amazon. Frequent buyers could quickly make up for the cost advantage of free shipping with higher prices on the Otto platform.
Zalando also has an offer for frequent buyers, called Zalando Plus. For 15 euros a year, it's all about faster deliveries, sometimes using our own couriers. The fashion retailer often delivers the next evening. There are no immediate cost advantages.
Other retailers offer free shipping with no annual fee for those customers who buy a lot and earn points - such as H
