Amazon jacks up the price of Prime from $99 to $119

Free shipping comes at a cost.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Amazon Prime, the online shopping site's membership program, is going up in price.

In its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Amazon announced it was increasing the annual price from $99 per year to $119 starting May 11 for new members. The renewal rate will also jump $20 bucks starting June 16.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company hadn't increased the price of membership since March 2014 (it jumped from $79 to $99 then), and in the time since "we continue to increase the value of Prime." Membership offers, among many digital and video services, free two-day shipping. The quick shipping is available for 100 million items.

Some simple math: Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members worldwide, as CEO Jeff Bezos revealed in his annual shareholder letter. If each of those accounts go up $20 bucks that's an additional $2 billion a year. But the price increase is only for U.S. members, so it's probably closer to $1.6 billion or so.

With the added annual cost people started reflecting on the quality of the service and if it's worth paying for.

For monthly members the price already went up in January, so the shock of shelling out more money to the giant company has already worn off for some.

An Amazon spokesperson said annual members should look out for an email abut the price increase in May.

Topics Amazon

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.

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