4 ways to avoid the Amazon Prime price increase happening on May 11
If you haven't yet heard, Amazon is jacking up the price of annual Prime memberships by $20 starting Friday, May 11.
Prime provides access to Amazon Music Unlimited and Amazon Channels (including HBO and Showtime), Prime Video, Twitch Prime, and tons of quick shipping options on over 100 million items — plus free two-day shipping. So yeah, it's definitely a sweet service worth paying for.
The bottom line: If you want to keep Amazon Prime and all those glorious perks, you're about to fork over $119 per year instead of $99.
Or are you?
We happen to have a few ways that you can get out of this price increase, at least for the next 12 months. Here's how to save 20 bucks:
1. Give the gift of Prime...to yourself
For those who are already Prime members, you can attempt to give the gift of Prime — a service where Amazon allows you to pay the annual membership fee for someone else for a year — to yourself. To try to make sure you lock in the $99 price, you'll need to send the gift to yourself by midnight on May 10.
After that, let your current Prime membership expire and remember to turn off auto-renew. When your existing membership is up, just redeem the gift membership that you sent to yourself and voilà: You have another year of the membership at $99, and you've weaseled your way out of spending an extra $20.
Disclaimer: This might not work, but a lot of people are thinking it will. If it doesn't, you're not completely at a loss: You'll just pay the $20 difference for another annual membership or you'll have a $100 Amazon gift card in your pocket. (When you give Prime to someone who already has a membership, the gift can be exchanged for an Amazon.com Gift Card in the value of the original gift purchase price.) We're pretty sure you'll find something to spend that money on in about 10 seconds.
2. Renew your Prime membership before May 11
If you're not already an Amazon Prime member — or you need to renew your membership soon anyway — you still have a few days to squeeze your way in there before the price is officially increased. If you renew or sign up for Prime before May 10 is over, you're essentially locking yourself into the membership for $99 for the next year.
The only issue: Amazon will offer (slash force) you to do a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime before they make you pay. If you're not a member yet and haven't used your free trial yet, we're not sure if they'll charge you the old price or the new price after the 30 days is up. (I mean, the site will say "After your free trial, Prime is just $99/year," until the official price increase, so hopefully starting your trial before May 11 locks you in, too.) Worth a shot though.
3. Sign up for a monthly Prime membership instead
If you've realized you don't really need everything that comes with Prime every single month of the year, you can opt for a $12.99 monthly membership instead. Honestly, this is pretty perfect for those who really only use the Prime for the shipping and who don't care about the music and TV stuff.
For big gifting months like November and December, you can secure your fast and free shipping — and for the rest of the year, just choose a designated Prime month to make all the purchases or your "to-get" list. Spending $40-ish per year sounds a whole lot nicer than $119, am I right?
4. Share a Prime membership with your significant other or roommate
If you already live together and share an address, there's no reason why you can't hack the system a bit and share a membership. Since Amazon allows you to add multiple cards to your account and ship to any address, it's pretty easy to share an account with someone if you don't mind giving them access to your purchase history, credit card, and Wishlist. (It's called trust, people.) Splitting the $119 membership will work out to be $59.50 per person, but join before May 11 and it's just $49.50 per person.
Final note: If you have a 4-person grandfathered account, we wouldn't suggest trying any of these, since when your membership expires at any point (which all of these methods require) it is not going to be worth it at all as you'll lose two of the accounts.
Good luck out there.
Topics Amazon
Leah Stodart is a Philadelphia-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable where she covers and tests essential home tech like vacuums and TVs, plus eco-friendly hacks. Her ever-evolving experience in these categories comes in clutch when making recommendations on how to spend your money during shopping holidays like Black Friday, which Leah has been covering for Mashable since 2017.
