Ashley Golden
Technology Editor
In an effort to compete with Netflix and Hulu Plus, the ecommerce goliath Amazon now offers monthly access to their Amazon Prime membership.
Amazon Prime offers free 2-day shipping on approved Amazon products, a free Kindle book to borrow each month from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and “unlimited instant streaming of thousands of moves and TV shows with Prime Instant Videos,” as stated on Amazon’s website. By allowing monthly access to their instant videos, Amazon hopes to pull consumers, who may have previously been dissuaded by the yearly fee, away from its competitors.
Still in the experimental stages, this new deal allows Amazon customers to sign up for Amazon Prime on a monthly basis for $7.99 per month instead of the $79 per year annual cost. While subscribing monthly will end up costing consumers more—to the tune of $95.88 per year, a $16.88 increase to yearly subscription—this new option will give users of the service more flexibility.
Yearly membership isn’t going away anytime soon, and as it is the new monthly membership isn’t universally available yet.
This has great potential for University of California Santa Barbara students and college students everywhere. Instead of paying for a full year of membership, students can buy select months during peak times of the year when the Prime service offers the most value for them, such as the beginning of each quarter when buying text books.
Doing it this way, students would only have to pay $7.99 three times, once each for Fall, Winter and Spring Quarter, for a total of $23.97 instead of $79 in membership dues. This compiled with the free shipping and cheaper textbook costs through Amazon will mean big savings for students.
Photo Courtesy of Amazon