It’s called regulatory capture. They have a monopoly here, so they can just raise their prices until the pain threshold starts diminishing their returns noticeably then dial it back a notch.

I ordered 76 items from Amazon in 2023. It’s mostly hobby stuff or things for my cats.

Their next story: You cannot live without avocado toast, it's a fact.

I think what a lot of people are missing in this thread is that not everyone has access to convenient physical stores and many people do have good reasons to want faster shipping.

For example, young families who don't live near a Walmart. When you realize you need a few things for the kid, it can be pretty tough to pack them up and drive however far to the store that may or may not have what you need. If they do have it, you aren't going to get reviews or many options.

My recent prime purchases have included bottle brushes, a crib mattress protector, a replacement remote for our sound bar (dog ate it), and a cheap car camera to check the baby since he started daycare last week and I'm completely paranoid about my ADHD brain leaving him in a hot car and killing him.

Did any of these need to be prime purchases? I guess not but you can see how I would want them sooner rather than later.

Walmart near me didn't have any good car cameras in my price range.

The sound bar remote was online only and was required for us to watch TV since our TV speaker doesn't work.

The bottle brushes were just convenient.

The mattress protector could have waited but would have been a gamble on ruining our very expensive crib mattress. This could have been a a Walmart purchase for sure though.

I'm not saying these were life or death purchases. They weren't and people got by just fine before Amazon. But does the convenience and reliability outweigh the monthly prime cost? For us, yes. And I admit we have become pretty dependent on it.

You would need to pay shipping on orders under 35$ - previously 25$ was the threshold. With some exceptions that require shipping be paid no matter what prime was there to give you two day shipping on all orders at no extra cost. Now they have prime video, prime gaming, prime music, and prime reading as part of it aswell. All of which have were some nice added value to anyone already paying to get the shipping. Although prime video now has ads, music and reading are really just a worse version of their subscriptions for those services - amazon music and Kindle unlimited.

Basically if you have frequent small orders on Amazon it might be cheaper to pay the monthly sub than to pay for shipping. For most people it's really not worth it, either because you don't place enough orders or they would meet the threshold for free shipping anyway.

Free two day delivery and access to prime video