There are currently about 25 million people signed up for an Amazon Prime membership. Anything with that large of a following needs to be explored.

Amazon Prime is is a service Amazon.com offers that allows you to get free* two-day shipping.

* The main draw is that it costs nearly $100 each year, even if you only order a tube of Chapstick. But you may order enough stuff to make the price worth it. For $99/year (recently increased from $79) you receive free two-day delivery and overnight delivery for just $3.99.

 

Other Amazon Prime Perks

There are other small perks like free streaming music, movies, and rentals from the Kindle owners’ lending library. Also with the $99/year subscription, you can add up to 4 people to your account as long as everybody’s stuff gets shipped to the same address. $99/year sounds expensive but splitting it four ways is pretty cheap = $24.75 per year per person.

Oh, and they give you a cute homepage badge to flaunt under the traditional Amazon logo:

Get Started with Amazon Prime

I signed up for the Amazon Prime free 30-day trial at checkout. All I had to do was select the Amazon Prime shipping option at checkout. And voila! But it was kind of disturbing how easy it was to get my free trial. They don’t even tell you that you’ve began a free trial. You just click that you want to get a free trial at checkout and bam… free shipping. They probably hope you will just get used to free shipping and not worry about the annual chunk they take from your bank account.

After you signup, you’ll see a charge from Amazon.com right away. Don’t worry, though. The $1 charge is to test that you have given them a valid debit/credit card number. Kind of like what PayPal does to verify a bank account. They will debit the charge within a day. This is common practice.

 

How to End Your Relationship with Amazon Prime

 

Step 1: From the Amazon homepage, click highlighted

 

Step 2: Click highlighted

Step 3: Click highlighted

A screen with then flash up that says you will still have access to Prime until your trial is over.

 

Did I Enjoy Amazon Prime?

No. After my trial period ends, I’ll happily go back to free standard shipping on orders over $35. And I actually am a pretty big Amazon fanboy. I use it almost exclusively for my online shopping. One thing that did annoy me a little was I order some items using my Prime shipping option. A day later I got an email saying that there was a shipping delay and my items may be a week late. I wasn’t given any more of any explanation than that. I needed those gifts for Christmas so this left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I’ll still continue to use Amazon. And although Amazon Prime wasn’t worth it for me, I encourage you to go through the free trial. Just don’t forget to opt out before the trial period ends and you’re charged nearly $100!

Finally 25 million people have signed up for Amazon Prime, so even though I don’t like it, a lot of people do. If you’re interested in signing up this link will take you directly to their 30 day free trial page.