Amazon’s Prime Advantage (Premium)

"Nice job, Paul," a note on the Amazon website greeted me this morning. "In the past year, with Amazon Prime you've saved more than $250 on two-day shipping and more than 40 trips to the store."

Ah boy.

I live a life of contradiction. Which is to say that I'm a hypocrite. I routinely complain about the cost of things and exhort readers to save their money for experiences that really matter. And yet, every year, I spend an unfathomable amount of money on ... stuff, for lack of a better term. I am, in many ways, the American nightmare writ large, slurping away in endless consumption.

At least I recognize the problem. And I can make an argument that my job requires me to buy technology, especially if I can't break through certain companies' PR nets and get them for review for free. And I do make this argument. Because no one likes to be thought of as a hypocrite.

So here's the truth. I really do care about saving money, even if I'm not very good at it. (Thank God for my wife, who is a more than an effective counter to my dumber side.) And I really do care, very much, about finding true value. That one is all on me.

And on that note, Amazon's Prime subscription sits right at the nexus of my contradiction.

Here is this service that lets me save money on the shipping of physical goods over the course of a year. The use of which assumes that I will buy so much stuff that paying $99 every year is actually a savings. Which, of course, it is.

As important, here is this service that provides an ever-expanding list of digital perks, added incentives for buying and then maintaining that subscription. These perks, some of which are truly impressive, really do put Amazon Prime over the top. Indeed, if you were to flip the equation here, so to speak, you may find that it makes sense to pay for Amazon Prime just for the digital services you receive. And then use the free two-day shipping on physical goods as the perk. It's very possible that Prime makes sense either way.

However you calculate it, Amazon Prime is a great value. It is, as I wrote back in May, Amazon's biggest advantage in its battle with other personal technology platform providers like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. And yet, I personally find myself underusing Amazon's Prime services for some reason. Again, hypocrite.

But in keeping with my "embrace change" philosophy, I find myself virtually ambling through Amazon's various digital services---many of which are free perks for Prime subscribers, others of which are standalone paid services---from time to time. And I feel it is helpful---for me as well as you---to review the list of services you do get, just for subscribing to Amazon Prime.

And, since this is so dense, I'm just going to go ahead and assume that this list is incomplete. That the list of perks, physical or digital, that one receives with Prime is just too voluminous for one brain to comprehend. So here are the highlights, along with some add-ons you...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC