For those who regularly buy from Amazon, the company"s Prime service is very handy indeed. For $79 a year, Prime customers enjoy free two-day shipping on over 19 million items, along with various other cool perks, such as unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows via Amazon"s Instant Video service.
But, as The Verge reports, Amazon Prime customers could soon face a price increase of up to 50%. Speaking on an earnings call with analysts, after reporting its latest quarterly financial results, the company"s CFO, Tom Szkutak, confirmed that Amazon is "considering" raising the price of an annual Prime subscription in the US by between $20 and $40.
Any price hike remains far from certain at this stage, so there"s no need to scream with rage just yet. If Amazon does eventually increase prices, it could soften the blow of higher charges by adding further features to its Prime offering. Alternatively, it could choose to introduce a lower and cheaper subscription tier that perhaps focuses solely on delivery, but Szkutak reportedly avoided discussing any changes to the company"s existing subs during the earnings call.
There is one other possibility too - Amazon may simply be floating the idea of such large price increases in order to prepare users for a much more modest price hike. An increase of $5 or $10 might well be easier for customers to accept compared with talk of prices rising by $40.
Source: The Verge | images via Amazon