What Are The Benefits Of Amazon Prime Membership? There are plenty, but it depends on one major thing; do you purchase a lot on amazon? If you have a newborn baby, then you know you need amazon prime or else you are wasting your precious money. Why is that? It’s because with prime, you open the doors to so many discounts, coupons, and savings that the prime membership immediately pays for itself. You can literally save a lot of money even if you are purchasing pampers diapers.

Subscribe and Save option

Normally, you can use subscribe and save (when available) to get 5% discount off of your purchase, by agreeing to have regular timely shipments sent to your door. This can save a lot of money when it comes to disposable diapers, diaper rash cream, baby wipes, etc (since you need a lot of them).

With prime, you can unlock extra savings by subscribe and saving to five products for the first month. Once you do this, you get an extra 20% discount off of your purchase.

Amazon Free Two Day Shipping

Amazon prime offers free two day shipping. Many items for sale on amazon are available for free two day shipping as long they are labeled “prime”, which is almost every item on amazon.

With prime membership, anything shipped by amazon will be guaranteed free two day shipping as long you chose that option.

The only exception is if the item you are buying is an “add-on-item”. For those orders, you need to buy a total of $25 (including the price of the add on item itself) and you can get free shipping. If you are confused as to what I mean by that, check out the picture below and you will get a better understanding.

In this purchase, I had two add on item and one normal item. The result was that I barely went over the $25 requirement. The two day shipping is free.

Credits For No Rush Shipping

If you order at least once a week on amazon, then you should try their no rush shipping which is available to prime members.

Personally, I do not find no rush shipping very helpful since I only need to buy from amazon once a month. No rush shipping is a feature in which you get $1 credit per order for not rushing your shipment from amazon despite having other options.

This might sound very nice, but that $1 does not apply to the order you currently made. It is more like receiving a $1 coupon. This $1 coupon is only allowed to be used for certain purchases from the prime pantry, and it can expire. That’s why I normally ignore this option.

Personally I would prefer to receive my merchandise faster rather than getting a $1 coupon that I might forget to use later on. However, like I said, if you order a lot from amazon, this option is definitely viable for you since you can probably earn enough credits for it to be beneficial.

Free Same-Day Delivery

If free two day shipping already sounds pretty awesome, then how about free same day delivery. That’s right. For qualified purchases, If you order before 12pm in the morning (11:30am for example), you can have what you want by 9pm the very same day. If you ordered after 12pm, then the earliest you will get your item is the day after.

This feature is very helpful if you are ordering things like school supplies or books for your kids. Schools demands a lot of projects, and homeworks that requires students to bring their own school supplies. This would have been very helpful to me if I was going to school back then.

There are limitations to free same day delivery. First of all, it has to be labeled “Free One Day” like I show you in the picture above. It also has to be available to the area you live in. If you want to know if your area qualifies for it, you can check your zip code here. You also have to purchase items on amazon that qualifies for it.

Another limitation is that if your purchases aren’t over $35, then you can not have the one-day delivery for free. You will have to pay $5.99 delivery just like prime pantry.

Prime Now

If free same day delivery is still too slow for you, there’s a feature called prime now. If you order now, you literally get it within roughly two hours. That’s almost as fast as ordering a takeout. Just like the same day delivery feature, prime now requires a $35 minimum purchase in order for your order to be delivered for free.

Just like the “same day delivery”, only certain products qualify for prime now services. If you want to see what they are, go check out their prime now page. You might be wondering why prime now exists when you have “same day delivery”.

Apparently, items available for same day delivery aren’t necessarily available for prime now. Some items are available for both of them, but usually they sell different things. Same day delivery feature tends to be available for a lot of different products on amazon. In other words, same day delivery has more variety of products. On the other hand, prime now mostly applies to food or other things that can be consumed immediately.

For example, on same day delivery you might order something like a novel, and kindle. These are products that is not “one time use only”. However, on prime now, you might order something like eggs, baking flour, dishwashing liquid, tissue paper.

Even though I describe it that way, there’s really no definite distinction as to what you can or can not buy with prime now versus same day delivery. To be honest, I think it depends more on luck. It depends on whether the thing you are buying happen to fall under prime now or same day delivery. If you have prime membership, then both of these features are included so it doesn’t really matter.

Prime now also has another feature, which is to allow you to order from a variety of restaurants. However, delivery for restaurants are not free even if your orders are hundreds of dollars. They also charge a tip in which you can remove by clicking the edit button next to it as I have shown you in the picture above.

As you can see, ordering from restaurants with prime now is very expensive. It is definitely not worth it. They charge you tax, delivery fee, and a tip if you forgot to edit it out. Out of all the amazon prime features, this is one feature I do not recommend unless you have lots of money to burn. There’s really no reason you should use this when you can call your local restaurant, order take out and waive the delivery fee with a large order.

Prime pantry

You can buy household products like groceries, beverages, and have it shipped to your door. It is a cool feature that allows you to buy household items online without traveling. You might be wondering, then how is it any different from purchasing from amazon normally? Amazon already sells household products and delivers it to your door.

There is one major difference. Prime pantry doesn’t require you to purchase a specific item in bulk. Let’s say that you wanted to let your little one try some gummy bear vitamins, but you don’t want to buy several of them at once. Usually the reason you want to do this is because you are not sure if it your child will like the taste of it. So rather than wasting money by buying it in bulk, you would rather try one and see if it works for you. This is the whole point of prime pantry.

Even though I did mention that prime pantry allows you to buy individual items, I highly recommend against just buying a single item. You should buy different items and stack it together. Why is that? Prime pantry boxes charges a shipping fee of $6 per order (there’s a limit quantity that $6 will cover. I will explain more later). That’s why while you are at it, you should also buy your laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, lotions, etc.

You might feel that the extra $6 shipping fee is totally unfair since you already paid for prime membership. However, business is business and prime is very cheap if you think about all the features that it includes. Not to mention, when you use prime pantry, Amazon have to go through the extra effort of packing individual items together for you rather than simply shipping it to you in bulk. However, you don’t have to throw in the towel yet, amazon also offers a way for you to get rid of this $6 shipping fee.

This is another feature that a lot of people miss. In prime pantry, there’s a specific “section” known as buy five save $6 that allows you to purchase five items and get $6 off. If you check that section to see if there’s something you like or something you would normally need to buy anyway, you can literally waive the $6 shipping fee.

You might be thinking that in the buy five item section, amazon would be selling a bunch of crap that nobody wants. That is absolutely not true. Let me show you a list of five items I got:

  • Aquaphor Baby Advanced Therapy Healing Ointment (3oz) – my baby’s diaper ointment, and I also use it for my dry skin
  • Eucerin Baby Eczema Relief Body Creme (5 Oz) – I just want to try it and see if it is good
  • Head and Shoulders Classic Clean Anti-Dandruff (32 oz) – I use head and shoulders all the time for my dandruff problem
  • Mucinex 12 Hr Chest Congestion Expectorant (40 count) – I get sick rather easily. This is a must for me personally.
  • Heinz Fridge-Fit Ketchup Bottle (64 oz) – Cooking sphagetti, meatballs, other stuff. I have a lot of uses for this.

This is stuff that I either normally need, or I need for future purposes anyway. Therefore, the $6 shipping fee is waived while I got what I want.

In the end, it only took up 12% of my pantry box limit. I still had a lot of room to spare. The pantry box limit is another thing I need to mention. That’s right, prime pantry has a box limit as I mentioned earlier. In other words, there’s a limit to how much you can buy at once per box.

As I mentioned earlier, each of these boxes have a $6 flat rate shipping fee. The limit of this is based on a combination of product weight and product volume. Once you fill up a pantry box beyond the limit, the second box (in other words, the extra $6 shipping fee) is automatically charged to your credit card.

Let me give you a couple of solid examples and you will understand what I mean. Let’s say that you are buying three giant gallon bottles of tide detergent, combined with two large packs of canned soda. At this point, your prime pantry box is almost full. If you buy anything more on top of this, it will end up in the second prime pantry box, and you will have to pay another flat rate shipping fee of $6. This makes sense because all of these items are pretty heavy so their total weight would fill up the prime pantry box.

However, there’s another way you can fill up your prime pantry box. You can buy items that are light as a feather and you can still fill your prime pantry box with it. Let’s say that you only wanted to buy some paper towel rolls. Due to their volume (the amount of space they take up),you only need to purchase four rolls and your prime pantry box would be almost full. If you purchased any more, you will need a second prime pantry box which costs an extra $6.

In order to avoid paying for extra shipping costs that you don’t want, always pay attention to the amount of boxes you already bought the top right corner. As you can see my items are at “21.2%”. However, amazon is talking about my second prime pantry box. The first one is already at 100%.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that amazon prime pantry is a separate order from your normal amazon purchase. Let’s say for example, you added a laptop to your cart, then you went to shop at prime pantry. The laptop will have its own shipment and prime pantry will have a separate shipment. They never ship together. This is important because it explains why prime’s free shipping doesn’t apply to prime pantry. This also means that prime now, same day delivery, and two day free shipping does not apply to prime pantry.

Let’s recap what you learned about amazon prime pantry::

  • Allows you to buy individual items so you can try different things
  • Buying household items so that they are delivered to your door
  • There’s a $6 delivery fee per box
  • You can waive the $6 fee if you purchase from the buy five save $6 section even if you bought a five of the same item or combination of different items altogether
  • The box limit is based on weight and volume combined, so always pay attention to the amount of boxes you are buying
  • Prime pantry is a separate order from regular amazon purchases.

What other features does amazon prime offer? There’s still more.

Release-Date Delivery

Amazon prime has this feature in which you can pre-order things and receive it the same day that it is released. This is cool if you want to be able to receive a new product the moment it is release without waiting in line to get it.

If your delivery doesn’t come on time, you can complain to amazon and have your prime membership extended for one month. You simply have to contact amazon and they will give it to you. Amazon is very kind and they are willing to maintain their reputation despite their losses, so please do not abuse this feature if you can. Of course, if your delivery is truly late when you needed it in a timely manner, then you definitely have every right to demand they compensate you for it. However, with their service quality, I would say that such a situation is quite rare.

Prime Video

With prime membership, prime video would be included. However, it does not appeal to me very much personally. Even though amazon claims to have thousands of video titles for you to watch for free included in your prime membership, I still feel that it is lacking. This is probably just me considering how many movies I have watched in the past. The titles that amazon includes in prime membership catch my attention.

Let me explain why. Normally, you would search for titles that you want to watch like Spiderman, Harry Potter, American Horror Story, or whatever preferences you have. However, if you want to watch any of that, you have to pay an extra $3 to $10 depending on what you chose. Of course, you can choose to “rent” it so that you can watch that movie temporarily without intending on watching it again in the future.

Amazon prime video does offer classic videos that I feel have rewatch value like the movie “Click” for example. In the end, it depends on on your preferences. Just keep in mind that if watching unlimited free and popular movie titles is your thing then amazon prime video is not for you. However if you want to be able to find almost any video that you always wanted to watch, but can not for some reason, prime video has a lot to offer at a very low extra charge.

One thing I have to point out is to not fall for third party subscription services. For example, I was looking for Harry Potter on my prime video account and the following was shown:

You see that in the yellow button it reads, “watch with HBO, start your 7-day free trial”. That sounds like a good deal right? Think again. I went to the HBO’s actual site and this is the deal they offered:

On HBO’s website, they also offer a free trial, but it is for one whole month instead of seven days on amazon. In other words, you could be watching for twenty three extra days for free if you went for a trial on HBO’s site. In other words, always double check the third party’s website for their offers before you get suckered into a “trial offer”

Nevertheless, after your trial expires, they still charge you $14.99/month so that is the same no matter where you signed up.

You can choose to watch your prime videos on your computer, mobile devices or tablet as long you have amazon devices or downloaded the amazon video app. As long your wifi or data plan is good, you should be able to watch a movie anywhere.

Prime Music

Once you start your prime membership you will also see something called, “Amazon Music Unlimited”. It is not the same as prime music. Amazon music unlimited requires an extra $8.00/month to use it. I don’t know about you, but prime music (included in amazon prime of course) has millions of songs in there, which more than enough albums and music than I would ever need.

You can also listen to your prime music by downloading the “Amazon Music” app if you are not using amazon devices like kindles or the amazon echo for example. Even if you didn’t purchase any amazon devices, as long you have a smartphone, you can listen to your prime music anywhere.

Prime Reading

Prime reading definitely has a lot of good books available to be read for free. Just make sure that you are in the prime reading section so that you don’t find yourself looking at a bunch of books that requires you to pay. If you want to know where the prime reading section is, then select departments from top left corner and looking for prime reading like the following:

Be warned that just like every other perks of amazon prime, prime reading doesn’t have every single book available for free. There’s a limited selection, and they are usually not titles required by schools to read. If you are looking to save money on textbooks or novels by using amazon prime, then you should pretty much give up that idea.

Don’t get me wrong though. There’s still a lot of good reads on prime reading. It’s just that most of them are not going to be part of any school curriculum.

Twitch Prime

If you game a lot, then you probably heard of twitch. Twitch prime is for gamers who enjoy watching how other players play and review games. As a primer member, you get a free channel subscription every month. You have to get a twitch account first and link it to your twitch prime account.

Prime Photos

This allows you to store unlimited amounts of photos on amazon. However, if you are uploading videos, there’s a 10 GB limit. If you want to upload files that are not photos or videos, then you have to purchase storage plans for $60/TB per year.

You can also invite five people into your “family vault” within prime photos. In other words, six of you (five invited, and one owner of prime account) can upload unlimited photos onto prime photos. This might be helpful for large families or people who always doing things in large groups.

Still Scared Of Trying Amazon Prime?

Most people have heard of the benefits of prime membership, but are too shy to try it out. Just in case you aren’t aware of it, you can try amazon prime for free for thirty days. During these thirty days, you can use all the features that amazon prime has to offer. After thirty days have passed, your credit card will be automatically charged $99 so that you can use amazon prime for the following year.

If being charged $99 sounds too scary for you, do not worry. While you are using the amazon prime trial, you can check to see how many days you have left by clicking “account & lists”, and searching for “Your prime membership” like the following:

Once you are inside your primer membership area, you can see how many days of free trial period you have left and a convenient cancel prime membership button. It is that easy.

What if you accidentally used prime past the trial period? Don’t worry. Give amazon a call with this number: 1 (888) 280-4331. Their services representatives are one of the nicest and most helpful in the world so don’t worry and tell them your problem.