Amazon pioneered the idea of expedited shipping of online purchases with the launch of Amazon Prime in 2005. The ownership club offered customers free ii-twenty-four hours aircraft on eligible purchases in exchange for a flat almanac fee of $79. The program seemed unsustainable at first simply over time, Amazon has proven its worth exponentially.

Online shopping wasn't a new phenomenon in 2005, mind you lot – eBay had been around for nearly a decade past that point – but it was more or less understood that ownership something on the Internet meant waiting a week or and so for it to be delivered unless you paid for premium shipping.

Beingness able to club something from Amazon and have it arrive just ii days afterwards felt like a rite of passage. Prime inverse buying habits, propelled the notion of e-commerce and decimated traditional retailers. Amazon bolstered the offering over the years with all sorts of additional perks but in that location's no denying that rapid shipping is cadre to the company'south retail strategy.

Today I will be taking a deep dive into Prime number's shipping benefits to determine if the membership is every bit much of a deal as we've been led to believe. I'll be using my own experiences with Prime (I've been an Amazon customer since 2007 and a Prime number member since early 2022) equally a example written report, leaning on statistical data to help go far at some conclusions that'll hopefully aid you lot determine if Prime'south shipping benefits alone are worth the almanac cost.

I signed upward for a free one-month trial of Amazon Prime in February 2022 and joined equally a paying member a few months subsequently at a rate of $79 annually. I've renewed ever since at the standard rate:

  • $79 per year for 2022 and 2022
  • $99 per twelvemonth for 2022, 2022 and 2022
  • $105.93 ($99 plus tax) for 2022 and 2022
  • In 2022 I'll accept to pay the newly increased charge per unit of $119, plus tax

Save for two outlier years (2017 and 2022), my guild history with Amazon is quite consistent. While insightful, this data isn't all that useful without factoring in aircraft costs.

Here we can run into the amount paid per year for Amazon Prime besides as the additional shipping fees I paid for i-day aircraft on select purchases. Notably, in the first two years of having Prime number, I paid more in actress shipping fees than the total cost of a membership. In contempo years, I've conspicuously get more patient and accept afterwards curtailed the actress spending.

Without factoring in extra shipping expenses – in other words, just using Prime's gratuitous ii-day shipping – on boilerplate in virtually years, I'm paying around $1.75 in shipping per particular ordered (and during especially busy years, near $0.70 per item ordered).

Being less patient and paying extra for one-day shipping (ordinarily $3.99 extra per particular) certainly skews the average shipping cost per detail metric but then again, yous're getting your item in just i day.

Other fun facts:

  • Full lifetime Prime orders placed: 341
  • Total lifetime Prime items purchased: 578
  • Total lifetime paid in Prime membership fees: $745.86
  • Full lifetime paid in expedited shipping: $427.63
  • Total lifetime paid in Prime number fees + expedited shipping: $1,173.49
  • Lifetime average shipping toll per item with Prime number ii-day shipping: $ane.29
  • Lifetime average shipping cost per particular (including expedited shipments): $two.03
  • Boilerplate orders per year (2012-2017): 49.67
  • Average items ordered per year (2012-2017): 83.16

Something else worth factoring into the equation is tax. For the longest time, Amazon didn't collect revenue enhancement on the items it sold which gave it a clear reward over local retailers. Practices have since changed, nevertheless, and you may now be charged tax on your buy depending on several factors including the location of fulfillment and the commitment address of the order.

The biggest indicator of whether tax was nerveless on my orders was whether or not the item was listed equally beingness sold past Amazon.com Services, Inc. Since 2022, if an particular I purchased was sold direct past Amazon, taxation was collected in every case. If it was sold to me by a tertiary-party seller, no revenue enhancement was collected. Of the 78 orders I placed in 2022, taxation was collected on 41 of them.

At the extremes, Prime is a win-win proposition for Amazon. If I order more than in an endeavour to "get the most value" out of my Prime account, Amazon generates more sales than it probably would have otherwise. And if I'1000 conservative and don't order much, I'm effectively paying more to ship each item, skewing things in Amazon's favor once once again.

Personally, with a lifetime average of $1.29 per particular shipped with 2-mean solar day aircraft, information technology'southward hard to argue that Prime isn't worth information technology. The added flexibility to get something delivered overnight for a few extra bucks is likewise nice but the most bonny aspect of Prime is past far the convenience it affords.

Whether you're a working professional person, a busy parent with kids, elderly, someone with a disability, a seasoned procrastinator or someone merely looking to free up some spare fourth dimension for other activities, at that place'southward no denying the convenience that Amazon Prime affords.

I admittedly don't use most of Prime's other perks but it's nice to know they are in that location if I want them, particularly considering I'm now paying extra to support their existence. Following a toll hike in the spring, Amazon Prime at present retails for $119 per twelvemonth.