Quitting Prime

For several years, we've had Amazon Prime.  But this year when they said they were going raise the annual fee by 20%, we found ourselves questioning the decision.  Did the fee justify how much use we were getting out of it?

Music...  we prefer Apple Music and don't use Prime Music.
Movies/TV... we have cable that we can watch on the internet as easily as Prime.
Shipping...  This is the big one.  Being able to order one item and have it ship for free in two days is the big attraction about Amazon Prime.

But, over the past year, we've had many items not arrive in two days.  In fact, they even took a week for several things we ordered and one time the item was pushed off by several months until I finally cancelled it, went to Barnes and Noble and purchased it that day.  I realize that the biggest convenience of Prime is not having to leave my home and still purchase items that we want or need.

So, we decided to cancel our Prime Membership and see if we could live without it.  I went through the process and cancelled it.  But, then I discovered that Amazon still automatically renewed it at the old rate.  Hmm...  I was faced with a choice to let it continue for a year or not.  It bothered me that they would renew it against my wishes.  I never like it when companies do that.  (I had Hallmark's HMNow online service charge me for a year membership even though I wasn't getting the service earlier this year.)

So, I went through the process to cancel again and this time it took.  Thankfully.

I was curious to see how this would affect what we bought and how much we would still use Amazon.  We like to purchased used books most of the time anyways, so Prime never saved us money on those.  The amount of purchases we've made through Amazon has severely dropped off by probably 95%.  I don't feel deprived.  I can still make purchases that I really need to that are over $25 and get free shipping.  It may take a week, but if I really need something now I can just go to a store.

Amazon is huge.  I realize this.  It was interesting to hear this week about the Prime Day crash on the site.  I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.  I haven't bought anything on Prime Day the past few years.  I'm glad that we have been able to forgo needing to have Prime!

Do you have Prime?  Do you think about quitting Prime?