The eCommerce retailer quietly made some major changes to the ways in which Amazon Prime subscribers can share their membership. Up until this month, Prime members were allowed to share their account benefits, such as free two-day shipping and Prime Instant Video streaming, with up to four other members.
Splitting the Amazon Prime perk of free two-day shipping with friends just got a lot harder.
The eCommerce retailer quietly made some major changes to the ways in which Amazon Prime subscribers can share their memberships. Up until this month, Prime members were allowed to share their account benefits, such as free two-day shipping and Prime Instant Video streaming, with up to four other members.
But as of last week, Amazon has put a stop to that.
The company has now absorbed the previous Prime shipping benefit sharing option into its existing “Amazon Households” program, designed to limit the ability to share Amazon Prime subscriptions with anyone outside of a customer’s immediate family.
The Amazon Households provision limits sharing of the program to six members, which includes two adults (with their own Amazon accounts) and up to four children.
As eCommerceBytes reported yesterday (Aug. 3), the old language surrounding Amazon’s Prime Program read:
“Free or paid Amazon Prime members can share their shipping benefits with up to four additional family members living in the same household. If you purchase a Prime membership for a small business, you may invite up to four co-workers to shop with this corporate account.”
But the updated text makes no mention of sharing Prime memberships when it comes to businesses, which will instead have to join the Amazon Business Program to reap Prime-like benefits.
The new guidance for sharing Amazon Prime benefits points customers to Amazon Households, where the following benefits can be shared: shipping benefits, Prime Instant Video (streaming only), Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Prime Early Access and Prime Exclusive Deals.
The new restrictions are likely to be seen as Amazon’s way of cracking down on these benefits being widely and easily used. Now, in order to share Prime benefits, the two accountholders within an Amazon Household are required to authorize each other to use any payment methods associated with their Amazon accounts for purchases.
This is a far cry from the days of only needing to know someone’s birth month and day in order to accept an invitation to use their Prime account.
While no official announcement was made by Amazon, it seems many of its more than 40 million Prime members are discovering the updates on their own. According to TechCrunch, Amazon Prime members have been posting their gripes and surprise concerning the updated terms on Slickdeals forums since the changes went into effect over the weekend.
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