If we place many orders on Amazon, we can consider the subscription to Amazon Prime, so as to have access to some advantages that can speed up shipments, save us on larger orders and have access to a series of services available from Amazon itself, at no additional cost. In this guide we will show you all the benefits offered by Amazon Prime, we will also show you the subscription costs and also show you how to activate it, how to renew it and how to deactivate it (in case we are no longer interested in paying Prime). We remind you that, even by deactivating Prime, we can always make purchases on Amazon but with the standard rates and slower shipping methods.
Guide to Amazon Prime
To see if it is convenient to subscribe to Amazon Prime, it is necessary to analyze, in addition to the price, what changes in the quality of the service offered by Amazon, both during the purchase and delivery phase. Reading all the chapters in this guide, we will get to know all the advantages of Amazon Prime, its costs and the pages to visit in order to activate, renew or deactivate it.What Amazon Prime offers
The main advantage of Amazon Prime concerns shipping: with the active subscription it is always free, even for expenses less than € 29. In this way, we will also be able to order objects of negligible cost (€ 10 or less) without having to pay shipping costs.In addition to shipping costs, we will also have access to Prime shipments, much faster than standard shipping: in most cases (it also depends on the area in which we live), the order will be delivered to us in less than 24 hours, at most 2 days.
In some large cities , delivery within an hour is also available, a really great advantage in case we need a particular product or object with the utmost urgency and we cannot wait even a day! Fast shipping is available for all items shipped and sold by Amazon itself, but we can also find it at third-party retailers that have Prime shipping (in this case we could get both one-day and 2-3 shipping days).
In addition to free shipping and the ability to receive products in one day, we can benefit from numerous benefits and access to new Amazon services, listed below:
- Access to flash deals before they go out on the Offers page. Regarding the offers, the month of November is an excellent opportunity to use Amazon Prime thanks to the Black Friday discounts, the day before Thanksgiving in the USA, which is also celebrated by Amazon Italy with many offers and discounts on each product.
- Access to the Amazon Prime Foto service, one of the best apps where to save photos online which for Amazon customers is completely free and without limitations, excellent for making cloud backup of images from your smartphone and PC.
- Prime Music allows you to listen, at no extra cost, to over 2 million songs, with the ability to skip songs and play only the albums or playlists we want (much more effectively than the free Spotify subscription).
- We can subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited by paying a single annual subscription of € 99, saving two months compared to the monthly payment (it costs € 9.99 per month, so without Prime we would have paid € 120).
- Amazon Prime Video is included in Prime's subscription and allows us to stream movies and TV shows for free, with a quality comparable to Netflix.
- We can access Twitch Prime, with the ability to follow all the free game streams and access new games and free in-game content.
- Access to Prime Reading, so you can read thousands of free eBooks from the Kindle Fire, from any Kindle e-book reader or through the Kindle app for iOS and Android.
- Amazon Pantry, to purchase a wide range of household and daily consumer items in a single large package, saving on shipping and on individual products (especially if with continuous purchase).
- Amazon Famiglia offers a 15% discount on periodic deliveries of a selection of diapers through the Subscribe and Save program.
How much Amazon Prime costs
The price of Amazon Prime in Italy is € 36 per year or € 4.99 per month, so that we can adapt it to all shipping or delivery needs (if we buy a lot it is always better to make an annual subscription).
In both cases 30-day free trial without spending a penny, so you can try all the benefits offered by the service and see for yourself the fast free shipping (in our opinion more than enough to deserve the activation of the subscription).
At the end of the 30 days the subscription will be activated automatically and the money will be deducted from the payment method indicated when registering for the service. To disable Prime before the 30 day deadline, we will have to act as described in the How to disable Prime chapter.
How to activate Amazon Prime
To activate Amazon Prime, just have a normal Amazon account and access, from any PC web browser, the Amazon Prime page.
We click the Subscribe button and use it for free for 30 days, so as to start the monthly trial period and the subsequent subscription (we can choose whether monthly or annual). To pay the annual or monthly subscription we will need a payment method by credit card or prepaid (PostePay is also fine): to add a new payment method to the Prime subscription, simply open the management page of the Amazon Prime subscription and left-click on Payment method settings . In the window that appears, choose one of the credit cards already used for purchases on Amazon or add a new card by clicking on Add a card . Currently Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Maestro cards are supported.
How to renew Amazon Prime
The renewal of the subscription to Amazon Prime is completely automatic : once the renewal date (monthly or annual) is reached, Amazon will scale the amount requested by the payment method provided. From the Amazon Prime subscription management page we can check, on the left side, the date of renewal of the subscription, available under the Next payment section.
If we need a reminder on the date of renewal, just click on the bottom left on the item Notify me before the next renewal, so as to receive a reminder via email 3 days before the expiration of the Prime subscription.
How to disable Amazon Prime
If we want to disable Amazon Prime during the current subscription, just go to the Amazon Prime subscription management page previously seen and use the Unsubscribe - Waiver of Prime benefits item, present at the bottom left (just scroll slightly page to find it). A new window will open, in which Amazon will show us the savings in terms of shipping up to that moment and provide us with three buttons at the bottom of the page: to end the subscription just press on End my benefits .
If instead we do not want to renew after the 30-day trial, just go to the same page seen a little while ago and click on the item Do not continue, present immediately under the renewal date on the left side.
In both cases, the subscription will not be interrupted abruptly : we will be able to continue to enjoy the benefits of Amazon Prime until the subscription expiration date.
Conclusions
The subscription to Amazon Prime is convenient for all users who make at least one shipment per month, who want very fast shipments and want to save on shipping costs; the annual price may seem high, but seeing the benefits included it is worth renewing it every year and not thinking about it anymore. The monthly subscription makes less sense to us, but it can be useful for those who buy very few expensive products once every 6-7 months, so as to benefit from fast and free shipping.In another guide, we showed you how to follow Amazon Prime Day offers so you can access limited offers before they run out. To save further we can rely on the extensions described in our Guide to Extensions to save on online purchases (Chrome and Firefox) .
If we have had problems with some of the products shipped from Amazon, we recommend that you read our article on the Amazon warranty, so as to check if there are the details for a refund (very likely on Amazon).
