If we carry out many orders on Amazon, we can consider the subscription to Amazon Prime, so as to have access to some advantages able to speed up shipments, to make us save on bigger orders and have access to a series of services made available by Amazon itself, without additional costs.In this guide we will show you all the advantages offered by Amazon Prime, we will also show you the costs of the subscription and we will 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 will always be able to make purchases on Amazon but with the standard rates and slower shipping methods.
Guide to Amazon Prime
To see if you want to subscribe to Amazon Prime it is necessary to analyze, in addition to price, what changes in the quality of service offered by Amazon, both in the purchase phase and in the delivery phase. Reading all the chapters in this guide we will know all the advantages of Amazon Prime, its costs and the pages to visit to be able to activate, renew or deactivate it.
What Amazon Prime offers
The main advantage of Amazon Prime is shipping: with the active subscription is always free, even for expenses below € 29. In this way, we will be able to order even items with a 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 (also depends on the area in which we live), the order will be delivered to us in less than 24 hours, maximum 2 days.
In some large cities, it is also available delivery in one hour, a really great advantage in the case in which 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 shipping in one day and shipping in 2-3 days).
In addition to free shipping and the ability to receive products in one day, we can benefit from many benefits and access to new Amazon services, listed below:
- Access to flash offers before they appear on the Offers page. Regarding the offers, the month of November is a great opportunity to use Amazon Prime thanks to the discounts of Black Friday, the day before Thanksgiving in the USA, which is also celebrated by Amazon Italy with lots of offers and discounts on each product.
- Access to the service Amazon Prime Photos, one of the best apps to save photos online that for Amazon customers it is completely free and without limitations, great for backing up the cloud of images from your smartphone and PC.
- Prime Music allows you to listen, at no additional cost, to over 2 million songs, with the possibility 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 (costs € 9.99 a month, so without Prime we would have paid € 120).
- Amazon Prime Video is included in Prime’s subscription and allows us to watch movies and TV series in free streaming, with a quality comparable to Netflix.
- We can access to Twitch Prime, with the ability to follow all the free game streamer and access new games and in-game content for free.
- 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 buy a wide range of household and daily consumption items and a single large package, saving on shipping and individual products (especially if the purchase is continued).
- Amazon Family offers a 15% discount on periodic deliveries of a selection of diapers through the program Sign up and Save.
How much does Amazon Prime cost?
The price of Amazon Prime in Italy and of € 36 per year you hate € 4.99 per month so that it can be adapted to all shipping or delivery requirements (if we buy a lot it is always better to make the annual pass).
In both cases 30 days free trial without spending a penny, so you can try all the advantages offered by the service and see for yourself the fast free shipping (in our opinion more than enough to merit the subscription activation).
At the end of the 30 days, the pass will be activated automatically and the money will be deducted from the payment method indicated when registering for the service. To deactivate Prime before the 30-day deadline, we will have to act as described in the chapter How to disable Prime.
How to activate Amazon Prime
To activate Amazon Prime all you need is a normal Amazon account and access, from any PC web browser to the Amazon Prime page.
We click on the button Sign up 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 yearly). To pay the annual or monthly pass we will need a payment method with a credit card or a prepaid card (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, we choose one of the credit cards already used for purchases on Amazon or we add a new card by clicking Add a card. Cards are currently supported Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Maestro.
How to renew Amazon Prime
The renewal of the Amazon Prime subscription is completely automatic: once the renewal date is reached (monthly or yearly), Amazon will deduct the amount requested from the payment method provided. From the Amazon Prime subscription management page we can check, from the left side, the subscription renewal date, available under the section Next payment.
If we need a reminder on the renewal date, just click on the bottom left of the item Notify me before the next renewal, so as to receive an email reminder 3 days before the Prime subscription expires.
How to disable Amazon Prime
If we want to deactivate Amazon Prime during the current subscription, just go to the Amazon Prime subscription management page already seen above and use the entry Unsubscribe – Waive the benefits of Prime, present in the lower-left corner (just scroll slightly to find it). A new window will open, in which Amazon will show us the savings in terms of shipping up to that point and will provide us with three buttons at the bottom of the page: to end the subscription simply press on End my benefits.
If, on the other hand, we do not want to renew after the 30-day trial, just go to the same page you saw a while ago and click on the item Don’t continue, present immediately below the date of renewal from the side to the left.
In both cases, the subscription will not be abruptly interrupted: we can continue to take advantage of Amazon Prime until the subscription expiration date.
Conclusions
The Amazon Prime subscription is suitable for all users who make at least one shipment a 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 pass has less sense according 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 How to follow Amazon Prime Day offers, so as to access limited offers before they run out. To further save money, 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 Amazon warranty, so as to check if there are any details for a refund (very likely on Amazon).