Marco:
This has not been a popular decision, to put it lightly, but most Prime customers — which I’ve been since 2005 — aren’t really going anywhere. There’s nowhere to go. Amazon has either destroyed or bought every competitor that has ever come close to its retail business.
I’ve also been a Prime customer for years, and though the $20 price hike is a bummer, of course, Prime is still worth it for us. There are so many one-off items — such as batteries, coffee filters, baby toothpaste, organic coconut oil, printer toner (ugh), charcoal lighter cubes, fine-tip gel ink pens, etc. — that are easier to order from Amazon than to put on the shopping list for the next time we’re out running errands. Heck, I have a friend who bought his lawnmower on Amazon Prime so he wouldn’t have to borrow a truck to go get one at Lowe’s.
But Marco’s complaint isn’t so much with the price increase as it is with the ever-evolving spamminess of Amazon Prime:
The biggest annoyance recently is that Prime members are now being forced through [an] interstitial ad between checkout steps […]
Showing this once is bad enough, but I see it regularly. Amazon is now annoying their best customers with desperate, obnoxious, tricky interstitial ads.
Reminds me of a few other examples of companies who spam their best customers.
Curiously, I have never once seen the ad that Marco sees regularly. However, Marco says he’s never once watched a video through Amazon Prime, whereas Anna and I have watched a few videos.
We’re fans of the Agatha Christie Poirot shows, and a few of the newer episodes aren’t on Netflix but are on Amazon Prime. We would probably use Amazon Prime more often if the viewing experience wasn’t so awkward for an Apple-centric household. To watch the Poirot episodes we had to download the Amazon Prime iPad app, find the shows, and then stream them to our Apple TV. It’s alright, but not nearly as nice as the Neftlix app on the Apple TV.