[koalaman]

This has been pretty obvious for a while. Whenever I do product searches on Amazon the prime eligible results are more expensive by exactly the shipping costs of the non prime vendors.

The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people.

[elashri]

> The only reason I keep it is for the video service which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of people.

Which will start having ads unless you pay a fee for the ad-free experience starting next year [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201028854/amazon-prime-video...

[temporallobe]

Tangentially related, even in YouTube Premium you can still see ads if the content creator embeds ads as part of their content. This seems like double-dipping to me and I am seeing more and more of this.

[endisneigh]

A more charitable take is that Amazon is raising the price (for the nth time) of prime, and introducing a small discount if you put up with ads.

[brvsft]

Nice, looks like I have an actual reason to convince my wife that we switch to Instacart next year.

[hnuser847]

The “hidden tax” described in the article is to sellers, not consumers. Free shipping is subsidy for consumers that costs Amazon billions of dollars. I have personally never seen what you’re describing.

[ceejayoz]

I fairly frequently see a little "may be available at a lower price from other sellers without Prime shpping" thing on listings.

[prettychill]

this is pretty common from what I have seen. especially with books.

[joenot443]

Which products do you observe this for specifically? I buy from Amazon US all the time and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed that discrepancy, so I can only assume we’re looking at different products or from a different region.

[dspillett]

While this varies by territory, I'm UK based, I find the main benefits of Prime to be the next-day (even weekend) delivery, Saturday (even if not next day) delivery, and sometimes the locker delivery option.

Even where prime price is the same as other+delivery this wins out. Though at each price rise or other change I have to rethink if I consider I'm getting a good deal.

[ryanwaggoner]

That’s likely because the non-prime vendors have to lower their prices to match prime, or they wouldn’t sell much.

[whimsicalism]

Fast delivery of things i want is good too