Amazon today announced that it will raise the price of its Prime premium services plan from $99 to $119 a year for customers in the United States. Rate increases will begin next month. This is Amazon’s first price increase for customers since Prime was raised to $99 in 2014 and only the second in the history of the program.
The price change will become effective for new Prime subscribers on May 11 and will impact the wallets of existing members June 16. The announcement was made during a call with analysts today to talk about the Q1 2018 earnings report in which the ecommerce giant reported $51 billion in revenue.
In a letter to shareholders last week, CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon has more than 100 million Prime households worldwide, the first time Amazon has publicly shared the number of Prime subscribers. An estimate earlier this year found that 60 million U.S. households, or nearly half of all households in the country, are Prime members.
To attract new members, Amazon has meticulously woven Prime benefits throughout many of its products and services, from free two-day shipping to grocery deliveries to Kindle Unlimited.
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Recent or soon-to-be-announced Prime perks include benefits for Whole Foods shoppers and FreeTime Unlimited for kid-friendly content from Alexa, as well as in-home and even in-car delivery services.
