Amazon Ends Shared Prime Free Shipping Outside Your Home (theverge.com) 46
Speaking of Amazon Prime, Amazon is axing the program that lets Prime members share their free shipping perk with people outside their household. The Verge: In an update to its support page, Amazon says it will cut off Prime benefit sharing on October 1st, 2025, prompting invitees who don't live with the account holder to sign up for their own subscription at a discounted $14.99 rate for an entire year (and then $14.99 per month after that).
Instead, Amazon is replacing this program with Amazon Family, which lets account holders share Prime benefits -- but only with people they live with. Amazon says everyone in a "Family" must live at the same primary residential address, defined as "the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time."
Instead, Amazon is replacing this program with Amazon Family, which lets account holders share Prime benefits -- but only with people they live with. Amazon says everyone in a "Family" must live at the same primary residential address, defined as "the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time."
The replacement system sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
You should not use Amazon Family even if you do live in the same household.
The system Amazon has devised is an Unacceptable security risk.
The problem is the new "program" requires that you Make all your Payment methods, such as your credit card, available for everyone else in the household -- They can click a button in the Family section of their Account management to automatically add your credit card to their Amazon wallet.
That means, for example.. If you wanted to share Prime delivery with your Elderly parent you are housing; They can go into their Amazon account and instantly add Your credit card, and then make a purchase on you instead of using their own card. Also, If they set their password to 1234 or their account gets hacked, and let a few other people access their account, now your account suddenly has a massive issue as well, and there is really no way to manage this risk. You just have to trust your family members more than is due or warranted in most cases.. Spouses often have some non-Joint bank accounts and cards for Personal and Joint for the household costs only - the very deliberate reason of not putting all the eggs in one basket, and making sure people retain a level of independence, and still have their own funds allocated just for each person's personal usage.
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The most common hardware token I've seen pictures of online is a Wells-Fargo one, so apparently they do (unless they dropped that program to save costs on the tokens, which is possible).
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Why?
Most people don't have such tokens and their current system works just fine for them, and as far as they're concerned, their customers.
In any case, it works fine for me. I require no changes in what they're doing.
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Most people don't have such tokens and their current system works just fine
Most people DO have a Smartphone that can create a FIDO Passkey by scanning a QR code and is actually secure. Whereas SMS codes can be intercepted easily by any adversary capable of launching a SS7 exploit to sniff your text messages, Or by pretexting a phone company in order to steal your phone number through a SIM swap or by Porting your number out to themself.
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Amazon also supports true two-factor authentication - not just the "two step" SMS stuff.
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Man....I dunno how I could go through life worrying about the shit you seem to worry about every day.
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Oh calm the hell down.
This isn't new, it's always been this way, and it is by design. As Amazon explains, it's their way of ensuring people in your Prime Family are actually family members living with you. It seems perfectly reasonable to me too, as you're not likely to share access to your credit card with your friend's sister's boyfriend's dog sitter who is too cheap to get their own Prime membership.
If you want to "maintain financial independence" from your wife, then don't add her to your Prime Family M
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"It seems perfectly reasonable to me too, as you're not likely to share access to your credit card with your friend's sister's boyfriend's dog sitter who is too cheap to get their own Prime membership.
We have a prime family membership. It is actually my wife's, and I'm the "add on". We set it up with her Amazon Prime Visa card as the sole method of payment and we just pay whatever the bill is. We don't do the "my money, your money" thing. It also let me drop my own Amazon Prime Visa card without losing the
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guess what! You're not liable for fraudulent charges, so at the end of the day, it's really not much of a problem.
This is not true. Your liability can be zero or limited in certain circumstances. If you have a spouse allowed to use the card, then you do not immediately know that it is fraudulent, and your liability goes up very high if the bank is not notified expeditiously. In fact, if you do not identify the bogus charge within a period of time, then you become 100% liable.
You will not be in a go
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guess what! You're not liable for fraudulent charges, so at the end of the day, it's really not much of a problem.
This is not true. Your liability can be zero or limited in certain circumstances. If you have a spouse allowed to use the card, then you do not immediately know that it is fraudulent, and your liability goes up very high if the bank is not notified expeditiously. In fact, if you do not identify the bogus charge within a period of time, then you become 100% liable.
You will not be in a good place if you end up having to Chargeback an Amazon purchase due to a family member's possible mistake that turns out to be a breach. Considering that Amazon will terminate your accounts and forever ban you from future business with them or doing so. There is In fact another kind of risk and liability for fraudulent charges.
What I said is completely true.
If you're not keeping up with charges on your card, that's on you.
This isn't new, it's always been this way, and it is by design.
False.
Well, I don't know what to tell you. When we signed up for a prime household many years ago, shared payment method was required.
No. It's not reasonable. It is bullshit.
So don't sign up for it.
For my spouse I'd might as well just have her log in to my account to order her stuff with Prime - technically we can just use one single Amazon account with a shared password manager entry. Actually no; she doesn't get to login at all - she can email me links of what things to order, and I will be the only one to order anything from now on. There's no point in making two accounts if the security and anti-fraud benefits of separate cards and separate accounts is wiped out by the Merchant creating unwanted card sharing bullshit.
I do not share credit cards with any other member of my direct family in my household period. They can get their damn own card. The card in my name is for me only - a spouse does not get to touch it, let alone other family household members, and it would become an accounting nightmare to sort out which purchases belong to each of us for budgeting after the fact, hence the necessity of having separate card accounts for each person in the first place.
Well...congratulations...I guess.
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I suspect the payment information sharing is a way to discourage actually sharing your account.
Also, you can disable payment sharing, but then other members lose access to all benefits and digital content. So, I guess, see my first statement.
Also, what about your college kid in a dorm? By most state laws, out-of-state students do not qualify for local residency if they live on campus. I feel completely entitled to list them as a family member on Amazon Prime. But to the OP's comment, I don't want them t
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I feel completely entitled to list them as a family member on Amazon Prime.
If your kid isn't living with you, they're not eligible for sharing in your prime membership. So regardless of how entitled you feel to include them....well, they're not eligible. If you include them anyway, they have access to your payment info. So, pick your poison. But it sounds like Amazon Prime Membership may not be suitable for sharing with your kids, whether they live in the same household or not.
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This is why we can't have nice things, people often defend unethical, anti-consumer behavior for reasons I don't understand. Maybe they will one day be the billionaire class after they simply make all the correct decisions in their life and need to continue such behavior? So no need for consumer protections, like what defines a family, so a company can rake you over the coals; just make better choices. Don't worry, the existing billionaires can't wait to greet you!
Overly, narrowly defining a family as a
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This is why we can't have nice things, people often defend unethical, anti-consumer behavior for reasons I don't understand.
You don't understand because you don't seem to believe that people can have completely different opinions as to what constitutes unethical, anti-consumer behavior.
So no need for consumer protections, like what defines a family, so a company can rake you over the coals; just make better choices. Don't worry, the existing billionaires can't wait to greet you!
Overly, narrowly defining a family as a means to increase revenue is despicable.
Oh, cry me a river!
Amazon is generous to offer the membership sharing benefit. It doesn't HAVE to offer any benefit at all! If you don't like the terms of its offer, then don't sign up for it. Plenty of us are perfectly satisfied with it.
You people will truly bitch about anything, if it involves "a big corporation".
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Amazon mission statement: https://www.aboutamazon.com/ab... [aboutamazon.com]
"Earth’s most customer-centric company"
I guess than can be interpreted as "customers are the center of how we maximize wealth extraction". I can think that way too, but I mostly like humans over obscene profits and business individuals who can suspend their personal values in the name of the almighty dollar because it's legal and "doesn't represent who they are as a person".
I work for a small-ish publicly traded company and our CEO's annual c
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Why not just get a job as a CEO?
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Spouses often have some non-Joint bank accounts and cards for Personal and Joint for the household costs only - the very deliberate reason of not putting all the eggs in one basket, and making sure people retain a level of independence, and still have their own funds allocated just for each person's personal usage.
None of which is in conflict with sharing a credit card for Amazon payments.
It doesn't prevent having non-joint bank accounts.
It doesn't prevent any level of financial independence.
It doesn't require you to have all your eggs in one basket.
It doesn't prevent having your own funds allocated for your own personal (and potentially secret) use.
It's one shared credit card, for one shopping site, for people who are supposedly in a shared family household. That's it! If you find that your beloved is somehow screwi
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"It's one shared credit card, for one shopping site"
No, it's the primary shopping site for most consumer goods and where 90% of purchasing is happening for most people these days. It doesn't matter if it's one or ten sites if it is generally ALL the sites used. My wife and I have all joint accounts but we do have individually designated accounts with a certain amount of budgeted discretionary funds auto-deposited and generally don't look at each others accounts. We are entitled to privacy, not secrets, ther
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Well, a couple of things.
First, it's completely optional. You're not required to use family sharing to use Amazon or have a Prime membership. So if you value inter-family privacy high enough, you can just have multiple Prime memberships. No problem there. You just just have to pay for each one. No big deal.
Second, just because everyone in a Prime Family membership must have ACCESS to the same payment method, doesn't mean they have to actually USE that payment method. So, if you and your wife (for example) w
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You should not use Amazon Family even if you do live in the same household.
The system Amazon has devised is an Unacceptable security risk.
The problem is the new "program" requires that you Make all your Payment methods, such as your credit card, available for everyone else in the household -- They can click a button in the Family section of their Account management to automatically add your credit card to their Amazon wallet.
That means, for example.. If you wanted to share Prime delivery with your Elderly parent you are housing; They can go into their Amazon account and instantly add Your credit card, and then make a purchase on you instead of using their own card. Also, If they set their password to 1234 or their account gets hacked, and let a few other people access their account, now your account suddenly has a massive issue as well, and there is really no way to manage this risk. You just have to trust your family members more than is due or warranted in most cases.. Spouses often have some non-Joint bank accounts and cards for Personal and Joint for the household costs only - the very deliberate reason of not putting all the eggs in one basket, and making sure people retain a level of independence, and still have their own funds allocated just for each person's personal usage.
Chilax. While what you say is technically true (which is the best kind of true), nowadays many banks offer "virtual pre-paid credit cards" to compliment the one you have. If anyone is so concerned with this "loophole", they may as well set up one for "Amazon-Family" Stuff, and use that one only for amazon.
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nowadays many banks offer "virtual pre-paid credit cards" to compliment the one you have. If anyone is so concerned with this "loophole", they may as well set up one for "Amazon-Family"
I used virtual cards with Amazon before. A problem is Amazon purchases end up declining on them, likely because Amazon switches between merchants at times.
Another problem is Amazon does not authorize your card immediately at the time of checkout like other merchants do. They charge the card later when the item ships, I
Re: The replacement system sucks. (Score:1)
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My virtual credit card is tied to Amazon and won't work anywhere else.
The largest problem is Amazon makes your card provided available for anyone in your household to charge payments against. And when you make an order yourself that you want to be charged against the card -- You can't control the exact timing of when the charge will be made, since for many purchase they initially accept the order and don't authorize your card until a day or so later.
And you can't add a separate payment method available f
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I thought someone said you could have a personal payment card as long as there was one other setup to be shared. That would make this work fine because I would just lock the shared one. But if as you say that's not true, I'll be continuing
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If you wanted to share Prime delivery with your Elderly parent you are housing; They can go into their Amazon account and instantly add Your credit card, and then make a purchase on you instead of using their own card.
Good news! Your elderly parent isn't eligible to be part of your "Amazon Family" anyway!
You can have a maximum of two adults in your Amazon Family [amazon.com]
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Good news! Your elderly parent isn't eligible to be part of your "Amazon Family" anyway!
Wrong. It seems that you cannot even read. They are an adult. Adults in the same household qualify, And they would be the only adult alive in the world who I would share Prime with, who even has an Amazon account.
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Only two adults in the same household can join. Great if you're single, I guess; but a lot of us aren't and also have other adults dependent on us.
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Only two adults in the same household can join. Great if you're single
My partner does not need their own account with prime linked, because I'd just login to my Amazon account on a tablet and let her complete the order in my browser session. Therefore they don't count towards the "2 adults maximum", since they don't even need their own account -- Not that they even like shopping on Amazon nor even want an account; I'll just say that they are the opposite of an Amazon fan and prefer to do their shoppi
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add Your credit card, and then make a purchase on you instead of using their own
Yeah but if you catch them you know where they live.
I didn't know (Score:2)
I didn't even know this benefit existed. Oh well.
Free at last! (Score:2)
I have been wanting to drop Amazon Prime for quite a while. But, my I have had my father in law on our plan for the past, oh 12 years or so. He is so generous and never asks a thing of anybody. He hates change, so I have been keeping the subscription REALLY just for him, content that he can take that for granted.
Now my reasons to keep Prime have dropped to zero, so cancel it I will.
I might have found value if they didn't
Give us prime music free with the service, then pull the rug, by making it a paid add-on
Another part of this that's not in TFS (Score:2)
I got the announcement email over the weekend, and noticed right away (since it affects me) - you can only have two adults in your new "Amazon family".
Got an elderly parent living with you? Nope, not eligible.
Got an 18-year-old kid living with you? Nope, not eligible.
Got more than 4 kids? Sorry, you're SOL.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help... [amazon.com]
Re: Another part of this that's not in TFS (Score:2)
Good (Score:2)
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Re: Good (Score:2)
Prime is over-hyped (Score:2)
So you get 1-2 day delivery for free, and you get Amazon Prime Video.
First, I don't want both. Bundling these two things makes neither one a good deal.
Second, if shipping is your thing, without Prime, I still get my packages in 3-4 days, instead of 1-2. Usually, that's quick enough. And half the time, I get an email that says, "Good news, your package is ahead of schedule!"
If video is your thing, these days, cross-licensing means you can get your movies and TV shows on multiple other, cheaper subscriptions.
This is like the third time they've redone this (Score:2)
I added my wife to my plan when they first allowed you to do so, long before all of the added on services like streaming. Later they redid it and called the plan the Family plan, and allowed me to add another family member, which I did, but at that time I couldn't change my wife's standing in the plan, and didn't need to since it just worked. Now as part of this they sent her an email saying her account is no longer valid, and it will be disabled in October. So, now I have to kick the other family member
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I'm confused why your wife couldn't just use your login credentials? You live in the same house, yes?
But that is no longer relevant as unless her brother also lives in the same house, he's the one who will be automatically kicked-off.
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First, we would spoil a lot of presents if we shared account credentials :D
Second, because of how the feature has changed over time, her account wasn't 'upgraded' to the top level that they defined when they first redid the system. She got all the benefits still. Now, as part of this newest shakeup, they determined her account to be invalid and ending the membership for it. Her brother's account, because I added it later in the newer system, was labeled as the full featured adult account. Last time I tr
We were speaking of Amazon prime? (Score:2)
Did TFS pop up mid conversation for someone? Who was speaking of Amazon Prime when they suddenly submitted a Slashdot story.