Amazon ending Prime Invitee shared deliveries

Popular perk allowing members to provide free shipping to others will disappear Oct. 1.

- BY KAREN GARCIA AND NATHAN SOLIS

CREWS WORK to transport packages on and off a plane at an Amazon Air Hub in San Bernardino in July.

When Netflix and other streaming giants found themselves in need of more cash, they cracked down on viewers who shared passwords.

People grumbled, but the gambit worked.

Now, the same principle is being applied to another service we use every day: online shipping.

Amazon is discontinuing a popular service that allowed Amazon Prime members to share fast, free shipping privileges with people outside their household, marking a major shift in how Amazon orders are fulfilled and potentially raising costs.

The program, Prime Invitee, will vanish in less than a month.

Through the program, which started in 2009, an Amazon Prime member could share their shipping benefits with one other adult, even if that person used a different address.

The invitee got a limited Prime account with the free two-day shipping perk.

Prime Invitee stopped taking new enrollees in 2015 -but legacy users have been able to continue to enjoy the perk.

The Invitee program is ending Oct. 1. Taking its place for the estimated 240 million Prime subscribers worldwide, more than 180 million in the U.S. alone is the Amazon Family program, where shipping and other benefits can be shared as long as the members live at the same address.

"Amazon Family enables Prime members to share a range of benefits with one adult whether that is a spouse, family member, or roommate and Prime Video and additional digital content like Kindle eBooks, audiobooks, and games, with up to four children in their household," Amazon said in a statement to The Times.

Dan Ives, an analyst at financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said Amazon's decision to change its subscription policy is a "sign of the times."