10 Good Reasons to Cancel Amazon Prime

Membership recently jumped to $139 a year. Maybe you don’t really need it.

- By Bob Niedt

BUDGET BUSTER?

Anyone can buy from Amazon without being a Prime member. You’re just not going to get the other perks. To that end, we’ve listed a range of good reasons you might want to cancel your Amazon Prime membership. (For our take on investing in Amazon stock, see “Profit From Healthy Profit Margins,” on page 30.)

Amazon Prime is pricey. If you pay your Amazon Prime membership in full, it’s an annual $139 hit (up from $119); it’s $180 if you pay the soon-to-be $14.99 monthly fee. For the yearly fee, that boils down to $12 a month, about the cost of a streaming-video service such as Hulu or Netflix. So just how much are you really using Amazon Prime— and how much value are you gleaning from it? Do the math.

“Because I take advantage of many of the benefits, including free two-day shipping for my frequent purchases, and enjoy the video, music and book content, I have no question that it’s worth it for me,” says Trae Bodge, smart-shopping expert at True Trae. “But if you do not shop frequently online, or use any of the many perks, it may not be.”

It’s easy to track how much you’ve spent and what you’ve bought. Click on “Returns & Orders” at the top of the Amazon.com home page after you sign in. It defaults to orders for the past three months. On that drop-down list, you can choose yearly time frames.