I have student prime and it only costs me $40CAD/year for prime music, video, and shipping. It’s way cheaper than literally any other streaming service I have.

Every single time I go to use Amazon, they offer me either free Prime, or like 1 week for $2. I’ll never subscribe again.

Prime is fine if you have to make a lot of smaller purchases, and don’t want to have to play a bunch of shipping costs, but yeah, if you can do Costco or something similar instead, and just wait on buying any other stuff you need until you can get free shipping on Amazon without Prime, then you can do without it.

Back pre-covid, I found the convenience of next-day and same-day shipping to be worth it. During and since Covid, though, it seems like actual delivery dates are a real crapshoot. You shop as a Prime Member, see next-day shipping, order, and the next-day shipping magically changes to 2 days from now. You then get the package 3-4 days later.

When you order the same product as non-Prime, the shipping date shows a week out but you end up actually receiving it a couple days early. So in many if not most cases the “faster” shipping is non-existent, so why bother being a prime member?

Not being a Prime member now, I find myself price-shopping more now, instead of just blindly ordering on Amazon to justify my Prime membership.

I faked my way into getting it for a discount using a relatives ebt card. They charge less for ebt card holders. In return I pay for their medical bills.

Being patient is where it’s at. In any case, many sellers include the “free” shipping in their costs, so it’s not rare to find a say a $20 item with Prime for $215 plus $5 shipping with another seller.

Amazon often has free shipping over $25 so over the months we just slowly add items in our cart, then buy by just over $25 increments to get free shipping.

Also, file sharing.