Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I always assumed it was only for people within your home.
Maybe I’m too nice?
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It can also be for people in other homes. Or at least it used to be…
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It’s like what Netflix did, no more sharing passwords-everyone needs to subscribe to their own account (it’s all about the $).
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I mean I have used prime to send people gifts, and a few friends have asked me to order things for them, but I have never shared the prime account with anyone outside my home. Reading deeper it looks like it was a strange feature only offered before 2015?
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Reading the article, it sounds like there was a thing where someone could purchase an item in their non-Prime account and use someone else’s Prime shipping benefits, and that’s being discontinued, but I’ve never heard of such a thing.
If it’s a case of trying to cut down on Prime account sharing, that’s a different story but that doesn’t seem to match what the article says.
Edit: Prime family program. Separate accounts, but shared Prime benefits.
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Yes, there was if you had a family member that did not live with you, you could add them to your Prime account and they could use it without paying another Prime fee. As I recall, it was limited to one family member.
-Ana
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Amazon Family allows you to share Amazon benefits with another adult (aged 18 and over) , up to four teens (who were added before April 7, 2025), and up to four children living at your primary residential address. This is the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time. Both adults can keep separate accounts while sharing:
- Prime benefits, including shipping, access to Prime Day and other exclusive deals and events, Prime Video, Prime Reading. To check the full list of shareable benefits, go to Amazon Family.
- digital content through Family Library.
- management of up to four child profiles with parental controls.
According to the Amazon page for that program, all linked accounts had to be living at the same address. I don’t know if the requirements for the program changed over time.
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The article talks about “shipping”, but I wonder if the reason behind this has more to do with Prime Video?
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Prime video was not included in this program from the beginning.
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I mean prime video is a zero cost at this point unless you pay for ad free (I dont)
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Yea, I don’t get this either TBH. You can ship an Amazon order anywhere you want. You can give your uncle Fred your account creds 6 states away, and Amazon has no way to stop Fred from using your account to order anything Fred needs / wants, shipped anywhere Fred needs it to go.
What am I missing here?
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I’m fairly certain that this move is an attempt to shore up sagging Prime Membership signups.
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This could carry some weight as prime membership sign up rates are down, but i suspect this was not a recent snap decision despite the short 30 day notice
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Is everything on Prime Video available for free accounts? I thought some stuff was gated.
Nothing, I think this is the just the first step in a larger campaign to cut down on Prime sharing.
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Amazon wants sales over signups. This thing is silly IMO.
Amazon pretends to be a lot of things they aren’t. They are a place to get cheap ■■■■ fast, first and foremost. They should focus on that instead of being the movie or vacuum capital of the world…
Couldn’t tell you the last time we used Prime Video - maybe to watch a Mets game they yanked off of SNY.
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I don’t think anything is free on Prime Video but could be wrong (stuff that has commercials). Wouldn’t know though bc we have been paying for Prime for years and years. Well worth it. It’s nice to order something at 8am and have it on our doorstep by 3pm same day….
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Prime doesn’t carry any weight in our area. Prime item ordered today 9/2 will come on Saturday 9/6. The best delivery time we normally get now days is 2 day delivery with most going 4 to 7 days. We stopped watching Amazon videos because of all of the ads and refuse to pay more just to get rid of them.
None of our family uses our Prime, but all of our family members have received an Amazon Prime order from us.
When Amazon was doing Thursday Night Football …
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Prime Video is part of the Prime Account. A lot of the titles are free, with commercials, but some of the movies do require an additional fee. I assume some of the studios want more money for certain releases.
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It has been the case that you could watch a lot of stuff with commercials on FreeVee. But a lot of programming is available only on Prime, and only if you pay.
But now FreeVee is going away, and Prime has some free w/ads material. Since this is in transition, hard to know what the final result may be, but I suspect it will be somewhat like Peacock, where there is stuff that is free w/ads, and other things that are for paying customers only (and still may have a few ads).
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And possibly an occasional promotional video without ads to promote watching without ads for the $3.99 monthly fee.
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