Amazon Restricts Prime Membership, Only Lets You Share With One Friend

Do have an Amazon Prime account or share it with someone?

Amazon’s change was first noted in a forum post on Slick Deals over the weekend. Plus, all payments and deliveries were independent for all members. That allowed you to get together with other folks to share the cost of Prime and all reap the benefits for less out of pocket expense.

Previously, the only benefit that could be extended beyond the primary account holder was two-day shipping.

Other benefits that a second person can enjoy from a Prime account include access to Prime Instant Video and the Kindle Lending Library.

A spokesman for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Until now, anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription could share its benefits with up to four family members in a household.

This change doesn’t appear to be retroactive which means you and the other four adults on your account having nothing to worry about if sharing was set up before today.

The reason people shared Prime benefits was so they wouldn’t have to share login and card details. That’s not entirely surprising – Amazon is still loading Prime with an ever-greater number of high-speed delivery and streaming media services, and the only real way to keep up the revenue per service is to get more subscribers.

As of August 1, you can only share the cheap shipping benefits with two adults and up to four children via Amazon Household.

The new setup seems particularly targeted at nuclear families. The children added to the account don’t have to have their own Amazon accounts and will not have access to any cards added to the Prime account. Additionally, do not remove anyone from your account unless you want their benefits gone forever, as you won’t be able to add them back under the old system.