Hate money? Sprint’s terrible Amazon Prime deal is for you

Attempting to leach off the Amazon customer base that wants to pay for Amazon Prime on a month-to-month basis, Sprint is offering a “deal” that includes Amazon Prime as an add-on to subscribers for $10.99 a month. Of course, that’s a 25 percent upcharge on Amazon’s yearly price of $99 for Amazon Prime. Over the course of a year, a Sprint customer would pay roughly $132 for 12 months of Amazon Prime.

Sprint is attempting to market this option to people that either want to try out Prime (rather than using the free trial offered by Amazon) or to people that only want a month of Prime to catch up on Amazon’s latest original shows, use it for their holiday shopping, etc… Of course, if a Sprint customer keeps paying every month and forgetting to cancel, it will become more expensive than Amazon’s regular price after about 9 months.

It’s likely that this won’t be the last service that Sprint offers as an add-on to subscribers. As the industry moves to payments-over-time when people upgrade their smartphones, offering ways to pile on additional fees will be in the best interest of the mobile providers. It’s unclear how much money Sprint gets to keep in this partnership with Amazon. Assuming Amazon only wants their standard price from Sprint, that means Sprint will clear nearly $3 a month per customer.

If you are new to Amazon Prime, be aware that Amazon occasionally discounts the price of Prime by 25 to 30 percent to celebrate award wins of their original programming like Transparent. The last sale dropped the price to $73 for a year, a figure that drops the monthly rate to about $6 per month. That would make the Sprint plan even more of a money-grab, making it a poor choice if signed up beyond 6 months.

No other carriers have announced plans to partner with Amazon for Prime month-to-month subscriptions, however we wouldn’t be shocked to see those announcements in the near future.

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2 Comments

1. 

   Michael Broder

   April 1, 2016 at 7:28 pm

   $11 to use Prime when–and only when–you need it is a great deal. You can watch 9 years of original programming for the price of a single year of membership. Or you can sign up on the 26th of November and get free shipping on prime eligible items from Black Friday through Christmas. If it were possible for me, I’d probably only order prime once every six months rather than pay for the whole year.

   Reply
2. 

   Doug Dingle

   April 1, 2016 at 2:33 pm

   If you want Prime for the free shipping or their original programming, it’s worthwhile. I subscribe.

   But I have found that movies I want to see, or episodes of older TV shows I want to watch, are always only available for purchase. Does Amazon really think I’m going to pay $3 to watch a 20 year old single episode of Star Trek Next Generation? Ridiculous.

   If that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for, Netflix is a MUCH better source of media.

   Reply