Retail giant, Amazon, announced that it would be imposing a whopping 17% price hike on its Prime services, citing inflation and the need to offset labor and transportation costs due to pandemic-induced disruptions.
The price for an annual Prime membership will rise from $119 to $139, while monthly memberships will increase from $12.99 to $14.99. According to the entrepreneur, this is the first time the service has increased since 2018.
New Prime members will be subject to the price increases starting on February 18; existing Prime members will be affected after March 25.
Amazon fans and customers were not happy about the recent increases, calling for people to cancel their subscriptions and accusing Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos of pocketing the money.
“With Amazon Prime going up in price after making billions of dollars in profits, after price gouging, after abusing their employees and union-busting ALL DURING A PANDEMIC maybe you all should think about just canceling that sh*t?” one user asked.
“Time for me to cancel Amazon Prime. They don’t even have consistent 2-day shipping anymore, and now they’re going up in price,” another queried.
Amazon shares skyrocketed 17% after-hours on Thursday following its Q4 2021 earnings report showing record sales of $137.4 billion, an increase of 9% from the same period last year.
The online retailer isn’t the only one to announce upcoming price increases for new and old subscribers alike.
Prevous month, Netflix announced it would increase prices from $1 to $2 to help pay for new programming and remain competitive.
Amazon was down 5.59% year over year at the last friday.
