We wonder just what hedonic adjustments the BLS will use to explain away the implied inflation from this 25% increase in Amazon Prime membership fees. Prefunding the cost of friendly drone deliveries (which Tesla may soon desperately need if it wants to sell its cars direct)? We also wonder, just what the impact on Prime membership will be considering the disastrous results that Netflix suffered when it did a comparable price hike a little over two years ago, which it promptly reversed when people started abandoning the service in droves. Just how elastic is Amazon pricing? We are about to find out.
From Amazon:
We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99 when your membership renews on October 28, 2014.
Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same for nine years. Since 2005, the number of items eligible for unlimited free Two-Day Shipping has grown from one million to over 20 million. We also added unlimited access to over 40,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video and a selection of over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
For more information about your Prime membership, visit our Prime membership page.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Prime Team