Amazon's Prime subscription service offers free two-day shipping as one of its best perks, and now the company is about to make things even better. The Internet retailer is planning to transition Prime from free two-day to free one-day shipping as its default option, the company has revealed, enabling customers to get their products the day after they order them.
Back at the beginning of the year, Amazon announced that it would soon be adding garage deliveries to Amazon Key. At the time, Amazon said that Key for Garage would go live at some point in the second quarter of year, and right on schedule, the company announced today that it's rolling out to Prime members. On top of that, Key is expanding to more cities in the US today, bringing the total number of cities where Key deliveries are supported up to 50.
For years now, Google and Amazon have been embroiled in a feud that saw the services of one company removed from the platforms of the other. Back at the beginning of last year, for example, Google decided to block devices like Fire TV and Echo Show from accessing YouTube. Amazon, meanwhile, has restricted its Prime Video app on Chromecast and Android TV. It was a particularly petty retail war that ultimately gave consumers fewer options, but today, it seems to be coming to an end.
Picking a video streaming service isn’t just an easy pick between Netflix or Hulu anymore. It’s far more complicated than picking a TV channel now, selecting between subscriptions that all have little differences that cost substantial monthly payments. So how do we even begin?
Twitch has added a special new benefit only for its Twitch Prime members: a full free year of Nintendo Switch Online. The new perk is only available to Prime customers and, of course, is only relevant if they also own a Nintendo Switch console. The online services enable Switch owners to play games online, play classic NES games, save game data to the cloud, and more.
Apple was tipped to call upon "Hollywood stars" to attend a March 25th event for the launch of a new video service. This video service would join a new News subscription service that'd also launch on the same day, at the same event. The video service would be similar to, but not the same as, major video streaming services already on the market like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
This week the folks at Amazon are field testing Amazon Scout. This is a 6-wheeled autonomous robot (an automaton of sorts) made to deliver packages to Amazon customers. This robot is "fully-electric" and may one day replace all delivery people in the world, for lack of a reason to run out and get payed to do a job a robot would gladly do for free.
Amazon Prime already offers a number of benefits to subscribers, and today we can add "advance screenings to movies that will probably be mediocre" to that list. Amazon has announced that it's offering tickets to advance showings of Aquaman to Prime subscribers, so if you're part of that group, you have the opportunity to see the movie before anyone else does.
Frequent Amazon Prime purchases can result in random boxes showing up multiple days a week, those possibly unpredictable depending on whether the user has automatic shipments set up. Amazon is addressing that by offering its Prime subscribers a new option: choosing a particular day to receive their packages.
Amazon is now the second public US company to hit $1 trillion market cap in history. The first was Apple, who hit the same landmark just this August. This isn't likely a moment that'll change the way Amazon operates - just the way they're viewed in the history of our consumer-centric world. Alexa's in your living room and an iPhone is in your pocket.
Earlier this year, Amazon introduced Prime Book Box, a box of curated books targeted at young children. The new offering was only available through an invitation at the time, but the company has officially opened it up to all Prime customers located in the United States. Buyers can choose to receive a box every month or only a few times a year, depending on their needs.
Twitch will end the ad-free experience for Amazon Prime customers, the company has announced. The decision follows a re-evaluation of the Twitch Prime benefits, the company explained, saying the free viewing experience for monthly Prime users will continue until October 15. However, the change will apply for new member beginning September 14.