Amazon hikes monthly Prime membership fees

If you subscribe to Amazon Prime on a monthly basis, get ready to pay more for the convenience of two-day delivery and watching programs like the new sci-fi anthology series “Electric Dreams.”

Amazon said Friday it is raising the fee on the pay-by-the-month version of Prime from $10.99 to $12.99 a month. With that increase, someone who subscribes to Prime on a month-to-month plan will soon pay $155.99 a year, or $24 more a year just to avoid paying $99 all at once for an annual Prime subscription.

By paying once, you get the same benefits of the pay-as-you-go option, but for almost $57 less annually than you would by shelling out $12.99 a month.

Amazon added the one-month-at-a-time Prime subscription option in 2014 at the same time it raised its traditional Prime fee by $20 a year, to $99.

Amazon also said it would raise the price of its monthly Prime option for qualified students, who will see their fees go to $6.49 a month from $5.49. Students can get a discount on an annual Prime membership by paying $49 a year. That fee isn't increasing, nor is a standalone Prime Video subscription rate of $8.99 a month.

The new fee structures go into effect immediately for new, monthly Prime members. Those who have been paying $10.99 a month up to now have until Feb. 18 to place all the orders they want before their subscription fees increase.

Amazon Prime, with its free, two-day delivery service on nearly everything that Amazon sells, as well as unlimited streaming of TV shows and movies via Prime Video, has been one of Amazon's most-successful e-commerce options in the company's history. However, Amazon has never disclosed how many Prime subscribers it has.

The company did say earlier this month that it shipped more than 5 billion items via its Prime service in 2017.

Amazon's monthly Prime price increase comes one day after the company announced the 20 finalists for its second corporate headquarters. None of the Bay Area cities that made proposals for what Amazon calls “HQ2” made the company's final cut.

On Thursday, Amazon also launched a new $10-or-less section of items that will ship for free even for non-Prime customers.