Amazon prime

Last week on holiday in my Pollensa I have now named 'Hardly' - because hardly anything works - wifey said she smelled burning. I couldn't smell anything but wondered why there was no hot water. The simple reason is that the gas burner in the heater, being 25 years old, was lifed. Or Goosed, if you prefer. It must have been spewing big flames out of the flue before the safety valve kicked in. So having taken it apart and scooped a trowel full of rust from inside it, I ordered a new Carver Cascade gas burner from Amazon.
Knowing that you get it quicker (sometimes) if you join Prime, I opted for the quicker Prime delivery, knowing also that you can cancel your membership at any time. So the idea is that you order an item, sign up for Prime, get the item the next day, and cancel your Prime so you don't have to pay the month's membership.
However I am not so sure. Have they changed their policy? Look what it says now:
You may cancel your Prime membership within 14 days of signing up. If neither you nor anyone authorised by you to use your account has taken advantage of any Prime benefits, we will refund your membership fee in full. If you or anyone authorised by you to use your account has taken advantage of Prime benefits during this 14-day period, we will issue you a prorated refund based on the number of whole months remaining in your membership.
It would seem that they start by charging a months membership when you first order something and 'join', then when you cancel membership two days later, your 'prorated refund based on the number of whole months remaining in your membership' your refund will be nil.
We'll see. I don't want to pay £9.95 just for the delivery of one item.

They used to do 30 days free membership but, from what you say, that seems to have ceased. You could make the most of the month’s fee by watching a few films and borrowing a Kindle book or two. The Kindle app is free if you don’t have the e-reader but borrowed books will vanish once you cancel Prime.

Just looked at my Amazon Account. Under prime I get :-

I was caught by the Amazon Prime trap. Maybe me not reading things properly and my daughter buying me an Alexa thing it seemed a good idea until I noticed the £95 hole in our bank balance. 
Considering I hardly use Amazon or the Alexa thing I tried to cancel the prime membership. I lost a morning of my life on the phone not helped by being told several times that they don’t understand my English.:censored!:I might have been brought up in West Yorkshire but at least and have a uk passport and speak English.

I have no need for prime, don't need the TV or films and always choose free delivery which normally means only 2 day delivery anyway.

My wife has a Prime account, mostly she uses the Amazon Music app 24/7. The biggest flaw I see is the amount of times whereby a Prime account qualifies you for next day free delivery, but you don't get it! Too many times I see her in a "rant-chat" with Amazon, because despite having the Prime account, 60%+ suppliers, who's stock is not in the Amazon warehouse, simply can't deliver on the next day promise. She's probably had 10-15 refunds and discounts in the past month. Prime is a waste of money imo, just wait the few days for free delivery. As I keep debating with my wife, do you really need this stuff next day?

I find Prime very useful. I read a fair bit and watch their videos. The vast majority of my stuff arrives on the promised day which is generally, but not always, the next day.

Sometimes there are offers for Prime members and I bought a Mac set up last year via that offer. I saved a considerable sum.

The 30 day free trial is still available to me, the same as Ploughlin above. I have signed up and cancelled without problem a few times in the past when I knew I needed to order a few things.
Gassy, I wonder if you just signed up for Prime rather than the 30 day free trial? The cancellation terms are possibly different between the two?

I can't really remember (it was after all yesterday   ) why I ordered the stuff with Prime. I'll have to go back to amazon and see what's what.
This is why you might need something the next day. Suppose your other half was packing the camper for a trip away tomorrow, involving a ferry for example, and you were checking the Carver water heater. You recall that the last time you used it, Other Half said she smelled burning. You didn't, so did nothing to investigate. Then when checking everything for tomorrows journey you found out the cause of the funny burning smell, and recalled that the last time you tried the hot water tap only cold came out. This is what you found:



 Anyway obviously the 25 year old gas burner is goosed so I needed a new burner and thought I would get it next day if I did Prime. As it turns out it's not the next day, it's two days so I needn't have bothered. It seems I may have paid £9 for P&P.
As for the films, books and so on I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I read of people downloading films on to USB sticks and taking them away in the camper to view on their TV or laptop but I don't know how to do that. So other than next day delivery, Prime serves no purpose in this house.

Dave 418 wrote:I was caught by the Amazon Prime trap. Maybe me not reading things properly and my daughter buying me an Alexa thing it seemed a good idea until I noticed the £95 hole in our bank balance. 
Considering I hardly use Amazon or the Alexa thing I tried to cancel the prime membership. I lost a morning of my life on the phone not helped by being told several times that they don’t understand my English.:censored!:I might have been brought up in West Yorkshire but at least and have a uk passport and speak English.

Amazon are notorious for their crafty business methods. Our first encounter was some years ago when we purchased a few CDs for friends. A week after delivery we flew to NZ for our annual stay with our daughter. On our return three months later I was surprised that monthly withdrawals had been taken off my credit card by Amazon, this was before I went for online banking, so had no way of checking.
After much phoning and a great deal of hassle it seemed I'd signed up for Amazon Prime by neglecting to uncheck a box on the CD order confirmation.
As I had obviously never watched a second of Prime over the three months, they begrudgingly credited my money back, but as above, I lost half a day of my life talking to various folk who didn't have a full grasp of English.
Al.

Sort-of the same thing happened to us with Hello Fresh. We went to the caravan show at the NEC and wifey got collared by a Hello Fresh person. "Have a free Hello Fresh" they said. Just give us your address and card details. Wifey had no idea that that included signing up for weekly deliveries of food that we can get cheaper at a choice of 3 supermarkets within 5 minutes walking from our house. We went on holiday and came back to piles of rotting vegetables and stinking other food, stacked up outside our house, and over £100 extracted from our bank.
I might add that at the time, I was looking at something else at the show. I didn't know she was being shafted by Hello Fresh sales personnel.  I am confident that if I had been involved I would have insisted that if we want fresh food there is a choice of at least twenty shops within five minute's walk of our house, and the last thing we need is boxes of allegedly fresh food being expensively delivered.

We have just returned from 3 weeks in France and downloaded a whole bunch of films, the latest series of Clarkson's farm plus other stuff that we wanted to watch, all put on to a laptop, even for a tech dumbo like me it was very easy to do. Lady G could also keep up to date with her favourite Aussie soap, I could see the election news and keep up to date with the sport . No complaints from me, always enjoy watching  our French cousins playing hunt the satellite signal whilst we relaxed.  
As to deliveries, we live in SW Cornwall and through prime can get things fast that would otherwise have to drive miles to find if at all. Astonished sometimes to order things in the afternoon and they arrive next morning
I value my prime membership and don't mind paying for it, I understand why others may have a different view.