For the first time since Amazon introduced their free-shipping Prime membership to customers nine years ago, it’s raising its prices on us — from $79 a year to $99. Probably to pay for all those drones they’re working on, we expect.
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most users, of course. Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak mentioned during their fourth-quarter 2013 earnings call in January that the company was considering increasing costs by as much as $40, citing shipping costs and increased Prime popularity.