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If you've been sharing access to an Amazon Prime account via the Prime Invitee Program, you have until Oct. 1 to switch to an Amazon Family account or lose access.
Since 2008, the Invitee program has allowed Prime members to share fast shipping benefits with people outside their household. So, you could split the annual cost of Prime with friends or family members, whether they lived with you or hours away.
Amazon now wants those farflung recipients to pay for their own Prime memberships. The only way to share an account is if you live in the same household as the primary account holder. If so, they can add you to an Amazon Family account (previously Amazon Household), which supports one other adult account and up to four child profiles.
PCMag editors received emails in the last 24 hours explaining that the benefit sharing will end on Oct. 1. The messages to Prime Invitee members lead with the option to sign up for their own Prime account, with a special offer of $14.99 for one year. It's usually $139 per year. All impacted users will be informed of the changes by Sept. 5.
Setting up an Amazon Family is free. Benefits include, "Free delivery, Prime Video, Amazon Music, exclusive deals, select digital content (audio books, eBooks, games and more), access to Grubhub+, Shutterfly Photos, and fuel savings at bp, Amoco, and participating ampm locations.”
The shared accounts need to be people who have the same primary address as you, and you’ll need to share payment methods with each other. The previous system didn’t need you to freely share payment methods. "Sharing payment methods, a.k.a. your Wallet, verifies that you and the other customer(s) are members of the same physical household," Amazon says.
To set up an Amazon Family, go to this link, click Add a New Member, and select Add Adult or Add Child. Everyone must manually accept your invitation to start sharing benefits.
Services like Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube Premium Family have started tracking when users are sharing a subscription with someone who doesn’t live at the primary address.
Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, told Fortune in June that Amazon is aware people are sharing accounts outside of its intended audience and didn't rule out a future crackdown on account sharing outside of its rules.
“Prime is meant for the household," Ghani said. "Our membership is different to a lot of other memberships in that it is purposely meant for household individuals living together. That could be a family, that could be adults cohabitating, whatever, but because of the nature of the benefits themselves, you don’t often just shop for yourself. When you’re living with other people, you shop for the household.”
This comes amid reports that Amazon had fewer Prime sign-ups during its annual Prime Day event this year than it has in the past. According to Reuters, Amazon secured 5.4 million US sign-ups before and during the July sales event. But that was down 116,000 compared with last year and 106,000 below what it had targeted.