Amazon Prime: Get Your Money's Worth from Prime Shipping, Instant Video, Music, and the Kindle Lending Library

Description

Here's a concise guide that simply explains how to get the most bang from your Prime bucks. Hi, I'm Steve Weber, publisher of KindleBuffet.com, a daily list of free and discount Kindle books. If you enjoy special deals on great books, please visit the site and tell me what you think. Way back in 2005, I received an email from desertcart.com announcing a new program called "Prime." It was a simple proposition: If I paid $79 a year for the annual membership, I'd get free two-day shipping on most of my orders. Plus, I could upgrade to overnight shipping at a huge discount--just a few dollars per order. I'm plenty thrifty, but desertcart didn't need to twist my arm before I coughed up my $79 fee for a Prime membership. It was a no-brainer. I order something from desertcart at least once or twice a week--books, groceries, electronic gadgets (the list has grown every year). So I didn't need to scribble the numbers on the back of an envelope to see that my annual Prime membership would pay for itself within a few months. Easily! In the decade since then, desertcart has increased the Prime membership fee just $20. Meanwhile, the company has stacked up more and more benefits to Prime, much beyond the special shipping deals that attracted me at the start: -- Free on-demand streaming of movies and TV shows. The service, called desertcart Instant Video, is similar to Netflix's online video service. And while desertcart's video store doesn't yet match Netflix's selection, desertcart is gaining rapidly. -- Free monthly rentals of popular Kindle ebooks, thanks to the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Anyone with a Kindle device and a Prime membership qualifies for the freebies, up to one book per month, with no due date. -- Free streaming music, a service like the popular Pandora or Spotify Internet music services. Whether you're like me--someone for whom desertcart Prime is a must-have--or a more infrequent desertcart customer--this book will explain how to get the most bang out of your Prime bucks. Review: Learned some new tricks - Although I have had a Prime account for a couple of years, I still learned a few worthwhile things from this book. The best thing was learning about the Prime Pantry. I had no idea this feature even existed. What an easy way to shop for groceries, and the flat rate shipping fee is very reasonable, and is less than I would have to pay in city and state taxes. Learning about this feature from the book made it more than worthwhile. Review: Nice, but....... - Biggest problem, couldn't watch any movies via Google Chromecast. They would play, but very choppy, stopped and started, etc. Couldn't enjoy a movie playing like that. We had to watch The Wire (great series) on my 17" laptop as a result. Although there were some "fixes" on the internet to solve this problem, I couldn't get them to work. E-mails to desertcart for help with the situation went unanswered. Apparently, they are fierce competitors with Google, so...... And, there are lots of movie titles available as part of the package, but there are many more that require additional fees. The "free" shipping is nice. Really didn't use the music feature and only one book (the book I chose happened to have additional fees). I guess if you have the desertcart version of the Google Chromecast product, this would be a worthwhile service.