With that said, it’s clear that Amazon wants to wring out as many extra Prime subscriptions as possible.
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The good news? The changes don’t appear to be retroactive, so you should keep your sharing benefits as long as you don’t shake things up.
Sadly, those days are gone. If you link your account, you’ll also have to share credit and debit card information, so make sure you really trust your new Prime buddy. Starting July 31, a feature called “Amazon Households” kicked in for all new subscribers.
The shift promises to cut back on abuse of the program by people who might have skirted the rules in the past by sharing shipping benefits with extended family members.
Despite this change Prime members can still add four children to their account and they won’t even need dedicated Amazon accounts to stream content using Prime Instant Video.
A spokesman for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before August 1st, you could share the cheap shipping benefits of Amazon Prime with up to four other adults. This will not affect either of their current payment settings, but each adult will be able to copy the credit and debit cards of the other account to his or her Amazon account and use them for purchases with Amazon.
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Amazon recommends that you’re with the person you’d like to invite when you start the process, unless that person is comfortable giving you their Amazon login info. The four children (who don’t need their own accounts) will only be able to use non-purchase related features, like streaming movies or sharing books. As TechCrunch notes, it seems Amazon is pushing corporate customers toward Amazon Business accounts, which provide free two-day shipping on orders of $49 or more, but don’t include other Prime benefits such as Instant Video streaming.
