Earlier this week, Amazon quietly cut back on the number of family members with whom Amazon Prime members can share their free shipping benefits.
Now, a spokeswoman is telling GeekWire today that the program, being called Amazon Households, has a few more changes coming, like the share all of the Kindle books you’ve purchased with your spouse.
“We are excited to allow Prime members to share more benefits within their household. This was always our intention, and the new Amazon Households Program allows a family unlimited access to Prime Instant Video so they can share access to videos included with Prime,” the spokeswoman said. “It also allows households to create a shared library of ebooks, audiobooks, apps and games across all of Amazon devices and media apps, in addition to sharing shipping benefits and more.”
Previously, the Seattle retailer allowed Prime members to share their shipping benefits with up to four additional family members living in the same household. Over the weekend, it changed that to only one other adult and four children.
But now those secondary members will also have access to the various other benefits beyond free two-day shipping. Over the past couple of years, Amazon has been adding a number of valuable perks, like video streaming and other content.
While this opens up a lot of new content for other members in your household, some of the benefits won’t extend to other, such as Prime Music and Prime Photos.
Amazon Prime memberships run $99 a year, and splitting up the cost among different family members would have been tempting for budget-minded families, but now that the number of perks have been extended beyond the primary member, the Household account could be more economical if users were signing up for multiple accounts to get access to the other content.
Here’s an example of the perks that will be now extended to the Prime Household:
- Access to Prime Instant Video
- Access to parental controls on Amazon FreeTime for up to four children
- Shared ebooks with the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
- Shared library of ebooks, audiobooks, apps and games across Amazon devices
- Shared Amazon Mom benefits including 20% off diapers and 15% off Baby Registry discounts
- Shopping privacy – shared accounts cannot see purchase history or order information from shopping on Amazon.com
- Shared digital wallet, which allows for easy purchasing of books, shows, and other products
