Amazon Prime Service Price Increases For First Time In 9 Years

Amazon has announced that its Prime premium service will soon increase in price from $79 to $99. This will be the first time Amazon has increased the price of Prime since the service was introduced nine years ago. It was also revealed Amazon Student Prime will be going from $39 to $49 per year as well. Existing members of Prime should already see an email from Amazon explaining the changes and when they should take affect.

The critical cut-off date is April 17. If your renewal comes up before then, you'll still pay the original $79 fee. If comes up on April 17 or after, you're stuck with the higher fee of $99.

Amazon recently celebrated a record holiday season for Prime, boasting that the e-commerce mega-site signed up more than a million new customers in the third week of December. The signups were coupled with Amazon launching the ability for customers to give a Prime membership as a holiday gift.

According to CNET, if you don’t want to pay the higher annual fee, Slickdeals.net has a workaround that involves buy a Prime gift membership and having it delivered to you as your current membership expires.