Amazon offering Prime members $1 video credit if they opt for slower deliveries

By Trevor Mogg July 31, 2014

Free two-day shipping is, of course, one of the key attractions of Amazon Prime. However, if you don’t mind waiting a little longer for your ordered item, you can make yourself a few bucks. Or one, to be precise.

As part of a limited-time deal, the e-commerce company is offering Prime members a $1 Amazon Instant Video credit each time they forgo the usual two-day wait and instead take delivery of items in five to seven days.

The new Prime delivery option is listed as ‘No-Rush Shipping’.

Amazon Instant Video offers buying and renting options for more than 150,000 movies and TV episodes, whereas Prime Instant Video allows members unlimited streaming of some 40,000 titles, with downloading of selected titles also possible.

With the offer running till the end of October, there’s plenty of time to strategically plan your deliveries to bag a few free movies along the way. Oh, just one thing – all HBO titles are excluded from the deal.

The offer will be seen by some as an attempt by Amazon to ease the pressure on its logistics and delivery operations, reducing costs in the process. The rising price of fuel and other shipping costs forced Amazon to increase its annual Prime membership earlier this year from $79 to $99, marking the first price hike since the service launched in 2005.

The No-Rush Shipping offer comes just days after the company reported a $126 million loss for its latest quarter, despite a 23 percent rise in revenue, which came in at $19.3 billion. The Seattle-based company has been investing heavily in a number of areas recently, with the production of original TV shows, the expansion of its delivery service to include Sundays in some locations, and the development of its new Fire smartphone all taking their toll on the company’s financial well-being.

While a one-dollar offer is unlikely to return Amazon to profit anytime soon, it clearly feels it could form part of a wider cost-saving strategy to help it at some point get back into the black.

[Yahoo via Time]

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