Amazon’s Hidden Prime Secrets

Amazon’s Hidden Prime Secrets

If you have an Amazon Prime membership (maybe it’s where you’ve been buying all your toilet paper during the pandemic) then you’re likely aware of the key benefits: free shipping, access to special deals, and the free streaming movies and TV shows. But there are a host of other, lesser-known benefits available to Prime customers, like free Kindle books, free Twitch Prime, free kids’ content, and a few ways to earn credit on future purchases. This week, we’re joined by WIRED staff writer Louryn Strampe, who tells us about all of the free and discounted stuff you can get from Amazon that you didn’t even know about.

Also, we discuss how the pandemic has shaped online retail in general, and how Amazon’s poor track record with worker’s rights and third-party seller relations have led some to shop at other online stores, even if that means a diminished experience.

[#iframe: https://playlist.megaphone.fm?p=DGT6274552575](100%x482)

Show Notes:

Read Louryn’s full list of hidden Amazon Prime perks. Her roundup of the WIRED staff’s quarantine hobbies is here. Also, Louise Matsakis’s report about the risks faced by Amazon workers during the pandemic is here.

Recommendations:

Louryn recommends the YouTube channels ASMRplanet and Dianxi Xiaoge. Lauren recommends the greeting card subscription service Warmly. Mike recommends the episode of the Broken Record podcast with Run The Jewels.

Louryn Strampe can be found on Twitter @lourynstrampe. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our executive producer is Alex Kapelman (@alexkapelman). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jaksot(431)

The Treacherous Allure of OG Usernames

The Treacherous Allure of OG Usernames

Product designer and internet native Chris Messina was lucky enough to snag the username @chris on Instagram back when Instagram was known as Burbn, and, like all of his early usernames, it became a p...

15 Helmi 201959min

The App Smackdown

The App Smackdown

Move fast and break app store rules: That very well may have been Facebook’s motto for awhile now, only, we’re just learning about it this week. After TechCrunch reported that Facebook was sidesteppin...

1 Helmi 201949min

Amazon Delivery Bots Are Here

Amazon Delivery Bots Are Here

Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that’s what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center in Osaka in 2015. A group of kids antagonized the r...

25 Tammi 201942min

Nike’s Truly Smart Sneakers

Nike’s Truly Smart Sneakers

Self-lacing sneakers have been the dream since Marty McFly first rocked Nike MAGs in 1989, but most attempts at turning shoe leather into smart sneakers have been expensive, produced in small batches,...

19 Tammi 201946min

The Best of CES

The Best of CES

We came. We saw. We touched a lot of gadgets. This week was the annual CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics show, and WIRED’s team was on the ground covering all of the top tech trends...

12 Tammi 201952min

The Year in Tech, in One Word

The Year in Tech, in One Word

If you had to sum up the year in tech in one word, what word would you choose? That’s what we at the Gadget Lab asked ourselves as we looked to somehow recap a year’s worth of tech-related drama in ap...

21 Joulu 201849min

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now

Most people, at this point, believe that climate change is a real thing that will harm future generations of humans. And yet, a cognitive dissonance exists around that knowledge and our sense of respo...

14 Joulu 201856min