What is Amazon Prime?
A question asked thousands of times on google: What is Amazon Prime? This article goes over all the details you need to know about Amazon prime and evaluates the service in Amazon.sa and Amazon.ae in particular. From its name, Amazon Prime is a program from Amazon, think about it as a premium membership account that boosts your regular Amazon account with many interesting features including fast & free shipping, international delivery, access to Amazon originals movies and series, free games, and early access to deals. According to Amazon the number of worldwide prime members reached 200 million subscriber as of April of this year!
What added value does Amazon Prime provide?
If you chose to become an Amazon Prime member, the program will guarantee many benefits. The most important benefits are listed next.
Free & Fast Delivery
This service from Amazon Prime provides a fast national delivery within 24 to 48 hours from the time of order. The service is available on thousands of items. Most of the time the delivery is within 1 day. Some other order may take 2 days. It is important to now that you can try Amazon Prime for 30 days free of charge, and cancel any time.
How does it work?
To benefit from your Amazon Prime membership, follow these steps:
- Look for products that has the “Prime” badge. You can also use the “Prime” filter in the side bar.
- Make sure that free delivery is mentioned.
- You can benfit from this feature after adding the product to cart.
- In Amazon.sa, this feature is available in several regions across Saudi Arabia, including: Riyadh, Jeddah, Al Madinah, Mekkah, Dammam, Al Kharj, Al Khobar, Al Taif. And Amazon is working on expanding this service to more regions in Saudi Arabia.
- In the above mentioned Saudi regions, Amazon Prime members benefits from free delivery with 2 days, while shoppers in other regions will have their Prime orders delivered within 6 days.
- In Amazon.ae, this service is available in the following regions: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Al Ain, and Ajman.
- There is no minimum order value condition for the free delivery to be applied. Even if the order is SR1 or AED1 the shopper will still benefit from the free delivery option.
- For products that doesn’t fall under the Prime category, Amazon Prime member may still benefit from reduced delivery charges on selected items. And the order might be delivered within the same day if the shopper is located in one of the major cities such as: Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, or Abu Dhabi.
- Prime member can get up to 50% discount on shipping fees on eligible items.
- Finish you order on elegibile items before 12:00 noon.
- Benefits don’t stop on national shipments, Prime members will also benefit from free delivery on a wide variety of products the ship internationally from Prime Global Store.
- To benefit from this option, choose “Prime International Delivery” on orders above SR 200/AED 200.
- Benefit from Amazon Global Store offers, and browsing products available on Amazon stores in other countries such as Amazon UAE or Amazon main store in USA.
What is Amazon Prime Entertainment Benefit?
Entertainment is not Limited to Prime Video
Prime Video is the Amazon’s very own streaming service (ya, Netflix like), and it has it’s own Amazon Originals movies and series and are worth checking. And with a 30-days free trials, you will get enough time to check those and decide whether you like it or not.
- Prime Video got a wide variety of movies and series that are available on free trial. You also have the option to add subscriptions to other networks such as Showtime, Starz, A&E, AMC and other entertainment channels, using the same account. Amazon is always working to expand their own streaming library by regularly adding new content.
- Prime Music: Unlimited music playlists with more than one million song and soundtrack. Amazon music is free with Amazon Echo.
- Storing photos on Amazon Cloud Drive.
- Lend/Borrow Kindle Books: This is currently available in USA only.
- Video Subscription: To watch different video content from third-party apps through Amazon Prime, and save your own content all in one place.
- Prime Gaming: Prime members enjoy a selection of free games every month, access to free in-game loot, a Twitch channel subscription every 30 days, an expanded set of chat emotes and colours, an exclusive chat badge, and more
Benefit from Prime Day discounts that are exclusive to prime members.
Amazon regularly launches a flash sale even for couple of days called Prime Day. It is usually two days of massive discounts that are exclusive to prime members only, that regular Amazon user cannot benefit. But any one can register a free Amazon Prime account for 30 trial period, benefit from the offers on Prime Day, and then cancel Prime membership any time.
How much Does Amazon Prime Membership cost in Saudi Arabia and UAE?
Amazon Prime monthly subscription cost is SR 16 for Amazon.sa and AED 16 for Amazon.ae. User in Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain can benefit from Amazon.ae Prime membership.
It is also worth mentioning that you can save on your Prime membership by paying an annual fee of SR 140 instead of SR 16 per month. (Disclaimer: Prices mentioned are the actual prices at the time of writing this article, and may change at anytime. For the latest pricing please check Amazon Prime pages.)
Launching Amazon Prime Service in UAE and Saudi Arabia
Amazon launched their Prime program in Saudi Arabia in January 2021, and it had a good number of members that decided to benefit from Amazon Prime Services.
In UAE, the service was launched two years earlier, on June of 2019.
Amazon is constantly updating the program by adding new features and benefits.
Is Amazon Prime worth your money?
After going through this whole details to answer the question “What is Amazon Prime?”, now comes the second question, is it worth it? Well, it depends. If you are a frequent shopper on Amazon or a hardcore gamer, then you will definitely benefit from all what Amazon Prime has to offer. However, if you are subscribing to Amazon Prime just for their Prime Video, I would say that Arabic audience have much better alternatives such as MBC’s Shahid, OSN Stream, and of course Netflix.
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Final thought on “What is Amazon Prime?”
We hope that this article has answered the question of what is Amazon Prime, and provided enough information to help you make an informed decision on whether to subscribe to Amazon prime or not.
I would say it never hurt to try, it’s free, and you can always cancel anytime.
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