Free shipping eclipses the $100 membership fee pretty quickly if you order several things a year...
... if you usually pay for shipping. I haven't ever paid for shipping on Amazon, even when I don't have Prime. (I do tend to order a lot less often, and overall I'm pretty sure I order less.
True enough. I suppose it depends on how you do your shopping and what kinds of things you buy. I buy enough things that are either big and heavy, or specialty items that I'm picky about, that if I tried to limit myself to items with free shipping without Prime, I wouldn't have the choices I wanted.
As others have posted, I'll often order commodities on there as well, to avoid the need to spend time going out for one thing, which takes said time and also often turns into three or four things once I'm at the store. I'm not a hermit, but there is something to the choice to avoid going out sometimes -- like the entire month of December when the stores are crazy and the same songs keep playing over and over. Bah, Humbug. Thank you Amazon Prime.
Plus, the music is great. So much music to play. Every day, another new album.