Amazon is killing off Prime Invitee Program and replacing it with Amazon Family
If you are an Amazon Prime customer who has been sharing account benefits – such as free shipping – with your friends, things are about to change. Amazon has announced that Amazon Family is replacing the Prime Invitee Program, and it is not just a name change.
Starting next month, it will only be possible to share Prime benefits with people who live in the same household as the account holder. This echoes the stricter rules being enforced by Google to prevent the sharing of YouTube Family Premium with people who live at different addresses.
The announcement comes only a matter of weeks before the changes come into effect, meaning that a lot of people have a decision to make in the very near future. In an updated support document, Amazon explains that the Amazon Family is replacing the Prime Invitee Program:
Prime benefit sharing through the Prime Invitee program will end on 1 October 2025. Prime invitees will lose access to the shared Prime delivery benefit, but can use Amazon Family instead.
What does this mean? Amazon presents customers with a couple of choices:
- If you shared Prime benefits with others through the Prime Invitee program: You can now share certain Prime benefits through Amazon Family. Your Amazon Family can include an account for one other adult in your household and up to four child profiles. Additional adult members will need their own Prime Membership.
- If you're a Prime Invitee: You can either ask the Prime member in your household to add you to their Amazon Family, or sign up for your own Prime Membership.
The list of benefits that can be shared remains fairly extensive:
- Fast and free delivery on Prime eligible items
- Access to exclusive Prime events and deals
- Prime Video (with ads)
- Prime Reading
- Access to third-party benefits (for example, Grubhub)
- Digital content such as audio books, eBooks, games, and more.
- Additionally, Prime members can share their Amazon Music Prime benefit with one other adult in their Amazon Family. This sharing allows both adults to enjoy ad-free listening on shuffle mode.
But while there are many things that can be shared, the fact that this is now limited to people living under the same roof will be seen by many as being too restrictive. Amazon makes its new position abundantly clear when it says:
To share benefits, you and your invitee must live together at the same primary residential address. This is the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time.
Amazon will clearly be hoping that the change leads to a leap in new Prime subscribers, but it is far too early to say how likely this is. The company has not made it clear how it will police the sharing of accounts, now set out what will be done to anyone found violating the new rules.
Are you an Amazon Prime subscriber affected by this? Will it make you consider taking out another Prime subscription, or will you just walk away.
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