Amazon announces major prime membership change
'The money saving is important, but for many rural customers, the more critical dynamic is the time saved by using Amazon. The expanded choice that Amazon offers is also very appealing to shoppers who are miles away from big malls and stores,' GlobalData retail expert Neil Saunders told DailyMail.com. 'For Amazon, rural gains are an important part of driving Prime penetration. And the business is confident it can service this profitably by adapting existing rural delivery stations into hybrid hubs which store inventory Amazon's algorithms know will be popular in the area.'
Shoppers interested in trying out the platform can do so for $14.99 a month or $139 a year. The project announcement comes after Amazon made the decision to expand its Prime Day sales event to four days from two. The company had already been the topic of conversation during the rise of inflation and fears of recession after CEO Andy Jassy warned shoppers tariffs potentially rising prices.
While Amazon's net sales skyrocketed to $155.7 billion this quarter, the company has been slammed by its employees and Prime members. Shoppers claimed they would cancel their memberships last year after finding out the company was axing its Amazon Today service.
Prior to its removal, it was a popular perk that provided same-day delivery from select stores in the customers' neighborhoods. Members also canceled accounts after finding out its streaming service started rolling out more advertisements across its TV shows and films.
The company didn't stop there with its prime perk change-ups and infuriated customers even more by raising the price of its Amazon Music Unlimited ad-free subscription program. Besides its member benefit terminations, fans have begun turning their backs on Amazon after Jassy issued a warning of brutal workforce cuts. It is unclear when the layoffs will begin and how many jobs will be axed, but Jassy revealed the cuts were the result of the company's increase in artificial intelligence.
The company is keeping itself busy by preparing for Prime Day, recently warning its members about increases in cyber scams It's also exploring the idea of creating its own currency, an idea that could save the company and retailers like Walmart and Target billions of dollars. Amazon is expecting to make between $159 billion and $164 billion during its second quarter, along with a $13 billion to $17.5 billion operating income. The company will release its second quarter results on July 31 after the market closes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Report: Bengals entertaining trade offers for Trey Hendrickson
August 17 - The Cincinnati Bengals are listening to trade offers involving four-time Pro Bowl defensive end Trey Hendrickson amid an ongoing contract dispute, NFL Network reported on Sunday. Hendrickson, who is slated to make $15.8 million in base salary in 2025, has been seeking a new deal all offseason. In mid-May, the star pass rusher told reporters he wouldn't play this season unless he received a bump in pay. Hendrickson, 30, led the NFL in sacks last season with 17.5. He has 35 over the past two seasons and 57 in four seasons with the Bengals. Hendrickson apparently craves an increase in pay that will place him in the higher echelon of defensive players. Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt just landed the highest annual average salary ($41 million) in history for a defensive player. Over the offseason, Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett ($40 million AAV) and Los Angeles Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby ($35.5 million) also landed huge deals. Hendrickson has been a Pro Bowl selection in all four of his seasons with Cincinnati. He played his first four seasons with the New Orleans Saints, serving as a backup for the first three campaigns. Hendrickson has 77 sacks, 220 tackles and 14 forced fumbles in 110 games (81 starts). --Field Level Media
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Zelenskyy faces daunting trip to the White House – but this time he will not be alone
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will make his second visit to the White House on Monday with the daunting task of reversing the damage done to Ukraine's security prospects by Friday's Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. Zelenskyy will not, however, be alone as he was on his first trip to the White House in February when he was ambushed and humiliated by Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, who sought to bully him into capitulation to Moscow's demands. This time the Ukrainian leader comes to Washington flanked by a dream team of European leaders, including Britain's Keir Starmer, Germany's Friedrich Merz and France's Emmanuel Macron, who combine economic and military clout with proven rapport with Trump. Their mission will be to try to use their individual and combined influence to coax the president out of the pro-Russian positions he adopted after just a couple of hours under Putin's sway in the sub-Arctic on Friday. To do that, they will have to project a more convincing sense of resolve and common purpose than they have managed hitherto, argued Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to Barack Obama. 'My advice would be to not capitulate to Trump,' Rhodes said. 'He has grown all too accustomed to people he perceives as weaker bending to his will, which is something that Putin does not do … Zelenskyy cannot be expected to do this alone, as that's what got him into that last mess in the Oval Office. Zelenskyy needs Europe. And the Europeans need to show a strength to stand up to Trump which they have not really shown yet.' Macron and Merz will accompany Zelenskyy on Monday as embodiments of the two pillars of Europe, the French-German axis that is at the core of the EU. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, will be a reminder of Europe's combined importance as an economic juggernaut. Trump struck a EU-US trade deal with her just three weeks ago in Scotland, and hailed the relationship as 'the biggest trading partnership in the world'. Brett Bruen, a former White House director of global engagement, said the Europeans should focus on economics and use the White House meeting 'as a chance to remind Trump how small Russia's economy is vis-a-vis the EU and the UK and other western partners.' The principal role in Team Zelenskyy of Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will be as a useful bridge: a European far-rightwinger who Trump counts as a friend but who also supports Ukrainian sovereignty. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, represents an even smaller European state but he is on the team because he managed to establish an unexpectedly warm relationship with Trump. The Finn cultivated his access to the president by hastily polishing up his rusty golfing skills for an impromptu trip to Florida in March for a round with Trump, on the recommendation of the Republican senator Lindsey Graham. Stubb used the occasion to offer the perspective of Russia's closest European neighbour, urging Trump not to trust Vladimir Putin. Starmer combines national clout and personal rapport in some measure. Trump has gone out of his way to emphasise their good relations, despite Starmer's 'liberal' outlook, and the president arguably has an incentive not to sour relations ahead of a state visit to the UK next month, an extravaganza in which Trump sets high store. Mark Rutte also brings the influence of high office, as Nato secretary general, with a proven track record of corralling Trump with honeyed words, at one point appointing him the 'daddy' among world leaders, helping avoid any disastrous outbursts at the Nato summit in June. 'A lot of people have learned the lessons of Trump, in terms of how you handle him,' said Kim Darroch, who was the UK ambassador to Washington in Trump's first term. 'There will be a lot of flattery. It's tiresome but it's necessary: it gets you to first base. You tell him how well he's doing, how glad everyone is that he is leading the west to find a solution to the war. But then you get onto the substance.' The fact that all these leaders have cleared their diaries to fly to Washington at short notice is a measure of how alarmed they were by Friday's Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage. The Russian president, wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes in the wake of his unprovoked full invasion of Ukraine, was feted with a red carpet and a personal round of applause from Trump, who allowed him to speak first after the truncated abortive meeting and abruptly dropped his previous insistence on a ceasefire. Instead, the US president uncritically accepted Putin's preference to move straight to a comprehensive peace deal, putting the onus on Ukraine to make territorial concessions. One diplomatic observer likened the prospect of Monday's White House showdown in the shadow of Alaska to a football team coming out for a second half trailing 0-3 but with a raft of super-substitutes on the field. The first challenge will be staying together and sticking to the same talking points. 'Put up a united front and speak from one set of points,' advised Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato. 'The goal is to get Trump to agree and side with them. But the message must be that their position is real, won't change, and if Trump doesn't agree they will pursue their path on their own.' 'Trump won't have the patience to listen to the same pitch a dozen times,' Darroch said. 'So for the initial round they probably need to select a couple of European speakers alongside Zelenskyy: perhaps Rutte as secretary general of Nato and Macron as the senior European national leader. 'My advice to Starmer would be to wait and see how the conversation goes,' Darroch added. 'If it goes badly off-track, or gets a bit spiky, he can intervene to pull it back on course, or calm it down, or just try to build some bridges. Because the risk is that if Trump thinks that the whole exercise is basically about telling him he's got it wrong, he could react badly or just close the discussion down.' On the way into the White House, Zelenskyy and his European backers can steel themselves with knowledge that not all is lost. The worst fear was that Trump would strike a deal with Putin in Alaska which would be presented as a fait accompli to Kyiv. That did not happen. Furthermore, they have potential allies inside the Trump administration. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, is a traditional Republican whose instincts towards Russia are hawkish, although he has a record of going along with the flow of the president's impulses. On Sunday, Rubio gave the arriving delegation some hope, insisting to NBC that a ceasefire is 'not off the table' and confirming that the US is interested in contributing to western security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, acknowledging 'it's one of their fundamental demands is that if this war were to end, they have to make sure this never happens again'. The arrival of so many European luminaries in Washington is a sign of panic, in part, but also of united resolve. Arguably the only way the delegation could be strengthened would be with the inclusion of a Norwegian. Last week, Trump is reported to have cold-called the Norwegian foreign minister (and former Nato secretary general) Jens Stoltenberg, catching him by surprise on his mobile while he was out on the street. The president is said to have pressed Stoltenberg on his obsession with winning a Nobel peace prize, an award decided by a Norwegian parliamentary-appointed committee. One of the cards Trump's visitors will have in their hands on Monday is a reminder that cosying up to Putin is unlikely to get him the Nobel he craves. 'Second-term Trump has his eye on his place in the history books,' Darroch said. 'This is a point which needs to be put across delicately, but history will be kind to him if he delivers a fair peace in Ukraine; less so if he presses for a capitulation.'
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The 'king of American coins' found after 70 years
Where James A. Stack Sr. acquired it is a mystery that may never be solved - but for more than 70 years, one of the rarest coins in American history sat quietly in his family's collection. Stack, a prominent New York banker and one of the most discerning coin collectors of the 20th century, began building his collection in the late 1930s with a bold goal: to assemble the most complete and highest-quality cabinet of U.S. coins possible. He pored over landmark sales, forged relationships with top dealers, and handpicked pieces not just for rarity, but for their pristine condition and impeccable provenance. By the time of his death in 1951, Stack's holdings spanned everything from early American copper to spectacular gold issues, along with rarities in U.S. paper money, ancient coins, and world currency. His collection included some of the greatest trophies in American numismatics - an 1802 half dime, an 1894-S dime, an 1838-O half dollar, the 1815 half eagle, and the finest known 1870-S silver dollar. Even the notorious 1933 double eagle once sat in his albums before being surrendered to the Secret Service, leaving behind only his wry note: 'Secret Service has mine.' One of his most elusive prizes - an 1804 silver dollar known as the 'King of American Coins' - has remained hidden since the 1940s. Just 16 examples are known to exist, and this one is considered the finest of the so-called 'Class III' type in private hands. It will be seen publicly for the first time next week at the American Numismatic Association's World's Fair of Money in Oklahoma City before going under the hammer on December 9, where it's expected to fetch up to $5 million. John Kraljevich, numismatic historian with Stack's Bowers Galleries, which is handling the sale told Daily Mail: 'It certainly has the upshot of making some people who thought they knew everything about everything, or at least everything about this coin, second guess. 'There's always another collection sitting in grandpa's closet. That's why we do what we do - the joy of discovery and the hunt for hidden treasure.' Despite its date, no silver dollars were actually struck in 1804. 'None of the silver dollars made in 1804 were actually dated 1804,' Kraljevich explains. 'In 1834 they wanted diplomatic gifts for heads of state, so they made new dies and put 1804 on them.' Those first pieces went to rulers such as the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat - instantly making them rarities. Later, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, Mint employees struck a few more off the books for collectors. This newly surfaced piece is one of those so-called 'Class III' examples. 'It's high grade, it's beautiful, and it's the only one among all the Class Threes in private hands with that kind of caliber,' Kraljevich says. 'Among the Class Threes, this is far and away the best one any collector will have a chance to bid on,' he added. The 'King of American Coins' nickname dates back to 1941. 'That was marketing talk from another numismatic auctioneer… a Lithuanian immigrant named B. Max Mehl, sort of the PT Barnum of the coin industry,' Kraljevich says. 'He spent hundreds of thousands of Depression-era dollars on marketing, got everyone looking for rare coins in their change, and really helped coin collecting blossom.' Where Stack Sr. acquired the coin remains a mystery. 'We have no backstory,' says Kraljevich. 'The collector bought this between the late 1930s and 1951 in New York… where it was sourced before that is anybody's guess.' Kraljevich believes the coin's pristine state and fresh-to-market appeal could drive bidding sky-high. 'We're thinking probably four to five million… but anything could happen. People love new discoveries and stories of hidden treasure. You get two wealthy individuals who decide they just have to have it, and records will be set.'
