Amazon Prime benefits can only be shared with one other adult now (and four kids)

Amazon Prime is a subscription service that offers free 2-day or faster shipping on millions of items, as well the ability to stream thousands of movies and TV shows over the internet, borrow some Kindle eBooks, and listen to millions of tracks from Amazon Music.

If you take advantage of enough of those services, the $99 per year fee can pay for itself in no time. But if there’s more than one person in your household that wants to use the benefits, it might not make sense to pay twice… because Amazon lets you share some benefits.

The company’s changing how Prime Benefits sharing work though. You used to be able to share benefits with up to four other adults. Now you can only share with one other adult… but you can create an “Amazon Household” with 2 adults and 4 children sharing some of those features.

The change doesn’t just reduce the number of adults you can add to your account: it also changes the features and requirements a bit.

For example, when you have two adults sharing an account, both people have to authorize the other to use any credit or debit cards associated with their Amazon accounts. This means your spouse may be able to use your credit card to make purchases from Amazon using your card, or vice versa.

Children, obviously, won’t be authorized to use your credit cards. In fact, you can even add children to your account if they don’t have their own Amazon accounts.

Features that can be shared include Prime shipping benefits, Prime Instant Video streaming, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, access to Prime Early Access content, and Amazon Mom benefits (including discounts on diapers and other items).

Already sharing your account with more than one adult? No problem. It appears that the change isn’t retroactive. But it will keep you from adding more people in the future — and if you remove someone from your account from now on, you won’t be able to re-add them if you’re already sharing benefits with at least one other person.

via AFTV News and Slickdeals