Many Are Not Happy with Amazon Raising its Prime Membership Cost

Amazon had a pretty good week last week. The stock hit a record new high after announcing a blow out first quarter.

For the first quarter, the e-commerce giant reported revenue of $51.04 billion while analysts had been expecting revenue of $49.78 billion. Earnings per share at $3.27 per share was also significantly higher than the $1.26 that analysts had waited for.

The company saw major growth in its AWS cloud service and advertising business with revenue in the division hitting $5.44 billion. Analysts had been waiting for $5.25 billion.

While Wall Street celebrated these numbers, there was something that had many Amazon customers upset about.

It was Amazon announcing that it would be upping its annual fee for a Prime membership from $99 to $119.

The 20% increase takes effect on May 11 for new subscribers but for current subscribes, it will be adjusted on their next subscription date.

The price of a prime membership hasn’t increased since 2014 until now, but according to the company’s CFO Brian Olsavsky, two-day delivery has expanded to more than 100 million items, compared to the 20 million items it covered in 2014.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and have not been compensated for this article.