With Black Friday just days away, Amazon UK has started offering its customers a £20 rebate on Amazon Prime membership. According to the announcement from the UK arm of the world’s largest online retailer, the lower rate will be applicable only for a limited period, from the 15th thru the 18th of this month, when membership to the company’s premium service tier will only cost £59 for one year instead of the usual £79. Amazon says, this year, it will offer over 7,000 deals on Black Friday, which are expected to save UK shoppers millions of pounds. The company also says it is expecting Black Friday 2015 to be the biggest shopping day in the history of Amazon UK, after Black Friday 2014 saw “more than 5.5 million items ordered at a rate of around 64 items per second”.
For the uninitiated, Amazon Prime members get expedited one-day delivery on millions of products and even same-day delivery on over a million products as part of the deal. Residents of select London and Birmingham postcodes even have access to the ‘Prime Now’ service which delivers over 10,000 different products to customers within just an hour of placing an order, for just £6.99 extra. Subscribers to Amazon Prime will also get early access to various deals and offers that will come from Amazon on the occasion of Black Friday, which falls on the 27th of this month. The service will also include unlimited cloud storage (for photographs only) and access to a whole host of eBooks, which are available as part of the Kindle Lenders Library for existing owners of a Kindle tablet of some description. The deal however, is available to new members only, and not existing Prime subscribers.
Announcing the offer, Mr. Christopher North, Managing Director of Amazon UK, said, “Amazon Prime is the best deal in the history of shopping and for four days, customers can get an annual membership at a great discount – just in time for Christmas. Sign-ups to Prime always increase in the run-up to Christmas as customers want fast delivery for gifts as well the ability to stream popular movies and TV shows to keep the family entertained. This year, members will also be able to stream great Christmas music and get 30-minute early access to Lightning Deals, including during Black Friday Deals Week when there will more deals than ever before”.