Amazon Photos: free £15 - what's the catch?

[selectortone]

I'm being offered £15 to sign up for Amazon Photos online storage, as a Prime member. No strings attached (apparently). Now, my dear old Irish mother always taught me that nothing worth having is ever free, so what's the catch?

I'm guessing they want to sign up as many people as possible and start charging them later on, but presumably I can opt out at that point, and they rely on people not bothering to do that. Any comments? (Other than the standard 'evil Amazon' ones )

 

[worn thumbs]

The likely catch is that if you let the subscription lapse,you lose access to your files.

 

[selectortone]

The likely catch is that if you let the subscription lapse,you lose access to your files.

Not a problem - they're already backed up to google and half a dozen other local devices.

 

[jcassidy]

What form did the £15 take? Amazon vouchers or money off your subscription?

Storage is cheap and only ever getting cheaper, so it costs them nothing to host your data. They are relying on printing, not only photos but also merchandise (hey, your grandads b'day is coming up why not order this personalised "Best Grandad" mug?)

Take the £15 and cancel when the fee trial is up...

 

[jcassidy]

Note I refrained from commentating on how evil Amazon is as regards facial recognition and cross platform data harvesting...

What form did the £15 take? Amazon vouchers or money off your subscription?

 

[selectortone]

What form did the £15 take? Amazon vouchers or money off your subscription?

It's a £15 voucher.

Take the £15 and cancel when the fee trial is up...

There is no trial period as such. As I said, I'm guessing they'll start charging for it some time in the future.

 

[ajsimmo]

Not a problem - they're already backed up to google and half a dozen other local devices.

Then why bother?

 

[alan895]

I just had a read of the T&C's here https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=22944218031 and from that it appears you need to spend at least £30 on "qualifying items" in order to use the £15.

 

[Rhossydd]

No particular catch. It's just a way to get you to use their photo storage system. You're already paying for it with your Prime membership.
Their hope is that if you've got lots of your content stored on AWS (Amazon web services) you'll be less likely to drop your Prime subscription when it comes up for renewal.

 

[selectortone]

Then why bother?

£15 for 'free'.

I just had a read of the T&C's here https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=22944218031 and from that it appears you need to spend at least £30 on "qualifying items" in order to use the £15.

I'm guessing I've spent that much, which is why I received the offer.

No particular catch. It's just a way to get you to use their photo storage system. You're already paying for it with your Prime membership.
Their hope is that if you've got lots of your content stored on AWS (Amazon web services) you'll be less likely to drop your Prime subscription when it comes up for renewal.

That makes a lot of sense, thank you.

 

[SimonB]

Be aware, at least when I used Amazon Photos some years back, that you are restricted to using their backup software, which is quite primitive, and I found it very buggy and slow. I stopped using Amazon Photos when they ditched direct access via Amazon Drive (I had a 1TB subscription with them too). I now use Google Drive with native backup from my NAS, and it's so much quicker and more reliable, as well as offloading the burden on my laptop. Other than it's included with Prime, I wouldn't recommend it as a service.