Money Management
Amazon Prime Introduces New Fuel Savings Perk
Amazon’s uber-popular Prime membership is gaining a new benefit — with a tease of more to come.
About the new benefit:
Amazon Prime users can now save 10¢ per gallon at select gas stations. Specifically, this includes BP, Amoco, and AMPM locations in the United States — of which there are approximately 7,000. According to Amazon, this new benefit is expected to save the average Prime member nearly $70 per year.
To enable this perk, Prime members will need to visit the new offer page and activate the deal (this only needs to be done once). During the process, members will connect their Prime account with Earnify, which is BP’s loyalty program. Once connected, members can locate participating stations using the Earnify app. To earn their discount, customers can enter a phone number at the pump, use a linked payment method, or use the app to enter their station and pump number.
While this fuel discount offer is live now, Amazon suggests that more transportation savings are on the way. For example, next year, Amazon expects to introduce a vehicle charging benefit with BP Pluse. Details of this deal are expected to be announced at a later date.
About Amazon Prime:
Originally known for its free shipping perk, Amazon Prime has since expanded to include its Prime Video streaming service, Amazon Music, and much more. Additionally, the company has made a splash with its annual Prime Days retail events.
Of course, with the new benefits, the price of Amazon Prime has increased over time. Currently, membership costs $139 per year.
What they’re saying:
Commenting on the new fuel discount benefit as well as the Prime product in general, Amazon Prime VP Jamil Ghani stated, “With free shipping on more than 300 million items, free access to remarkable video, sports, and music content, free food delivery, and substantial savings on grocery delivery and medications, Prime is an incredible value for members. We’re constantly looking to add more value for Prime members and perhaps the broadest and most popular additional benefit we could offer is fuel savings—we’re excited to give this to Prime members.”
My thoughts:
What’s interesting to me is that, while Walmart+ was seen as the mass retailer’s answer to Amazon Prime, this time it’s Amazon copying Walmart’s homework. With Walmart+, customers can save 10¢ per gallon at participating Exxon, Mobil, Murphy’s, and Walmart stations. That adds up to approximately 14,000 stations — which, if you’re keeping score, is double the number of stations this new Prime perk includes. Also notable is that Walmart+ currently costs $98 a year compared to $139 for Amazon Prime.
With that said, although the two products are somewhat comparable, the truth is that they’re really built for different types of people — and the number of Prime members is surely much larger. So, for them, this is a great new benefit that will hopefully allow them to save some money (and recoup a bit of their membership fee). Perhaps we’ll also see it expand to more stations in the future in addition to the teased EV charging perk.
