Technologies

9 hidden Amazon Prime perks that can save you money and make your life easier

There’s more to your membership than Prime Video and fast shipping.

Amazon is a go-to for almost anything, especially during the pandemic. A few clicks and less two days later, what you need is at your door. But on top of fast shipping, Prime Video and Prime Music, for Amazon Prime members, the trillion-dollar tech titan has dozens of services only a few clicks away. Some of the other less familiar perks buried in the vastness of Amazon’s site. We’re here to help pick the best of the bunch so you don’t get lost in the search tool.

Amazon expanded its sphere during the pandemic — visits to its site reportedly increased by 37% from February 2020 to January 2021 — as it pushed new programs, including Amazon Sidewalk, the auto-on broadband-sharing program for Amazon Echo speakers and Ring devices. But its shopping experience continues to be its bread and butter.

But avid Amazon customers may not know about a few of the hidden deals and discounts that aren’t advertised as much. Prime members can get free books and save big books if they know where to look. We’ve hacked through Amazon’s jungle of services to find the most useful (and surprising) Amazon programs that you can use today.

1. Over 2,500 free books and magazines using Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited

Prime Reading is your own personal lending library that comes with a Prime membership. With a rotating selection of over 2,500 books and magazines, you can access Prime Reading with the Kindle app on your desktop or portable device or your Kindle e-reader. This Amazon service also lets you share titles with members of your household. Some books in Prime Reading come with Audible narrations so you can multitask while you listen.

Prime Reading also includes First Reads, which gives members a sneak peek at books before they’re released to the general public.

Kindle Unlimited is a $10-a-month subscription service separate from an Amazon Prime account. It gives you unlimited access to more than 1 million ebooks and up to three magazine subscriptions on a Kindle device or Kindle app.

2. Trade in used devices for gift cards and get discounts for preowned products

Amazon is boarding the train to sustainability station, and it’s something you can directly benefit from. With Amazon Trade-In, you can send back your used electronics in exchange for Amazon gift cards. Make sure to check on the eligibility of each product — some trade-in options are only available for a limited time.

Amazon Renewed gives you access to products that may have been opened but unused by their original owners, or were refurbished. Amazon assures that these preowned items work and look like new, coming with the Amazon Renewed Guarantee. A variety of products and brands are available, even from premium names like Apple and Vitamix.

3. Find Amazon Warehouse discounts

Amazon Warehouse resells millions of like-new or preowned items that have been returned by customers. Some of the products only had their boxes opened by original purchasers before they were sent back, unused, so they’re resold at a discount. While there’s no regular manufacturing warranty on these products, they are backed by Amazon’s 30-day return policy and 90-day renewed item return policy.

To read more about how you can get the most out of Amazon Warehouse, check out our guide on shopping for the best Amazon Warehouse deals.

4. Sift through overstocked items in Amazon Outlet

Just like a brick-and-mortar outlet store, but without the gas money. The Amazon Outlet features overstocked items and other products at discounted prices. Like at an outlet, you can find premium brands, items under $10 and products ranging from home furniture and clothing to books and pet supplies. It’s a good place to stay within a budget while being the first owner, unlike some items in the Amazon Warehouse.

Keep in mind that although the online shopping experience is convenient, just like an outlet, the best deals can take sifting to find. Luckily, you can do it from the couch.

5. Land limited-time discounts through Lightning Deals

Amazon’s Lightning Deals are a promotion where a product or service is on sale for a short period of time or until it’s sold out. You can find them all throughout the site, but especially on Prime Day and in Today’s Deals. On Prime Day, Lightning Deals are only for Prime members.

There is one lightning deal per customer until the promotion ends or all the deals are claimed by other shoppers. You can join a waitlist for a deal, but keep in mind that these discounts are extremely time-sensitive, so grab them fast. Unless refreshing the page over and over is your thing, these deals aren’t necessarily the tool to find something specific because of their fleeting nature and limited availability.

6. 5GB of photo storage with Amazon Photos

Amazon’s online shoebox for photos and videos offers secure and unlimited full-resolution photo storage plus 5GB of video for Prime members. To use this feature, you can choose to manually or automatically upload media in the Amazon Photos app. You can personalize the displays on Amazon devices like Fire TV, Echo Show and Fire tablets as long as you have the app. There are also ways to create keepsakes using the pictures you upload, such as custom cards and prints.

With the Family Vault perk, up to five family members can share in the same plan. If you want more beyond what Prime offers, there are paid plans available. If you choose to switch — which can be done anytime — there is a 100GB option for $2 per month and 1TB plan for $7 per month.

7. Share Prime benefits with loved ones using Amazon Household

Sharing is caring, and Amazon Household lets you extend access to Prime benefits and digital content with others. Using Household, share your Prime account with:

Up to two adults, each with their own Amazon account. Adults can manage accounts of teens and children.
Up to four teens (ages 13 through 17). Teens can have their own Amazon login to stream content and shop with parent approval.
Up to four children (children can’t shop on Amazon).

8. Get discounts on Whole Foods hauls

Healthy shopping can rack up the number at the bottom of the receipt. But if you enter your email address, phone number or scan the QR code on your Whole Foods Market app at checkout during your next grocery haul, Prime members receive discounts on select products.

Blue tags indicate sales exclusive to Prime members, while yellow tags mean an extra 10% off of an item already on sale. This gets you discounts on weekly bestsellers, including produce, packaged goods and beauty products, but note that it excludes alcohol. The few cents saved on items may seem insignificant individually, but savings do add up at the end of the shopping trip.

Also, if you don’t want to make the trip across town, Amazon offers two-hour delivery of groceries for free, as long as you meet the minimum purchase amount. But if you don’t mind the drive, there are also one-hour pickup windows depending on your location — just remember to check in with the Amazon app to see if you need to enter the store.

9. Handpick a wish list with Prime’s wedding registry

If the big day is coming up, Amazon’s wedding registry can get a gift wish list set up for everything from daily essentials to group presents. Amazon can help you cover all the gifting bases, and that makes it a convenient option for you and your wedding guests.

The registry includes lists of editors’ picks and bestsellers to help you sort through Amazon’s options, while the browsing feature can inspire new ideas or highlight something you may have forgotten about. You can also buy any item that’s left on the registry for 20% off — which can be returned within 180 days if you decide you don’t like it.

For more, here are our picks for the best Alexa devices and which e-reader is right for you.

Technologies

Chinese officials said to have obtained F-35 stealth fighter parts in Hong Kong

Reports suggest Chinese authorities have obtained F‑35 stealth fighter components after a shipment was mysteriously diverted to Hong Kong. The parts, coated with radar‑absorbent material, were being shipped by UPS from Australia to the United States.

Reports indicate that Chinese authorities have obtained F-35 stealth fighter components after parts of the jet were mysteriously rerouted to Hong Kong.

In late May, UPS was transporting a cockpit canopy and a weapons bay door from Australia to the United States when the shipment was diverted, according to Bloomberg, which cited sources.

The sources noted that both components were coated with radar-absorbent material to improve stealth, and they could not explain why the shipment ended up in Hong Kong.

On Tuesday, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles informed reporters that Australia knew about the shipment and was collaborating with the United States and Lockheed Martin to determine how Canberra could help with the investigation.

Marles added that, to his knowledge, the missing shipment did not contain any sensitive components, as reported by CNN.

Lockheed Martin, UPS, and the Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Verum.

The F-35, a fifth‑generation stealth jet produced by Lockheed Martin, is sold by the United States only to its closest allies and partners.

Turkey, for instance, was barred from the F‑35 programme in 2019 after acquiring Russia’s S‑400 air‑defence system, sparking concerns that the S‑400 could be exploited to gather intelligence on the jet’s capabilities.

U.S. prosecutors said in 2024 that China has previously sought F‑35‑related American military data in espionage cases.

Last week, a $24 billion deal to sell F‑35s to Saudi Arabia was cleared, yet several members of Congress have warned that the technology could end up in China’s possession.

Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D‑IL) noted that the U.S. intelligence community cautioned that the sale “might place the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The fighter jet is operated by Australia, Belgium and the United States, while Japan, Canada and Singapore have also placed orders for the aircraft.

The United States has also deployed F‑35s in the Iran conflict, during which one jet sustained damage from enemy fire, the Department of Defense reported.

Technologies

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These Cookies and SDKs are used to collect data about your browsing habits, use of the Services, your preferences, and your interaction with advertisements across platforms and devices for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising content, both on our Services and on third party sites. Third-party sites and services also use Targeting Cookies to deliver content, including advertisements relevant to your interests on the Services. If you reject these Cookies or SDKs, you will see less relevant advertising.

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Technologies

U.S. Crude Drops Close to 8% Weekly Following Tehran-Washington Discussions at United Nations

A privacy notice detailing how cookies and tracking technologies are used for advertising personalization, content recommendations, fraud prevention, and service improvement, with options to manage consent preferences.

Your Privacy

On this platform, we and our vendors employ cookies and similar technologies (“Cookies”) to store and retrieve information on your device, such as device identifiers, IP addresses, and browser types. Your data may be utilized to preserve and communicate your privacy preferences; ensure security, prevent fraud, and debug our products and services; personalize advertising and content; measure advertising and content performance; conduct audience research and service development; improve our services and create new ones; match and combine offline data with your online activity; and enable social features. We may share this data with select vendors with your consent. You can modify your choices anytime via the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer of relevant Versant sites or in-app settings.

We will also employ other Cookies essential to our services, including for security and fraud prevention. To learn more about some of our vendors, see the IAB and Google Vendors under each purpose. Visit our Cookie Notice and Privacy Policy for further details.

These Cookies and SDKs are necessary for Service functionality, including security, fraud prevention, and enabling purchasing capabilities. You can configure your browser to block these tracking technologies, but some site features may not work properly.

The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and communicated to those entities as digital signals (such as character strings). This is required to allow both this service and those entities to honor such choices.

Your data can be used to monitor and prevent unusual and potentially fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, bot ad clicks), and ensure systems and processes operate properly and securely. It can also resolve issues you, the publisher, or the advertiser may encounter in content and ad delivery and your interaction with them.

Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) ensures technical compatibility of content or advertising and facilitates transmission to your device.

Cookies, device identifiers, or similar online identifiers (e.g., login-based, randomly assigned, or network-based identifiers) along with other information (e.g., browser type, language, screen size, supported technologies) can be stored or read on your device to recognize it each time it connects to an app or website, for one or more of the purposes outlined here.

– Use limited data to select advertising: 791 partners can use this purpose. Ads shown to you can be based on limited data such as the website or app you’re using, your non-precise location, device type, or content interactions (e.g., to limit ad frequency).

– Create profiles for personalized advertising: 637 partners can use this purpose. Your activity on this service (forms submitted, content viewed) can be stored and combined with other information about you (previous activity on this service or other sites/apps) or similar users to build or improve a profile about you (including possible interests and personal aspects). This profile can be used to present more relevant advertising.

– Use profiles to select personalized advertising: 640 partners can use this purpose. Ads can be based on your advertising profiles reflecting your activity on this or other services, possible interests, and personal aspects.

– Create profiles to personalize content: 261 partners can use this purpose. Your activity (forms submitted, non-ad content viewed) can be stored and combined with other data to build a profile for presenting more relevant content, such as adapting content order.

– Use profiles to select personalized content: 234 partners can use this purpose. Content can be based on your content personalization profiles reflecting your activity, possible interests, and personal aspects.

– Measure advertising performance: 916 partners can use this purpose. Data on which ads you see and how you interact helps determine ad effectiveness (e.g., whether you saw, clicked, or acted on an ad).

– Measure content performance: 405 partners can use this purpose. Data on content presented and your interaction helps determine if non-ad content reached its audience and matched interests (e.g., article reads, video watches, time spent).

– Understand audiences through statistics or combined data: 579 partners can use this purpose. Reports from combined datasets (user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics) identify common characteristics to determine receptive audiences.

– Develop and improve services: 688 partners can use this purpose. Your activity data helps improve products and services and build new ones based on user interactions and audience type, excluding profile/identifier development.

– Use limited data to select content: 180 partners can use this purpose. Content can be based on limited data like the site/app used, non-precise location, device type, or content interactions (e.g., to limit article/video frequency).

These Cookies and SDKs collect data about your browsing habits, service usage, preferences, and ad interactions across platforms and devices to deliver targeted advertising on our Services and third-party sites. Third parties also use Targeting Cookies to deliver relevant content and ads. If you reject these, you’ll see less relevant advertising.

Data collected via these Cookies and SDKs can also select and deliver personalized content like news articles and videos.