Amazon Canada launched its Prime service in Canada in January. Prime has been available in the U.S. for years; for an annual fee of $79, members get three benefits: free two-day shipping, Kindle e-book loans, and access to Amazon’s large bank of streaming movies and TV shows.
In Canada, we only get the first of those benefits: free two-day shipping. No Kindle loans. No streaming movies and TV shows. And the price we pay for this truncated service? $79 a year. Canadians hoping that, by now, Amazon would have improved the offering will be disappointed.
Where’s the value? Amazon already gives us free shipping on orders of more than $25, and I rarely hit the site and spend less than that. This Christmas, I did almost all of my shopping through Amazon.ca and paid not a cent for shipping.
If Amazon adds streaming content to its Canadian Prime, I will consider buying in. Until then, Prime is simply not worth $79.
And I’ll go one step further: there are a lot of reasons to like Amazon.ca and I am a regular customer, but I dislike the company’s approach to Canada. Americans can buy many Kindle models; Canadians only recently got more than the stock Kindle offered to us. Americans get a triple pack of services in Prime; Canadians get one.
You have to ask: does Amazon value the Canadian market? 
Peter Wolchak 