Yesterday I went on Amazon.com to buy a phone accessory that I wanted to get quickly. After adding it to my cart, I clicked on the two day shipping option to see what the price was — expensive! But then an offer popped up for a free 3-month trial of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium shipping service. For $79 per year, Prime offers free 2 day shipping on all Amazon orders, with the option for discounted overnight shipping. I don’t buy enough to justify this, but this free offer was pretty tempting, so I took it.

Immediately my purchasing behavior changed. First, I finally gave in after several years and turned on Amazon’s “One-Click” shopping option, which lets you purchase items in one step. Previously I’ve avoided it like the plague because I’d always wait to make sure I had enough in my shopping cart to qualify for free ground shipping before placing an order. But now, I get free two day shipping on everything, which is pretty darn close to instant gratification. So when I saw a book that looked interesting, I clicked “buy.” A few minutes later, I saw a DVD, and clicked “buy” again. And then again. It was so simple, so fun, and so nice to not have to worry about the stupid shipping charges. And hey, I had a couple gift certificates in there anyway, so what’s the harm?

Amazon has caught me in their web. I don’t know if the intent of the Prime free trial is to change your shopping habits or just to get you addicted to the free shipping — probably both — but with me, so far, they are succeeding. Eep.

One thing I should add, the offer has the (obvious) caveat that after three months if you do not cancel, you will be charged the $79 for a year subscription to the service. The difference between this offer and every other offer I’ve ever seen is that Amazon emails you *before* your trial runs out, to warn you if you want to cancel, and they allow you to *immediately* cancel, well before the subscription runs out. Meaning, I signed up and cancelled on the same day, and my free trial is still active for the next three months *without any worry about being rebilled*. That’s absolutely awesome, and makes me love Amazon even more. Which is smart on their part, because if someone like me, a loyal customer for several years, were to get pissed off by being charged for something they didn’t want, Amazon might lose a lot of good will. Instead, at least in my eyes, they just gained a ton, and who knows, if I use it enough, I might even sign up for their damn Prime program. But probably not.