Amazon Prime members are losing one of their long-standing perks this month

You have until 31 January to take advantage

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Quick Summary

Amazon is getting rid of one of its subscription benefits from 31 January.

The company is calling time on the "Try Before You Buy" perk originally launched in 2018.

Amazon Prime has been around for quite some time now and offers a decent number of perks for its yearly subscription cost. That includes free and fast delivery, but you also get access to special prices during sales periods like Black Friday, as well as subscriber-specific shopping events like Prime Big Day Deals.

Amazon Prime Video, Prime Gaming and ebook lending via Prime Reading are others that have also proved very useful, too.

However, there are a couple of extra benefits that you may not even know about, and sadly one of those is also about to disappear. The Independent has reported that Amazon is calling time on its "Try Before You Buy" perk that allows shoppers to try on clothing, shoes and accessories at home before being charged.

What is Prime Try Before You Buy and when does it end?

Under the perk, you can buy up to six items and have seven days to try them on before being charged. It works in a similar way to services like Stitch Fix used to, where you decided what you wanted to keep before you paid anything.

Of course, you can also opt to use services like Klarna's Pay Later if you want to shop elsewhere. As long as you send items you don't want back before the returns deadline, your Klarna bill will only reflect what you have chosen to keep.

Still, Amazon has offered the "Try Before You Buy" benefit since 2018, initially trialled as Prime Wardrobe in 2017. The decision is said to be down to customers making better use of size recommendations and features like virtual try on.

An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement: “Given the combination of Try Before You Buy only scaling to a limited number of items and customers increasingly using our new AI-powered features like virtual try-on, personalised size recommendations, review highlights, and improved size charts to make sure they find the right fit, we’re phasing out the Try Before You Buy option."

The last date to qualify for the perk is 31 January, 2025. Any apparel purchased after that date will qualify for free returns, but you will need to pay upfront as you do with other items on the online store.

Britta O'Boyle

Britta is a freelance technology journalist who has been writing about tech for over a decade. She's covered all consumer tech from phones, tablets and wearables to smart home and beauty tech, with everything in between. She has a fashion journalism degree from London College of Fashion and previously did a long stint as deputy editor of Pocket-lint, but you’ll now find her byline on several titles including GQ, the Express, the Mirror, TechRadar, Stuff and iMore. You'll never find her without her Apple Watch on, aiming to complete her rings so she can justify the extra bar of chocolate and she loves a good iPhone trick.