Partly because she wants her online purchases of books
and products delivered swiftly and free, and partly because she wants to
follow-up on friends' and colleagues' suggestions of shows to watch on Amazon
Prime's streaming television service, a reader we're calling "Sally"
has decided to sign up for Amazon Prime. Colleagues at the large university
where Sally works regularly chat up one another about their latest weekend
binge-watching activity, and Sally finds some of their entertainment choices
intriguing enough to want to get in on the binge.
Given that she already pays for cable service, internet
service, a Hulu subscription, and a Netflix subscription, Sally wasn't crazy
about the $119 per year fee to join Amazon Prime. But a colleague who works
with her told her that the price for college students with an .edu email
address is only $59 a year, plus students can get a six-month free trial,
before the annual fee kicks in.
Everyone who works at the university has an .edu address,
even if they are not students. One of the perks of working at the university is
the ability to take one course every semester for a nominal fee, or, if you've
been working there as long as Sally, for free.
"I've tried to take a course every semester,"
Sally writes. "So technically, I guess this makes me a student." But
she acknowledges that the reason she has the required .edu email address is because
she's an employee of the university, not because she's a student.
Sally wants to know if it would be wrong for her to sign
up for the student rate on Amazon Prime even if she is not a full-time student.
It's certainly worth a shot. If Amazon's intention is to
give those taking college courses a break on the price, then taking even one
course a semester seems to fit the criteria. Some students go to college
part-time, so Sally's level of engagement with college might not be all that
different from many other college students.
"I'm not sure if it's something I want to
keep," she writes, "so the six-month trial is really
attractive."
If Sally wants to try out the service, the right thing
for her to do is to go to the online signup page and begin the process of
signing on for the six-month trial. As she fills out the application to join,
she might find that some questions posed make it clear that she is not eligible
for the college discount. But if she finds that she is able to fill out the
form successfully, providing all the information asked for, then she should
rest easy with her decision to join her friends and colleagues who get free
two-day shipping on purchases and access to however much programming Amazon
Prime offers.
Of course, given that Sally already has cable television,
Hulu, and Netflix, she might find that adding yet another streaming television
service to her life finally pushes her over the edge on entertainment. But
that's a different conundrum for another day.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
1 comment:
some regulation on management seems like that
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