>> Businesses have to make money to survive. 

that's such a simplistic argument..

there is normal price increases and this fleecing your customer..

nearly doubling the cost without any obvious advantage is closer to the second..

plus they took the rewards away from non-prime customer... no more accumulation of points to redeem for coupons... that's a pretty desperate move

they also need to consider how many customers they'll lose as a result of this...

charging (insert price) does not mean (insert wanted customer) will buy the product...

so they may overall lose money despite the price increase... hence not meeting the "sales goal"...

so yeah... it's not rocket science... but it's not 1+1 either

me for one they've lost as a prime customer... and i've noticed i buy a lot less since my prime ended...

that's another correlation they need to keep in mind

of course they're the only ones that have the actual numbers to decide if it was the right choice

my $0.20.. price adjusted for inflation and then some