WASHINGTON — Starting Wednesday, Oct. 1, Amazon is ending a program that allowed Prime members to share their free shipping benefits with people outside their household.

In an update to its customer service page , the company announced it is eliminating the so-called Prime Invitee program and is encouraging users who don’t live at the same primary address as the account holder to sign up for their own Prime membership.

"The Invitee program, which launched in the U.S. in 2009 and stopped accepting new invitees in 2015, enabled sharing of the Prime shipping benefit only and is being phased out," an Amazon spokesperson said. "Fewer than 1% of U.S. Prime members are affected by this change, and the majority of invitees can instead enjoy a broad range of Prime benefits with Amazon Family.

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