I have to pay extra to remove ads from Prime Video
I’d seen rumours online but got the email this morning.
EDIT: seems like there won’t be ads for everyone straight away.
Live events, such as sports, and content offered through Amazon Freevee will continue to include advertising. Customers in the Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man won’t see ads in their experience at this time.
I cancelled Prime as soon as I got this email. It was set to renew in February so perfect timing. I also sent them an email to provide some feedback about the change:
I cancelled my membership as soon as I received notification that you would be including ads to a PAID streaming service. I cannot believe that you think asking for more money per month to have an ad free experience is ok. The world is going to shit because of greedy corporations like you. I hope you go bankrupt and Jeff Bezos goes looking for the Titanic in a poorly made submarine.
Honestly, I would love to believe everyone here, but I remember Netflix last year with eliminating password sharing and how everyone lost their collective minds about it. I thought dam Netflix will really get it this time, then it turns out Netflix was right and they actually gained subscriptions from doing it.
My Prime subscription renewed in Dec. I didn’t know about the ads arriving. So yesterday I went through support and cancelled my subscription and they agreed to refund what I paid.
If they want to change the membership terms on renewals it’s their right to do so, but changing the terms of an annual subscription after I purchased it is unethical to me.
We need to show you ads for your sake. It's so that we can make more and better content for you, so that you and even more, stay subscribed, even though we also just raised subscription fees. It's not because we want the money. It's for your sake we're doing this!
Already cancelled my prime account when this was announced months and months and months ago.
You're already getting recurring subscription fees from me, so you're getting paid even if I don't use your services for any period of time. Stop fucking around and playing games, adding ads is double dipping. I'll just stop the recurring transactions and find services elsewhere.
No, what you have to do is cancel prime, refund your remaining subscription, forget they ever existed, and buy stuff from places that might actually appreciate it.
I've had prime since almost day one. Lately I've been trying to reduce my dependency on Amazon which isn't easy when you're already paying them in advance for shipping just to keep prime video and a few free games and ebooks. This was the push I needed to finally sever that tie and release myself from their trap. This could be the start of a good thing for a lot of people. Prime has been an effective competition blocking lock-in scheme for too long. It's end result is it's ability to keep prices high because they are the sole gatekeeper. Good riddance Amazon.
"We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than … "
That's an insanely low bar to clear. Also, I thought you already did, by having [quickly recounts using fingers] none!
They're really trying to spin this as a positive. They always tried to pull this. From the very start. "Your prime now includes Video, you didn't ask for it, but we gave it to you anyway, for free! Also Prime now costs more."
And then as soon as there's finally anything interesting "Look, all the things you love are now on your free prime video - oh you want to watch that one? Sorry, that is for rent only, or you can buy it!"
I don't remember how long I've been a customer, must have been 2009. Got a gift card for Christmas, I can't use it to pay because I need to verify my identity? What?!
What a beautiful excuse to drop prime. Unfortunately my own changing of behavior won't change anyone's, but hey, at least I guess it's less money spent monthly.
I unsubscribed. I find myself using Amazon less and less for shipping anyways, so now I definitely don't feel the need to stay subscribed for streaming either.
Greedy pigs, they can't help themselves anymore. I swear it went up 20 or 30% in the last year or two, and now this. Does anyone have recommendations on where to find stuff if you are tech stupid with no computer (only a Roku TV and android phone)?
I dropped Prime before any of this happened. I was paying mostly for the two-day shipping, which became increasingly longer than two days.
What made me quit it was when I ordered two of the same item from the same seller, but one shipped from the seller and one direct from Amazon. Both were listed in stock. The one shipped by the seller arrived in three days. The one shipped by Amazon had not yet shipped after the first week. I even contacted the seller, who suggested I cancel, but Amazon wouldn't accept my cancelation, so I had to wait more than two weeks for it to ship.
Turns out I was a fool to be paying Amazon all that time for a sub-optimal service. And I've saved so much money ever since when I can't just buy things with free shipping. In fact, I rarely buy anything from Amazon at all anymore.
So this? This tracks with the direction they've been heading for a long time, and it doesn't surprise me one bit.
I've cut off all but Disney+ and that's only because my nieces and nephews use it. Everything else just gets put into my 80TB raid now. Could probably do to start purging some of it, but also I wanna keep the writes to a minimum to extend drive life and I'm not anywhere near full.
The last straw for me was no more free returns. I cancelled my prime but it doesn't expire for a few months. A buddy of mine is doing the same. It's no longer worth it.
That's unfortunate. Prime video had some shows that were good and it had a really cool feature where you got information about the actors on your phone while you were chromecasting. Everyone with lines got a card with their name, characters name (if it's revealed) and what they are known for. Video was the only part of the company that I am not actively boycotting but I guess its piracy all the way now.
To be fair, coupling free shipment with video was strange to begin with. So, they are decoupling it a bit. I do not care about Amazon video, why should I pay for it at all?
Then again I've been avoiding Amazon like the Plague for at least a decade: I still remember their deleting of ebooks that people bought from their Fire Tablets some years ago and don't trust those fuckers at all in any way form or shape.
Glad more people are figuring it out, and in a way that's mainly mildly infuriating.
PS: Recently discovered Smashwords and am buying tons of ebooks from them as I can download all of them in open formats. IMHO, merelly the clued-on minority ditching Prime won't hurt them enough to make up for the vast bulk of people who will just stick around and accept ads, so the best we can do to screw Amazon is to spread information about sites that can be used to get same kind of stuff Amazon sells, so this is my small contribution.
Have not seen that in the Netherlands but I’m still dropping it. Haven’t seen anything we enjoyed watching for months (and Prime delivery still takes a week in most cases).
Wait til they find out I'm happy to pay nothing and still get the same content (often with less hassle).
All these streaming services seem to have forgotten that piracy is incredibly easy and a lot of use chose to use their services because they were originally convenient and affordable. Now that they're more fractured than ever and way more expensive, why would I bother?
On Christmas we wanted to watch a movie at my Family’s House and the Prime Video Servers where so fucked that we couldn’t watch it (it was an payed Movie). I generally think Prime Video and Music is shit.
Can someone tell me what the point of prime is at this point? I don't remember the last time a package arrived in under a week and now there are ads of a shitty streaming service?
Cancelled my Prime account last year. Kept my Amazon account and since then, used it twice to order stuff I couldn't find anywhere else. Still got free shipping.
It had ads before movies from a long time, 4+ years or even more. The difference is before they were calling them "recommendations", now they're called "ads"
They were running forced movie "recommendations" (=ads) before movies to gather metrics to present to the advertisers
I remember not too long ago, maybe 4 or 5 years, I was having a big argument on reddit and getting killed for giving out about Prime's ads between episodes... I'd completely forgotten about them until now. They used to promote their other shows with 30 second ads between episodes and reddit, or at least wherever I was, were absolutely cool with it.
I thought I would miss the free monthly games from Prime Gaming but even that’s gone downhill. For most of this year, everything I’d want to claim is something I already own or got free somewhere else already.
I'll be paying and having no second thoughts about it.
I know you all LOVE to scream "shiver me timbers" at the drop of a hat but for me it's just to much hassle. At the end of a long day at work I don't want to have to figure out if my torrents are properly managed or use potentially questionable websites.
What I want to do is come home, press the microphone button on my shield remote, tell it what I want to watch and let it go. No hassle, no fuss, I don't care about anything so incredibly much that if it suddenly wasn't available then I NEED to have it at any cost. To me that kind of "have to have it right now and at all times forever and ever" mentality is just as bad as the rampant blind consumerism that the majority of humanity seems to embrace. If I want something that bad I'll find a way to purchase it physically.