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.
You don't actually have to pay Amazon anything. I suggest you consider this.
Exactly.
I canceled my sub when I got the email. I'm going to pirate anything I want to see from them from now on.
Consider: Pirate everything. It's just a race to the bottom. The average you can charge for an ad tiered service will just continue shifting up as each streaming service gently increases their ad-free prices. If it was ~$15/mo avg before this, now Netflix sees the avg price go to $15.57/mo. If you're going to increase the price by 57¢ you might as well make it a nice round $1....Then Hulu sees the average go to $16.13 so then they need to increase their prices. So on and so forth until we're back to paying $60/mo like we did for cable TV.
And here's the kicker. They're legally obligated to do this because they could be sued by shareholders for not trying to make more money. And that's without mentioning that they actually prefer people to watch the ads because they generate more revenue from sponsored advertising. Pirating is ethical and cool. Paying subscription fees to trillion dollar corporations is cringe.
And I just cancelled. Fuck them. This is 1990's pay TV repeating itself. I'm not playing that part of history again.
Options:
Pay no extra and suffer annoying adverts in all movies and shows.
Pay an extra £35.88 a year to get the same awful experience you had before.
Save £95 a year and cancel it. Spend your savings on a VPN, and look into Jellyfin, Radarr and Sonarr. BEST VALUE
that looks to be almost all steaming services adding an ad-supported option, you now pay to not have ads.
Back to the high sea's to watch anything then
Edit: ignore this. They actually do offer an adfree sub
But Amazon is not doing this. They show ads on the one subscription they have, that they already recently have raised the price for. This is higher price for lower quality and no option to upgrade or downgrade. They leave you the option to stay or leave
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.
The thing is I don’t think a majority of people pay for Prime for Prime Video. I obviously have no statistics for this, but I think Video is just a “bonus” on top of the shipping. I don’t know anyone who uses Prime Video as their main source of streaming.
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.
Want to watch Amazon Prime shows commercial free for free?
Set sail me mateys!
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.
This is a 26% price hike. Amazon's marketing BS shouldn't fool anyone.
But... If they don't do that how will they invest in future programming?? Don't you understand how little fucking money Amazon makes??
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.
Avast! Abandon yonder stream ship, lest those scallywags hornswaggle ye again.
Get greedy, never get paid again, that's my policy.
Made em give me $50 back too, fuck you, dirtbags.
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.
This is exactly what every streaming service that has added ads has claimed at the time. Then they load as many ads as feasibly possible.
Marketing is a fucking disease.
It was like that for TV too… back in the day there weren’t ads on cable, and then they just started adding them one day.
"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?!
Enshittification galore.
Canceled my sub, dusted off my torrent tracker logins.
This shit sucks so much, first they make a descent service at a fair price then make it worse and more expensive.
"Enshitification"
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.
Yo ho yer scallwags we sail the high seas🌊🏴☠️🦜
I only have Netflix left, for the kids. Everything else I obtain “elsewhere”.
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.
I canceled my prime membership. Been switching where I purchase most things anyway so this was the last straw.
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.
It "allows" them ~~to invest in compelling content~~ to make more money from the same service.
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