Amazon to Run Ads in Prime Video Shows and Movies
An ad-free option will cost Amazon Prime members an extra $2.99 a month.
Oh boy, more enshittification
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I’ve been a Prime member from the very beginning, but I’m seriously reevaluating whether I should drop it. The value proposition is decreasing for me. At $99 I thought it was pretty good considering the perks like video and music. But then they crippled Prime Music a few months back so it’s a shadow of what it once was (pushing you to subscribe to Unlimited). Now Prime Video is getting ads. Those “extras” are becoming less compelling. So I’m paying $140 annually for just free shipping? Hmmm, these numbers don’t add up anymore.
I cancelled last year. Slower shipping is annoying, but it also encourages me to shop elsewhere, which is nice. I haven't missed Prime Video, and I'm considering cancelling other streaming subscriptions as well (Disney+ and Netflix left, and both raised prices for my ad-free tier).
At current prices, I could probably just buy physical media for nearly everything I care about and come out ahead.
Amazon typically hasn’t been two business days consistently for years for me. I also found out many of their prices are massively inflated for certain products. A lawn mower I was considering was at least 30% more expensive than the same one on a competing website.
They've been pretty consistent for me, sometimes faster, probably because I live a few miles from one of their warehouses. But you're absolutely right about prices, I've found Target to be competitive or cheaper if they have it, and their delivery is just as fast as Prime.
Amazon pricing seems heavily weighted on whether you shopped around online or not. I think they have tracking cookies that check whether or not your comparing prices. If you do, they keep their prices reasonable, if not, they slowly jack them up until you start, then they back off a bit.
See that’s the wacky thing for the mower specifically. Not only do I shop with a browser that has all cookies disabled, I must have checked on the price for the mower ten times over many months along with some alternatives and even other websites. I think they inflate the price if it’s a 3rd party vendor selling on Amazon sometimes.
Great news is that Amazon has also added delivery fee for same day and overnight deliveries for Prime members. At least in UK
So basically it's too much payment for not much of benefits
Additionally, ordering from other sites was a gamble a few years ago. Now its a well mapped path and its pretty painless.
If they are gonna run ads, I may drop it and just stick with their ad streaming service freevee if they gonna do that.
You still get free shipping as a non member if you buy like $25 worth of shit. And you might get it in 3 days instead of 1 (the horror)
But yeah, that's about all you're getting and no it's not worth it.
They just recently upped free shipping to $35 in stuff
I figured it might have changed considering the last time I ordered something from there was about 6 months ago
You’re getting it for 140? I think I pay 180. Seeing the service continually get worse and worse has me close to canceling too.
Just do it. For $140, you could buy like 10-15 DVDs and rip them onto a USB drive or something.
I also highly recommend your local library (if you're in an area with good library service), we get lots of shows and movies there for free.
Their change to Music already made me go and get Spotify instead.
Shoving ads in Video as well makes that shit an easy cancel.