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.
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.
Yeah we cancelled last month
And I just cancelled. Fuck them. This is 1990's pay TV repeating itself. I'm not playing that part of history again.
Options:
Yeah, you're spot on with every point there. I've cancelled my auto renew, as we do use the other benefits of the prime account, but we can and will be using other services from the end of our current subscription.
Is there a guide for dummies you'd recommend. PVR and etc are unknown terms for me. I used to torrent under vpn but that was in the Limewire days.... hoping for some help in the safest ways to return to the seas.
There's plenty of guides for Linux, but with Windows you're a bit more reliant on installers and reading some of the guides about setting all the bits up.
Off the top of my head, you need:
qBittorrent (for downloading, turn on the web interface, and you can configure it to do nothing if not connected to your VPN)
Prowlarr (this scrapes torrent data from websites and collates it all together for the other parts of this system, add some sources once you install that)
Radarr (browse movies and pick which ones you want, link it to Prowlarr and qBittorrent, give it a folder e.g. D:\Movies to download into)
Sonarr (same as Radarr but for TV, again link it to Prowlarr and qBittorrent, give it a different folder e.g. D:\TV to download into)
Jellyfin (an open source Netflix, allows you to play the stuff you downloaded in a pretty web UI, or through a client program you can get for a couple of platforms, add the folders you told Radarr and Sonarr to download to)
Then you tweak everything that annoys you. By default it's quite happy to grab full 60GB+ Blu-ray releases, which is fine if you're on a fast connection and have lots of storage, but if a movie is over 10GB or so, it all looks the same to me. Depending on how you watch, you might have to mess with Jellyfin clients to figure out why certain videos won't play. It's pretty good but it's not perfect.
How does a VPN give you access to shows on Amazon that require Prime? Or do you mean it'll just give you access to more shows than you'd have otherwise?
For maximum impact:
I've been doing it for years and don't regret it on bit in light of the regular sleazy behaviours of Amazon coming to light (their removing of ebooks that people bought from their Fire Tables alone is the reason why I never bought any digital media from them except for a single music track in MP3 format a decade or so ago).
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.
I hope they reply 😆
Do you really think anyone reads your useless commentary to them? I bet this is outsourced to some AI which then gives a summary of all the comments made when canceling for further planning enshittification. No matter what you type - you help them.
Exactly what I did too! Sadly, most Americans would gladly continue paying for their lessened experience. When faced with potentially losing a tiny bit of content, most Americans will gladly pull down their pants.
100% agree. The reason we are in this situation is because people are so fucking complacent. They downplay/justify these shitty practices repeatedly and corporations just get away with worse and worse shit.
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.
Can confirm, of the 6 people I know with prime, only one actually cares about the video. They all got it for shipping and easily buy enough that the free shipping paid for it, so I don’t fault them at all. Heck, I‘ve had to inform a few of them that they even get video and other services at all.
Can confirm, I view Video and Music as nice bonuses
I have never once accessed wherever they put their media. I don't even know how to get to it or what shows they offer with the exception of the shows I have acquired via the high seas that says amzn or something in the files title.
Even the shipping sucks ass from them..they offer nothing to justify the cost.
Frankly the no more password sharing thing was kinda justifiable. Fair is fair, actively making the service worse and telling you that it's for the bettering of the service when it's clearly not on the other hand...
Netflix punished me, who does not share a password, by making it impossible to sign into a TV while on a trip because it wasn't at my 'home location' without switching the location. That isn't an option when the rest of the family is still at home and wants to watch too.
Plus Netflix had already said that sharing a password was cool with them, so it was a reversal of something that they were completely fine with when it was increasing their market share...
I wonder how many people downgraded though. I'm sorry, but even if I'm using their premium 4 screen plan in one household, I want the option to take it with me or let someone in another house watch something without hassle.
I personally canceled when they got rid of the cheapest option and replaced it with an ad option and a way more expensive base ad-free option. They also auto enrolled me into the premium package as the "closest" to their old cheapest plan.
Fuck em. I'll enroll for a month when the next Sandman comes out and that's probably it.
Well, the total user base here is in the tens of thousands, even assuming there was even 100% agreement on that, that still amounts to less Netflix subscribers cancelling than they have in a single small town in the us.
I think people here (and reddit and other social media) forget that most people just kind of do their thing and don't make posts online about this stuff.
They actually lost subscribers in major markets. The added subscribers were in developing markets and had nothing to do with the changes in plan costs — developing market prices are comparatively dirt cheap.
But Netflix PR was good at spinning this as a win.
My parents and mil still use our Netflix, once they start charging extra I will cancel. To be fair I would've cancelled years ago, they are the only reason I keep the service.
Yeah, but most people weren't sharing their password anyway.
Ads make everyone's experience worse.
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.
Unethical to you, but profitable to them.
being unethical is profitable, my good sir.
I've worked in Investment Banking for a decade or so some years ago and everything there is calculated and risk-priced with zero moral or ethical considerations (even "Regulatory Risk" or, in other words, "If the risk-adjusted profitabily exceeds other options we will break the Law").
Funnilly enough I was in the Tech Startup World after than and nowadays (back in the 90s it wasn't like this) it's pretty much The Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance - or in other word, riddled with shit from the most speculative end of Finance, only with pretty much zero regulatory oversight so, naturally, riddled with near- and actual-Fraud.
All this to say that somebody in Amazon made the maths using their customer behaviour profiles to calculate the risk of the only negative response possible (people actually cancelling, the other two being the slight positive one of "people stay as they are and watch ads" and the more positive one of "people pay the extra for ad free") times lost income versus the upsides and determined Amazon's profit will increase.
Notice how in order to reduce the possibility of people taking the option that's negative for them, they renew and after it do a one-sided change the terms of the contract, which Nudge Theory tells will yield the maximum number of people just accepting it (so they'll be in the "stay and watch ads" rather than "cancelling" group), something which for them even has no negatives (people will either still cancel, which is neutral versus telling it to people upfront and they cancelling, or they'll stick around and take it which is positive for Amazon) hence was a pretty obvious choice for an unethical company.
So, I applaud you for actually activelly going through the gauntlet they put in front of you and cancelling, though I suspect you're part of a tiny minority.
I suggest spreading the "renewal and then change of contract terms" story is the best way to punish them for their actions, especially emphasising that they're knowingly pressuring people to stay with highly sleazy screw-the-customer legally dubious techniques.
(Though not with a wall of text like I did ;), so thank you kind reader for getting this far!)
I would say that the thing that can really screw Amazon over the mid and long-term is losing customer trust.
Thanks for the Finance context. I figured they ran numbers and decided to go ahead anyway.
It’s sad that being public also encourages companies to act in ways that aren’t ethical as long as it maximizes shareholder value.
I just cancelled my subscription
same, this was the last straw for me.
Their email reminded me that I didn't cancel the free membership thing. I emailed them back with LOL and then instantly cancelled.
Dito, hopefully Invincible S2 finishes before it lapses. If not
Want to watch Amazon Prime shows commercial free for free?
Set sail me mateys!
I swear, every time someone says something like that Orinoco Flow by Enya starts playing in my head
They've had very little worth watching, tbh. I'd rather steal better shows instead.
Piracy is the way! Everything for free!
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.
Not a shill or anything, but isn't Prime Video thrown in for free? Here in Australia, we pay for Prime to get free next day shipping, and Prime Video is a free inclusion.
Although I guess, now, it's kinda all advertised as a group of services for the subscription fees, so I'm probably answering my own question here.
I'll go have another coffee and wake up properly...
Edit: just checked - Prime Video is definitely listed as a membership benefit along with the shipping, so they're absolutely moving the goal posts mid-game, especially for annual subscribers. Dick move, Amazon.
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??
Who else is going to cuddle their nuts and jelq them if we don't?
True. We must all make sacrifices so Amazon's profits can grow. Maybe their marketing department should call the increase a "Mandatory Donation for the Good of the World" to help us keep things in perspective.
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.
Gonna add an unsolicited recommendation here. One of the main things I held onto Amazon for was wishlisting for holidays. I've since migrated to giftopedia and I like it, so if you are me, give that a try.
Avast! Abandon yonder stream ship, lest those scallywags hornswaggle ye again.
Yarrr
We are like-minded!
Get greedy, never get paid again, that's my policy.
Made em give me $50 back too, fuck you, dirtbags.
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.
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.
I quit last year when they wanted to raise the cost but never shipped in two days. Honest it's been just fine. The 4 or 5 times I needed it last year I dealt with the 6 dollar shipping charge. Most of the time I can just buy directly from the vendor though.
Yeah, had it for years. They ruined their default Music sub earlier in the year so I got Spotify out of spite instead of upgrading it.
When I heard about this change a few months back I cancelled on the spot.
Pirate everything.
We must scream it from every rooftop!
And every mast!
"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.
Piracy solves this
It does, though this will also be their excuse just to raise the price of prime in general. Even with their rewards card and 5% back, the "benefit" of prime is getting slim for me. Might be time to cancel prime.
Canceled my sub, dusted off my torrent tracker logins.
Fuck amazon! 🏴☠️
Oh, snarky! Hooray for piracy!
This shit sucks so much, first they make a descent service at a fair price then make it worse and more expensive.
"Enshitification"
It's hard to be a good company when you are owned by demons
I assume you meant decent. Prime has always been substandard. They are indeed a descent service gliding right down into the enshittification cesspool.
yo ho ho ho ho ho ho ho and a bottle of rum
🦜☠️💀🏴☠️🥃
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 never paid for prime. I hate paying for shipping though so I usually wait until I need a couple of things to get over the minimum. I recently ordered a pair of ear buds. They were $34.95 so I added a box of $1 Kraft mac and cheese to avoid paying the $8 for shipping. haha!
You in the US? Amazon.ca doesn't have a "buy this much for free shipping" option as far as I know.
Argh, ahoi mate! Lets sail the high seas, come with us!
You are precisely like me!
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)?
Stremio is nice.
I only have Netflix left, for the kids. Everything else I obtain “elsewhere”.
Same but Disney+ because they're young but since they're not ours and we only babysit then on weekends, if we decide to move I'll be able to also cancel that...
I have Disney+ until Jun when my annual subscription renews.
As they've decide to hike the price I won't be renewing, for the little it's used they can pull from other sources.
I'll keep Netflix for the others in the house.
Can't you obtain kids' shows "elsewhere"?
Not in the language I want. Besides they hop from series to series. Can’t keep up with that lol.
Yo ho yer scallwags we sail the high seas🌊🏴☠️🦜
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.
It "allows" them to invest in compelling content to make more money from the same service.
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 had free prime for years, I signed up for a free trial on an empty visa gift card. Every time I log in, it complains that they couldn't collect payment, but it keeps giving me prime benefits, I'm coming up on 2 years like this.
That's honestly great! I've gotta start enrolling for things with those types of cards.
Dropped Prime when they boosted it to $140, feels like a better decision every day.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ oh boy here I go again
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.
Why would writes matter? I assume at 80TB you aren't using SSD. Magnetic drives don't care whether they are reading or writing. It's the spinning and heads moving that wear them out.
Even if your drives are all SSD you're never going to have so many writes that it dies unless you download a full catalog of 8k content daily then nuke it and start over... for a few years
My prime sub is more for free delivery on packages, rather than their shitty prime video service.
That said my dad does get some use out of it.
You still get free shipping on purchases above $35. I cancelled mine. Figure at the very least it'll cut down on some impulse purchases!
Not true in Australia - it more depends on package size - larger packages and niche packages are more likely to have shipping that's often more expensive than the price of the item, especially if it has to be shipped overseas. Prime give me more options to buy these items with free shipping without paying more than double.
Same here.
Funny that it's 2.99 no matter what currency you're using... I'm saving money by living in Canada!
Just means it's all bullshit.
But Prime is $99 in Canada vs $140 in the US, so it's a bigger increase percentage-wise
But OP is in the UK, don't know what the price is there...
Why is it more expensive in the USA? Do they get more stuff included?
So cancel it
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.
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?
when they do fully separate the two unrelated services and people have separate charges for each, they'll soon realize how many people only watched it because it was tacked-on in the first place.
Well, it was already possible, at least where I live, to get prime video only. Especially helpful since Prime doesn't have any faster shipping where I live anyway. That's the subscription I had, but I cancelled them a while ago already, so I don't know how this decision impacts subscribers like that
Well it's a good thing when they decoupled it they reduced prime shipping by 2.99 a month.
....oh wait.
They probably needed to adjust costs for inflation, so not increasing the overall prime and instead increasing just the video portion is good in my book. People should not pay for services they do not use.
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.
Myself, I'm enjoying this.
Even gave myself a virtual pat on the back.
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.
I recently wanted an audiobook and found out it's only available on Audible(because of course), so I resubscribed from when I had it about 5-6 years ago. Plan was to get the book and cancel again. They have also removed audiobooks from my account. Granted, they're still available on audible. They weren't taken off the service. I can buy them again. But it just shows they aren't mine anymore.
From now on, I will pirate something before I subscribe again.
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?
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).
Saw it today in Germany. Cancelled my sub. Ads is a line in the sand that won't be crossed no matter what.
Agreed. No idea why you got downvoted; if I wanted ads I’d subscribe to cable and not a streamer who’s also using the ads to track me further.
Cancel immediately. That's what I did, and I'm not looking back.
I specifically used the link in that email because I knew it had analytics tied to it.
I received one of these as well. I pay for Prime for other reasons and pirate any shows I want to watch cuz fuck watching ads.
I'm in the same boat. I have noticed that delivery services have been getting worse and worse though, and paying for returns is painful.
Maybe I should try getting rid of it.. I tried that with Netflix a few months back and have had no desire to resubscribe.
I would love to, but I use Fresh for groceries because it’s literally the only grocery delivery service that doesn’t infuriate me. I wish someone would make a competent competitor to this service. I have tried literally all of the competitors in my area and had to bounce on them.
Yup I Just cancelled F Amazon. Only had Prime for the streaming and the crappy Prime shipping that was always late.
Customers in the Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man won’t see ads in their experience at this time.
Well, I got the same email and I'm in RoI. I just agreed to cancel with my wife so ¯(ツ)/¯
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?
I'm one of them libural pansy hippies who occasionally gets (slightly more) humane meat/dairy at whole foods. Did the math and begrudgingly, the prime exclusive discounts covered the costs. The alternative for me is going full vegan, or spending even more at a similar store, either of which would just suck.
Would drop prime but I use it mainly for the shipping advantages and dont watch anything on it except 2 shows
You do you. But I would like to point out that prime encourages excessive consumption of crap we all don't need. Maybe this bullshit will let you consider dumping prime altogether and perhaps you will find that it isn't missed.
Personally I do buy stuff from amazon on occasion. Like windshield wipers of odd sizes. But the lack of two day shipping is a good moderator to help me curb my american programmed buy-fucking-everything-to-fill-that-hole-inside mentality.
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.