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.
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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.
Profit margins are the concern of people who actually respect capitalism, which I do not.
Steal, motherfucking, everything.
pay the creators not the marketeers…
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.
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
Yo ho ho, shiver me timbers, what a crew the Jolly Roger is getting
Aye, what a fuckin crew. Everybody knows the noobs don’t know how important seeding is, and bitch about download speeds 🤨
Patience, Long John Silver. They’re just a bit green about the gills. They’ll get their sea legs.
“See that door marked Pirate?”
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
It says in the email that you can pay extra for ad free.
Sorry. I missed that
The email says you can pay $3 more for the current experience? Or is there some other subscription that makes this confusing?
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.
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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.
that’s until people learn about movie-web.app
I hate it already. It’s a search bar, I don’t know shows names. I want a list of pictures. Do they have a list of pictures?
Then do t use it. This is a new way to access free content. Sure it doesn’t have any suggested shows, but that’s because it does t host any shows in house. It aggregates sources. Also the project is open source, feel free to post your issues there. Open source projects only grow with the collaboration of their communities.
I won’t be using it. I already hardly watch anything to begin with which is why the lists are nice.
Ok then that’s not he thing for you.
Sadly not.
This is such an odd comment!
If you want pictures you could check out Stremio with the Torrentio addon, although I’d recommend also getting a Real-Debrid subscription for faster streaming.
If you’re interested but confused here’s a reddit thread with detailed instructions.
Why was it odd? I don’t follow mainstream media, I don’t know show names, I don’t know actors/actresses names, I don’t follow their jobs etc… so a site that wants you to specifically look for a movie or show title doesn’t actually work for me at all.
I usually watch shows/movies I see recommended by people (either online or in real life) rather than stuff recommended by an algorithm, but that’s just me. Whenever I’ve tried algorithmically suggested TV or movies, it’s kinda been bad (which is surprising considering I love Spotify’s suggestions)
I don’t even want an algorithm. Sort it by release date and I’m happy lol
Torrent sites have 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…
That whole password stuff would at minimum make me change my subscription. That multi-screen plan is way too expensive to not be able to use it away from home.
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.
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.
being unethical is profitable, my good sir.
Unethical to you, but profitable to them.
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 [puts on fancy tricorn]
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
Piracy is the way! Everything for free!
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!
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Maybe they should ad a donate button or patron so that we can show our gratitude
Maybe they should ad a donate button
I see what you did there
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.
