Amazon Prime Video to start showing ads unless you pay an extra monthly fee

chipfork

We have just received the email stating the ads will be a standard in Prime Video from Feb 5th, unless we wish to pay extra for an ad-free service.

It is a shame that Amazon don't have separate Prime tiers with different features and pricing. There are elements that we would choose to subscribe to, but the only way to remove Prime Video is to cancel Prime.

Given the usual poor Christmas offering on terrestrial/Sky we tried an Amazon FreeVee film. Adverts started around 5 mins after the film got started, we decided that the interruptions weren't going to work for us so abandoned the film. I guess Prime Video will be a similar. Paying extra to what we feel is a less comprehensive offering of media seems daft, so we'll either pocket the saving as we don't watch huge volumes, or maybe look and see what Disney etc are offering.

We have a Sky Q box so tend to plan and record most things so that we can skip through any ads. We have a Netflix subscription and that offers, in our humble view, a better selection of TV series and movies.

If Amazon hadn't made the changes we'd have probably just continued automatically renewing the subscription without even thinking about it. In a way the change has been useful, it has prompted us to have a think about subscriptions, much in the way the Virgin Media price hikes prompted us to switch providers after 21 years.

We primarily use Prime delivery and the dependency on Amazon possibly hasn't been for the best. The delivery service has been very good and the ability to get something the next and same day has on occasion proved useful. However, Amazon isn't always the cheapest and being Prime-less will guide us to checking with other retailers rather than using Amazon as our de facto store.

We have an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription which I believe is separate. For some while we've been thinking whether Spotify or other services would be a better option, so I suspect that will be changed too. I don't believe there will be an impact on our Kindle and Echo devices. So it's going to prompt some changes, we'll certainly keep an eye on how Amazon Prime develops, it may one day better suit our needs.

scottleag

If you're on an annual contract then contact their chat service. Took me 40 minutes but they've now reimbursed me the monthly ads-free charge for the remainder of my contract (six months, £17.94). For anyone who signed up for Xmas and I imagine that'll be a fair few that's £32.89 for eleven months.

nablor

Bit annoyed that they've introduced this half way through my contract, talk about moving the goal posts. CANCELLED my renewal just in case adverts are intrusive but still on the fence on permanent cancellation as too many of these platforms and all getting costly.

chipfork

scottleag said:

If you're on an annual contract then contact their chat service. Took me 40 minutes but they've now reimbursed me the monthly ads-free charge for the remainder of my contract (six months, £17.94). For anyone who signed up for Xmas and I imagine that'll be a fair few that's £32.89 for eleven months.

I did contact their chat to explain why I was thinking of cancelling, but the only offer I got was for them to cancel Prime for me. We were on an annual plan. The primary purpose of the contact was to understand any dependencies that we may not have considered should we cancel. They weren't particularly savvy so I had to check details on independent forums. They did say that we would no longer have any next-day delivery options and all deliveries would now be chargeable. I'm not quite sure that is correct.

Firstly, I cancelled the Amazon Music Unlimited plan which I believed leveraged a discount through Prime Membership. It was actually costing the same as a Spotify Premium plan. I have signed up to Spotify Premium and I'm on the 1 month free introduction. The interface isn't much different to Amazon but I have already found and downloaded a few albums that disappeared from Amazon for some reason. I download a selection for when I am travelling.

Then I cancelled the Prime subscription which was due to renew in July. That's delivered a refund of just under £50. I couldn't see how long we'd had a continual Prime subscription, but we have orders going back to 1999. It's unlikely it has been that long, but it's certainly a very long time and we have never cancelled and re-joined.

We're in no rush to find another TV/Movie streaming service. We have a basic Sky TV package and Netflix which works for us, for now. I would guess this will change our shopping habits, time will tell, we used Amazon a lot for shopping, probably too much.

If they'd kept the service the same, put some of their profits into improving the Prime Video offering and afterwards said there would be nominal price rises to fund those delivered improvements, then we would have been onboard with that. As it is, it makes more sense for us to wait until someone else funds the improved catalogue and then consider then if it's worth re-joining.

tastyfish

Don’t watch much Prime video but this seems to be the way many companies are going. Free service with ads, now subscribe and get ads, or pay even more without ads. Next it’ll be pay extra for ads to be shown at a less intrusive moment (rather like how terrestrial TV ads are usually timed, ie with a natural pause in the programme, as opposed to the Youtube approach of showing them at random, such as in the middle of a sentence). And then it’ll be pay more for ads of a certain length. Where will it end? Until they make it unbearable and we all decide to switch off en-masse?

Bitoshi

As if we were watching any ads anyway, and with sound on.
Ads off mode it's just one button away, at least for now.
Dear Amazon, I would tell you where you can put your ads but I am cautious not to give you any more stupid ideas.
We needed that final push to stop paying for Prime. It is Europe, not US - if you pay for a service, it means because you don't want ads with it, and you are not getting ads!
Last year moved from Amazon Music to Spotify, because of whole screen ads constantly pestering us to switch to Unlimited Music. We are happy with Spotify and grateful to Amazon for helping us out.
Anything we want to watch on Amazon Prime Movies is either available via addon subsciption or pay extra to watch! So why do we need Prime? All old TV shows we like to rewatch every now and then are gone or only available with ads anyway - again, why are we paying for Prime? Freevee can be accessed directly as an app, without Prime subscription.
We paid for Netflix and Disney+ and when annual subscriptions expire, we will switch to only one service per one monthly payment. Watch everything we want to watch and move on to another. This is the way.
And all the stuff we bought via Amazon in last 7 years, because of the free one day delivery - 50% returned due to unsatisfactory quality. And, to me, it looks like delivery cost is already priced in, so why do we need Prime, we can buy the same things on ebay or elewhere for comparable price.
We also noticed in recent years how sellers on Amazon are inflating their prices and how much prices fluctuate, we are paying premium for a service, yet we are being cheated on price. So we started using camelcamelcamel to check that we are not overpaying.
Anything more expensive is being purchased directly from company producing it anyway, due to anther problem Amazon has that probably everyone is aware of, but I don't want to be accussed of spreading any false rumours.
Times are tough, hopefully others will keep propping up Amazon, so Amazon can continue making silly movies and burn money on A-listers's gigantic fees. We would prefer to see more ambitious movies from around the world, cheaper to make and experience blockbuster premieres on big screen.
May your lowest paid workers become your superstars Amazon.

Idroid88

With the recent announcement about ads on Amazon Prime, I looked at cancelling.  However, I have purchased 3 films in the last which previously I would have bought on DVD or Blue Ray.  What happens to my purchases if I cancel and if I cannot access those films I purchased in good faith, will Amazon send me the DVDs as a replacement?

Neil_Jones

Idroid88 said:

With the recent announcement about ads on Amazon Prime, I looked at cancelling.  However, I have purchased 3 films in the last which previously I would have bought on DVD or Blue Ray.  What happens to my purchases if I cancel and if I cannot access those films I purchased in good faith, will Amazon send me the DVDs as a replacement?

You don't lose access to the movie purchases if you cancel Prime.

You don't need Prime to Buy/Rent videos.

phonek

Q: Can you pay for yearly INCLUDING the extra £3/m fee (ie. £130.88/y)? 

If not, then this is bloody stupid. Part of the point of paying annually, apart from saving a few quid, is so we can NOT have a monthly charge to track each and every month. 

Now, annual payers have to track our bank accounts for when an annual 'Prime' payment is taken from our bank ac, then another 12 smaller separate payments for each and every month additional 'Prime-ads free' is taken from our bank ac. Stupid, quite frankly. 

Why not just offer an annual fee that includes the add-free amount within it?!
We're not stupid Amazon, we can clearly tell this makes the total amount higher regardless, so we don't need your utterly patronisingly trying to be opaque per-month charging method to make managing it even worse.

Terry46_2

My annual sub for Prime was renewed on 14 Dec 23. Is it legal for them to change the terms during the contract?