Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January
Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January
Thanks to industry consolidation and saturated market growth, the streaming industry has started behaving much like the traditional cable giants they once disrupted. As with most industries sufferi…
Didn't they just raise the price of prime too?
$120 / yr. to $140 / yr. now +$3/mo, so call it $176 / yr.?
For what was $120 in 2022?
Glad I noped out at $140.
Price timeline
2005 - lanuches at $79
2011 - $79 (includes Prime Video)
2014 - raises price to $99
2018 - raises price to $119
2022 - raises price to $139
2024 - keeps the price at $139, but introduces ads that you can remove for $3/monthSame. Haven’t really missed the content and I don’t mind waiting an extra day for stuff with free shipping.
Yeah the only thing exclusive to prime that is worth more than $5 (one time) is the 80s period show Red Oaks, and it went off air years ago.
We just cancelled, probably gonna save way more than the subscription fee not buying shitty off brand products that clutter up my house.
I cancelled prime ages ago, Amazon itself is just another cheap Chinese marketplace at this point (just another Wish, AliExpress, or temu). I'd rather buy at twice the price literally anywhere else cause the quality of stuff is so low.
I don't know if they still do this but when I cancelled Prime (years ago), they scammed me on the refund.
I got fed up with them and asked to cancel my membership, maybe 2 - 4 months into an annual subscription. I was expecting to get a pro-rated refund on the remaining term, since I paid for an annual subscription, not month to month.
When I reached out to them about the refund, they explained that I was not owed one. They told me that when issuing pro-rated refunds, they deduct the total value of all the "free shipping" I'd received and the rental value of all the "included with Prime" movies/shows I'd watched up to that point, and they only issue a refund on the difference. I don't recall the exact figures, but they basically said your refund would have been $70, but you already received more than $70 retail value in benefits, so you get nothing.
That doesn’t even track, because the proration inherently wouldn’t include the months you’ve already used. That $70 is for the months in the future that you haven’t used, and therefore haven’t yet received any benefits from.
It was already shitty when they started to charge extra for all these "channels".
Now it's even worse.
Is it worth keeping for the prime deliveries?
This is what I’m undecided about. For quite a few items my shopping list, Amazon is cheaper or significantly quicker to use. The free delivery, and often, overnight or same day delivery is incredibly helpful.
The video platform was never part of the value of the subscription for me tbh.
Prime can get fucked just like Amazon itself already has been for years now. It's just AliExpress shit with higher prices now.
Is it even legal to change the pricing like this in the middle of someone's year long contract? If someone paid $130 for a year of prime assuming there would be no ads, how can Amazon just stay putting in ads and demanding an extra $3?
I'm sure they'd say: "We never told you there wouldn't be ads. But we do have this new product you can purchase if you don't want the opportunity to learn about relevant targeted products from our new ad feature "
Glad I cancelled.
