What they should have done is announce a price increase and a new ad-supported service, forcing people to choose. They'll get this in the end but it will cost them to settle in or out of court.

to quote Cory Doctorow "The 'Enshittification' of the service as a rule!

What they should have done is announce a price increase and a new ad-supported service, forcing people to choose.

They already did this. Amazon introduced 'FreeV' or something similar, then started moving content from the base Prime Video to that ad-supported channel. And the ads were unskippable, irrelevant and generally annoying. I didn't bother to check if the price gouging also made that channel ad-free, I just cancelled Prime instead. The price hike was just the last straw in a service that rarely had anything watchable on it, and the most godawful UI design I've ever seen.

Some day, some streaming service will let subscribers have some choice over the categories viewers want to watch, or never want to watch. I suspect the constant deluge of 'channels', often overlapping is a way to try and make it appear that the services have more content than they actually do.

Non-subscribers must be shown an impressive range of content so they sign up and pay money.

Subscribers must be given a lousy choice so they do not watch anything. Streaming content to subscribers is an expense.

(Large DVD collection in the attic format shifted to a NAS for viewing. If you do not have a collection your local second hand shop will get you started for a pittance.)

And if you have the original DVD then you're not dissapointed like when you go to stream something you love (eg. the scene in Men Behaving Badly where Tony comes back from the pub and is shouting "Debra, I fucking love you!" in the garden) only to find some killjoy has beeped the swearing and ruined the joke.

Still sounds like a material change in the Ts&Cs. I think they'll want to settle this quickly to kill of the discussion and run of cancellations.

Freevee used to be IMDBtv, and it was separate from Prime and anything else. Sadly, yes, there seems to be this irritating mish-mash of services that makes it look like there's more than there is.

I'm supportive of the lawsuit, mostly because I use Prime mostly for shopping, but if you're bunging me into an ad-'supported' tier, please bugger off until my Prime membership is due for renewal. *Then* you can ask me if I want to have ad-free movies and TV.

Does Amazon really make three quid a month per customer from advertising? Does Netflix make nine?

There's a bit more to it than that. Subscriptions are great because, like gym membership, they tend to have long tails of people who hardly use them but never cancel their subscriptions. This skews the "per user" calculations.

If you've ever looked at advertising spending, and this is what actually matters, you'll realise that they probably make quite a bit more than that. Don't forget that they use the data from the "ad-free" service to profile and market the advertisers and this means they really do know a great deal about their audience and advertisers are happy to pay for high quality data. Note again, that the "per user" number is skewed, advertisers will be bidding only for active users, say British ex-pats in Germany who are interested in IT, are retired and "from a far look like flies".

There are also network effects for large ad businesses. Your ads carry a big bonus if you can guarantee that at least X% of the population see them. For that reason, when you have a large ad business, you have a strong disincentive to offer ad-free tiers. The reason is that when people switch to the ad-free tier, you not only lose the ad revenue, but you can even charge less for ads, because advertisers know that their ads is reaching only part of the population so they are less valuable.

"because advertisers know that their ads is reaching only part of the population so they are less valuable."

Said advertisers don't seem to know the cost of annoying potential customers

In theory perhaps but in the real world a lot of people are advert antagonistic and will actively avoid products that are forcefully advertised. Flinging ads at that sector is not just a waste of money but counter productive.

Also some ad flingers fight against the blocks - Do they really think if someone sees an advert through a vector they thought was blocked and will think "Gosh, that's clever, I'll buy that product now" instead of the far more probable: "Curse to hell, they'll never get a penny from me".

Icon ->

Precisely how does Amazon fit ads into its presentation of 'content'?

Do they occur within the flow of a programme/film, that is, as ad-breaks familiar to commercial TV viewers?

If so, then what is the frequency of interruption per hour, and what is the range of individual 'break' durations?

How does this vary among recipient nations? For example, the UK has tighter regulation over terrestrial broadcast 'ad breaks' than the USA. Also, the nature of allowed ads varies.

Shall Amazon, in laxly controlled regions, adopt highly intrusive advertising, whereby ads show on the screen whilst a programme is running?

Will there be restriction on sudden, and large, upward variations in sound intensity when a 'break' is entered?

Also, to consider, is the matter of 'break' influence upon programming. Shall 'content' commissioned by Amazon be created in the knowledge of 'ad break' timings? This distorts dramatic flow when 'cliffhangers' are interpolated in order to retain audience interest across 'breaks'.

'Profit maximisation', or attempt thereat, in distinction from long-term sustainable income, this in the face of 'piracy', may be counterproductive.

The USA TV advertising system has always baffled me even when I first went over in the 80s and had ad breaks after the opening credits of the tv show (it was Cagney and Lacey for you TV trivia fans). Last time I was there, the type of adverts (vote on proposition XX, your congressman is an idiot, vote for me) alongside the-in programme adverts must detract from the shows they're interfering with.

Amazon know that most people won't cancel as its the Prime Free Shipping which enticed us in all those years ago, the streaming side seemed to be a happy bonus.

If any one of my streaming subscriptions goes this year, it will be Disney. Once I've finished all 300 seasons of Family Guy that is...

"most people won't cancel as its the Prime Free Shipping which enticed us in all those years ago"

And yet even without Prime, there are quite reachable conditions under which delivery is free

As a non-USian I find "normal" TV over there completely unwatchable. There seems to be more ad time than actual program and ad breaks are so long I had usually gotten distracted and wondered off before they even finished. Never mind remember what was actually on. The big draw of streaming is/was the same as it was for cable TV at the start. Lack of ads. With this continuing enshitification it's going to drive people away again.

From the last couple of weeks, the adverts seem to appear about 5 seconds before you'd expect them to in the normal flow. Mildly annoying but there are only 2 adverts per 40 minutes or so. Less than we were seeing on their FreeVee service.

Targeting is hopeless - considering the amount of purchasing data that Amazon have from our account, I have no idea why they're targeting this 50-something with adverts more suited to 20-somethings. I'd not be impressed if I were paying for the adverts.

A colleague reports that a ~47 minute episode of vintage Star Trek on Amazon includes ~15 minutes of adverts divided unevenly over 5 occurrences - some are 30 seconds, others are several minutes. They also mentioned that the ads start several seconds ahead of the original slots in the broadcast, interrupting dialog.

"A colleague reports that a ~47 minute episode of vintage Star Trek on Amazon includes ~15 minutes"

That would be my observation of the length of a "one hour" show now about thirty-two minutes of actual content for the decade it was shown. You can see the decrease depending on the decade the show was produced in. The older the show longer the time for the content shown. In the 50s you got 57 minutes or so, 60s 54 ~, 70s down to 48~, 80s down to 44~ and on and on in the reduction per decade since as the parasite TV corporations got greedier and greedier. At least with the Amazon deal they get to skip that other thirteen minutes you would get with the network broadcast of that same show to fill up that hour. That would be my observation of the length of a "one hour" show now about thirty-two minutes of actual content for the decade it was shown in. You can see the decrease depending on the decade the show was produced in. The older the show longer the time for the content shown. In the 50s you got 57 minutes or so, 60s 54 ~, 70s down to 48~, 80s down to 44~ and on and on in the reduction per decade since as the parasite TV corporations got greedier and greedier. At least with the Amazon deal they get to skip that other thirteen minutes you would get with the network broadcast of that same show to fill up that hour. With the no skipping of the four minutes of credits included in that 47 the two minute opening then the two minute closing ones ...

Back in the 1980s, New Zealand's GOVERNMENT tv channels screened 20 minutes of advertising per hour and still had the gall to charge a TV license fee.

When private stations came along with the same amount of advertsiing (or slightly less) Widespread civil discobedience in the 1990s resulted in it finally being scrapped

I'm glad to have dumped watching broadcast TV years ago and nothing is unskippable if you're determined enough

The ads seem to be inserted automatically rather than by a human editor choosing an appropriate slot or even matching the ad break timing originally designed for linear TV. As a result they routinely break scenes 5 to 10 seconds too early, even mid-sentence in some cases.

FWIW other ad-supported streamers are no better.

If they're going to monetize us, they could at least be less shoddy about it.

From what I've experienced since this switch, it's either right at the beginning with an ad or two (similar to NOWTV), and maybe one ad halfway through, or an ad when you've paused and unpause.

I paid for Amazon Prime for fast free delivery. What they decided to introduce as "Value added" was up to them. Upping the price of Prime in general, when they added something I didn't want or need is taking the piss. Then changing the terms of that free delivery, even more. Now I got used to having it as part of the service, they want to charge extra for removing the adverts, even more of a smack in the mush.

I'd be quite happy if they just went back to free next day delivery and charged what they used to for it. No-one asked them to keep adding these extras to Prime.

Agreed. Free DElivery was the only thing keeping me there, because Prime Video was rubbish. When the price jumped from £79 to £95 last year, that was the time I bailed and re-evaluated my purchases. After all, there's as much Chinese crap on Amazon as there is on ebay now, so I only buy from Amazon when I'm looking for reputable branded stuff, rather than quirky hard-to-find stuff that I could only ever find on Amazon.

"there's as much Chinese crap on Amazon as there is on ebay"

And Ebay are much easier to deal with when you encounter counterfeits

I cancelled not that long after the huge price hike for the bundled video service I didn't want. Not even because of that but because their once outstanding customer service nose-dived; that was before the tidal wave of dodgy Chinese tat. Amazon no longer has anything I want, but it now has plenty of stuff I don't, including the deluge of attempted spam from AWS that they evidently do very little to counter.

Seems I'm OK with Amazon until my one year subscription ends about August. At that point I'll choose which of Netflix or Amazon (or somebody else) deserves my money. If the corporate tosspots at Amazon think I'm paying to watch adverts, then they can fuck off - and as others have noted free delivery can be achieved through other means, and the tidal wave of unbranded and often unsafe Chinese tat that is Amazon now really pisses me off.

I think it's what happens when a founder or driving force steps back from a company, and the corporate bread-heads step in, aware of the price of everything and the value of nothing. Ebay became an expensive place to sell and dominated by untrustworthy tat after they went down the corporate route, Google gave up on not being evil once the bread-heads were deciding their own exec compensation and trying to please Wall Street. HP turned to shit after its founders were sufficiently long out of the door. Now the "management genii" have the reins at Amazon, they are trying to fleece us, Disney did the same. I worry Netflix will try the same shit as Amazon.

I suppose at least Meta have been quite refreshing because they've stuck by the same standards they've always had (no privacy and no rights for their users), although I'm not sure that's down to the corporate managers, or simply because Zuck has installed himself as unchallengable King-Emperor for life.

I have Netflix and Amazon, and am looking at which one to drop. Netflix because of the price increases or ads, especially after the password sharing ban that they previously encouraged.

However, I am leaning towards Amazon, I like the 'free' next day delivery but rarely get anything now. I tend to go to Ali Baba where I can get the same Chinese name items for less money, just have to wait longer for delivery. There is very little I can get from Amazon that is named and that I can't get for the same price or cheaper elsewhere.

The 3 most annoying things are:

1) Here is an additional 'Prime' to justify paying extra, that you don't want and won't use like being able to store photos in the cloud.

2) Here is your Prime video streaming service - sorry if you want to watch that you need to pay £x to watch it as it isn't included in the Prime free to view package.

An example which showed this recently was 'Ambulance' - on Prime I would have to pay extra to watch it, go to Netflix and it is included in the deal. To make it worse this doesn't just apply to new films or shows when they are first released on streaming but can be shows that a years old.

3) I search for something on Amazon, then say sort it into order based on price and it jumps from 20 pages of items to 2, and most of the items shown don't actually meet the search criteria.

The more I think about it the more I think I will drop Amazon.

You might want to poll the family…

In my house a few years back it was The Grand Tour, then The 100, currently it’s Clarksons Farm, so it was Netflix that got rejected…

"You might want to poll the family…

In my house a few years back it was The Grand Tour, then The 100, currently it’s Clarksons Farm, so it was Netflix that got rejected…"

I watched the Grand Tour and Clarksons Farm, those are good shows that made Amazon streaming worth happening. However, if they'd never launched a streaming service and all their added extras I'd never know any different and there's a good chance someone else may have paid to make those series anyway. Fact is there's loads of production houses touting their concepts waiting for someone to pick them up. Only thing is the likes of Grand Tour might not have had the same budget, who knows.

If the Amazon streaming service didn't need so much cash pumping into it then I might still have the same service I signed up for at the same price. They were literally printing their own cash and now their screwing it up, along with all the other reasons i.e tat that will eventually cause them to sink.

It can be both!

I think Amazon will be the one to drop. Even allowing for the Netflix foibles of cancelled or incomplete series, and cyclical boom and bust on original content, I think Netflix is leagues ahead of Amazon. In large part because a good proportion of Netflix original content is very good and because a lot of the stuff they buy in is good.

Watched "The Outfit" last night, not a Netflix Original, but still absolutely amazing. Tiny budget, tiny cast, tiny set and yet an hour and a half of on-your-seat-edge captivation. Almost as personal as the theatre. British audiences will particularly appreciate the dynamics between Mark Rylance's lead character and the rest of the cast, and it's fantastic to see such high quality content from US writers/directors Graham Moore and Johnathan McClain.

One trouble we have with Netflix is they tend to stop providing movies or shows. I don't often want the latest-and-greatest shows; I'd rather have the old stuff. And offering Seasons 3-5 of a given show but dropping 1 and 2 is ridiculous.

Personally I think that the plantiff should be awarded the win immediately just for having the name "Wilbert Napoleon" - it made me smile on a damp Wednesday afternoon.

"A previous lawsuit filed against Amazon in 2022 covered similar ground, claiming the retail giant promised Prime free delivery from Whole Foods after it acquired the company, but later, in 2021, charged a $9.95 delivery fee. Amazon recently filed a motion to dismiss [PDF] the suit saying the Prime Terms give Amazon the "sole discretion" to add or remove Prime benefits, with the court previously agreeing Amazon "had contractual authority to suspend"... "any benefits of Prime membership, including free delivery and two-hour delivery."

An absolutely disgusting decision by a court that must be appealed to the very highest level.

If a corporation is allowed to change terms of the contract, worse at their "sole discretion", then for all intents and purposes you don't have a contract . A "contract" that one party can change ON THEIR WHIM is not a contract, it is a "promissory note" of the simple intent of honoring their word. The court has given Big Corp the very power to renegotiate a contract, unilaterally, without a single point of recourse from the customer's end.

This is the most disgusting appearance of American corporatism that I think I've ever seen. Why bother to claim a "contract" when it is, really, only one-sided?? When that side has the power to do anything they want, without any legal repercussions?? That "contract" is just a LIE to them but holds YOU in contempt if *you* have the nerve to object to it.

It is also a MASSIVE failure of the plaintiff's lawyers to fundamentally make their case in this manner. You shouldn't have lost. A contract is a contract, but if changes are allowed they must be allowed by all parties otherwise it is only a "contract" as far as one side is concerned; to the other side, it's just a promise.

While I agree in principle, in practice you've agreed to those terms by signing the contract so they can, legally, make those changes (which is what the judge is stating). What they can't do is override your legal rights in doing so, which limits what changes they can make, and what rights you retain.

For example, by changing the terms and conditions (and provisions of service) in many countries you can cancel membership (how they phrase it) immediately and without penalty plus demand a refund on any remaining balance (if you pay yearly and have x months left for example - you are entitled to a refund for those x months). Not sure if that's true in the US, but it's true in the UK/EU.

It's about all we can do, but yes, it is disgusting that they are making changes like this (rather than they can). It smacks of greed and a distain for the customer. That they also push their 'prime membership' and make it hard to avoid their 'free trial', especially as you then have to cancel it else they start charging just makes this all so much worse.

"Unfair terms in consumer contracts" laws spring to mind - both in Europe and North America

For the court to say that Amazon can do this, the paintiff must not have invoked those laws, as such contract terms have been struck down repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic

…’tis time to raise the black flag again and set sail on the briny deep once more in search of ad-free plunder!

Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

https://youtu.be/WpE_xMRiCLE?si=tU0z3o3oXufHyDE9

Just imagine Jeff Bezos in the black suit...

Wrong Bad Guy. . .

WE ARE BEZOS OF BORG. YOU WILL BE PRIMED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. . . .

CON-tract

Given the likes of Amazon fire sticks, Amazon Fire TVs, there's also potentially an argument that customers bought into the ad free Prime Video concept to the extent of making hardware purchases in the "Amazon hardware eco-system" that made viewing of Prime video easier on a TV (e.g. not everyone has a smart TV with Prime app installed & so some form of "stick" accessory is a common workaround - customer planned streaming uses can drive choice as to whether to purchase a Roku, Amazon, chromecast etc "stick").

As a side issue, on ad including basic tier, also dumped Dolby Atmos & Dolby Vision (to the chagrin of some folk with high end audio visual systems* apparently )

* Not me, but found out from a friend via a music & tech related mailing list we are both on

At least the Fire TV sticks are useful in that you can sideload IPTV apps for added "Yaaarr!", although I believe they plan to remove the sideloading ability just like the NowTV/Roku sticks.

The dropping of Dolby Vision/Atmos isn't getting as much airtime as the Ad insertion. Glad someone mentioned it.

Are they actually losing a lot of money on it, and want to reduce it?

Amazon is usually not this stupid. It's obviously going to get a ton of people to cancel.

You must be a youngster, you still have faith in human nature and you think because the deal is bad people will reject it.

The vast majority of people will either i) just put with the ads or ii) pay the 2.99 to go back to where they were.

Enough will pay the 2.99 that this is seen as a success and they'll try it again in a few months.

I would really love to be wrong on this but look at recent history. Netflix made a much bigger deal about password sharing than Amazon did about being Ad free, it was part of their original marketting that sharing passwords was good. And yet very few people cancelled their netflix subs when they started cracking down. I don't see why this would work out any differently.

Amazon is usually not this stupid. It's obviously going to get a ton of people to cancel.

Apart from when they threw a billion at Rings of Power and a eight and a half billion at MGM... which is the reason Prime TV turned into a money pit in a first place.

Sign me up to the class.