FYI here is a site with instructions on how to cancel your prime membership since it’s not the easiest thing to find.
I was able to cancel on the mobile app using this same process.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,”
The double-speak is relatively subtle, but it’s always interesting to see how much work they put into gaslighting their customers:
- “No action is required from you…” - yes, Amazon hopes we do nothing, but Amazon unilaterally changed the assumptions underlying agreement, so “no action” is an acquiescence to a materially worse reality for us and a better one for Amazon.
- “…there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership” - yes, no additional dollars are required because Amazon is now selling our time and attention, but that is still a new “fee” we are paying.
Pretty gross, Amazon.
The enshittification will continue until profit margins improve
Fortunately a VPN is like 30 quid a year. Jellyfin and Radarr are my jam now.
I’ve kept Netflix and Disney+ for now. I was looking to cancel one for a while, and Amazon made that an easy choice. There’s fucking nothing on it at the best of times.
If the price was slightly higher and it’d remove ads on twitch, I might buy it
I still have prime for the shipping, looks like I’ll just be pirating prime video content. Fucking bastard pieces of shit.
Just before our yearly subscription ends. I’m busy ripping and saving what we like for the next month and finally canceling prime this year, this is just the added motivation to remember how much it sucks.
Even though I don’t have Prime, Amazon’s moves are making other sites more attractive. Walmart has been pretty good recently, offering 2-3 day shipping at no additional cost in my experience, along with a better app UI/UX. Now that Amazon has upped the minimum for free shipping, the only edge it holds over Walmart is the wider selection.
FFS, at least give me some quality programming for once.
My Prime membership is up in March. I’ve already decided to not renew it, since they decided to cancel The Peripheral. Had I not already made that decision, this change would have made it for me anyway.
As soon as I saw this I cancelled immediately. I’ve been a member since, um, ever?
My parents still watch cable and the odd time I’ve seen an ad for some other service advertised as only 12/mo with ads or something like that. Is that supposed to sound good to anyone. All these shit corporations need to get fucked.
This has two effects. First, it is supposed to entice with a “cheap” option. Second, it normalizes ads being part of the experience.
The moment when pirating a movie gives you better experience than actually paying for it.
So, always?
Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99 each month or $139 annually. (Prime Video can be subscribed to individually for $8.99/month.) The new charge for ad-free streaming would bring Prime to just under $18, and would push standalone Prime Video to just under $12.
So you’re going to pay for ads? Why even sell such a service?
Stremio + Torrentio
I don’t use Amazon much anymore anyway, because the products are overwhelmed with cheap, poor quality trash you couldn’t peddle on alibaba and completely worthless, largely faked reviews and ratings. I order once or twice a year some replacement cable or adapter I can’t find anywhere else reasonably quick, but that’s pretty much it, so canceling over this ad bullshit doesn’t really hurt me much.
Next on the list is my Netflix sub, which I largely use just for oldtrek reruns as second screen background noise while I use my computer. I could probably, uh, procure those shows fairly easy, or splurge on a collectors edition and would still save money.
There’s a used media shop down the street and I’m contemplating getting dvd/bluray box sets of my favorites so that I have offline media available.
