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.
I cancelled my subscription. I’ve haven’t felt this free in a while. I’m no longer a slave to Amazon.
I don’t understand this mindset. Could you elaborate a bit? What about Amazon’s service or products made you feel enslaved by them?
cheap, fast delivery, easy returns
Not me, I use it for shipping only anyways lol. I also have zero tolerance for ads. If it’s not on the couple of services I already pay for, I just play it on Plex instead.
A few things
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Amazon years their employees like shit. Pay and treat them properly. Our gadget for $20 less than we can get from another store is subsidized by those workers.
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the commercials on Prime video. I specifically pay to watch shows, and not be interrupted and pitched dish soap. That was the deal
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removing the option of prime delivery will mean I will source my options more fairly to local sellers
In the end, I feel less dirty by not having that option. In the long run, will Amazon serve me better? The enshitification of the internet has taught me the answer will be no.
Just to be clear, what they pay their employees and the commercials they show made you feel enslaved?
I’m not quite sure what your hang-up is? Is it the word slave? If that is it, then the employees of Amazon are the wage-slaves that deserve due credit. Where as I might consider myself a slave in the sense that I find myself answering to their bidding.
- Jack up rates, yes master.
- Interrupt us with ads, sure go ahead master
- disrupting buying patterns, always you master
My sense of freedom from Amazon is not up for debate.
So what is your @hogmamma@lemmy.world relationship with Amazon?
I think you’re being just a touch dramatic, but aight, dude. I don’t have any relationship with Amazon other than being a Prime subscriber.
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The last straw for me was no more free returns. I cancelled my prime but it doesn’t expire for a few months. A buddy of mine is doing the same. It’s no longer worth it.
Yo HOoOoO! 🦜
Would Blokada block these ads?
I’ll be paying and having no second thoughts about it.
I know you all LOVE to scream “shiver me timbers” at the drop of a hat but for me it’s just to much hassle. At the end of a long day at work I don’t want to have to figure out if my torrents are properly managed or use potentially questionable websites.
What I want to do is come home, press the microphone button on my shield remote, tell it what I want to watch and let it go. No hassle, no fuss, I don’t care about anything so incredibly much that if it suddenly wasn’t available then I NEED to have it at any cost. To me that kind of “have to have it right now and at all times forever and ever” mentality is just as bad as the rampant blind consumerism that the majority of humanity seems to embrace. If I want something that bad I’ll find a way to purchase it physically.
I mean this is just cuz you don’t kno how lol. I honestly find it significantly more convenient having literally all of my media on Plex vs. across 5 different streaming services that all charge too much, still give you ads, have inconsistent libraries, and pull shit when you’re in the middle of watching it.
This shit sucks so much, first they make a descent service at a fair price then make it worse and more expensive.
“Enshitification”
It’s hard to be a good company when you are owned by demons
I assume you meant decent. Prime has always been substandard. They are indeed a descent service gliding right down into the enshittification cesspool.
sounds like cable and pay for view
Myself, I’m enjoying this.
Even gave myself a virtual pat on the back.
Then again I’ve been avoiding Amazon like the Plague for at least a decade: I still remember their deleting of ebooks that people bought from their Fire Tablets some years ago and don’t trust those fuckers at all in any way form or shape.
Glad more people are figuring it out, and in a way that’s mainly mildly infuriating.
PS: Recently discovered Smashwords and am buying tons of ebooks from them as I can download all of them in open formats. IMHO, merelly the clued-on minority ditching Prime won’t hurt them enough to make up for the vast bulk of people who will just stick around and accept ads, so the best we can do to screw Amazon is to spread information about sites that can be used to get same kind of stuff Amazon sells, so this is my small contribution.
I recently wanted an audiobook and found out it’s only available on Audible(because of course), so I resubscribed from when I had it about 5-6 years ago. Plan was to get the book and cancel again. They have also removed audiobooks from my account. Granted, they’re still available on audible. They weren’t taken off the service. I can buy them again. But it just shows they aren’t mine anymore.
From now on, I will pirate something before I subscribe again.
I’ve had prime since almost day one. Lately I’ve been trying to reduce my dependency on Amazon which isn’t easy when you’re already paying them in advance for shipping just to keep prime video and a few free games and ebooks. This was the push I needed to finally sever that tie and release myself from their trap. This could be the start of a good thing for a lot of people. Prime has been an effective competition blocking lock-in scheme for too long. It’s end result is it’s ability to keep prices high because they are the sole gatekeeper. Good riddance Amazon.
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Yeah, had it for years. They ruined their default Music sub earlier in the year so I got Spotify out of spite instead of upgrading it.
When I heard about this change a few months back I cancelled on the spot.
I quit last year when they wanted to raise the cost but never shipped in two days. Honest it’s been just fine. The 4 or 5 times I needed it last year I dealt with the 6 dollar shipping charge. Most of the time I can just buy directly from the vendor though.
“Line no go up, we get more money from you and advertisers, now line go up again”
Yo ho yer scallwags we sail the high seas🌊🏴☠️🦜
To be fair, coupling free shipment with video was strange to begin with. So, they are decoupling it a bit. I do not care about Amazon video, why should I pay for it at all?
when they do fully separate the two unrelated services and people have separate charges for each, they’ll soon realize how many people only watched it because it was tacked-on in the first place.
Well, it was already possible, at least where I live, to get prime video only. Especially helpful since Prime doesn’t have any faster shipping where I live anyway. That’s the subscription I had, but I cancelled them a while ago already, so I don’t know how this decision impacts subscribers like that
Well it’s a good thing when they decoupled it they reduced prime shipping by 2.99 a month.
…oh wait.
They probably needed to adjust costs for inflation, so not increasing the overall prime and instead increasing just the video portion is good in my book. People should not pay for services they do not use.
Cancelled prime. Downloaded freevee since most stuff on prime was already ad driven freevee.
No noticeable change except a fatter wallet.
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.
Exactly what I did too! Sadly, most Americans would gladly continue paying for their lessened experience. When faced with potentially losing a tiny bit of content, most Americans will gladly pull down their pants.
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.
I hope this doesn’t include movies and shows that have been fully purchased…
I don’t think “fully purchased” applies to anything on amazon prime or Netflix where anything can be permanently removed.
You mean like how you fully purchased a premium account?
I wonder why there are no laws against eforced, unilateral contract adjustments like this. Especially considering “no ads” was an explicit part of the original purchase
i’d guess it’s because you can quit anytime. whenever they change the contract, you could walk away, it’s not like you’re forced to pay until the end of the year or something like my gym membership.
not defending the practice, but i think that’s the legal reasoning
