Just got this email from Amazon. Of course they will be offering a commercial free option for a additional charge lol

Dear Prime member,

We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. 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. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here. (link removed)


It's only $3.00 more per month, which really ain't bad I guess but still. I will have to wait and see how bad it is before i sign up for that, if at all. I don't really watch a whole lot on there as it is.

I'm on the fence, part of me thinks reinstituting a pee break isn't bad and it might stop me from binging shows. I'm not paying more for commercial free or at least that is my current stance at the moment. If they do it during movies that would be a problem but if its beforehand I am not sure I'd care.

As above, it depends on where the commercial are place. Before/after a show is tolerable to me, in the middle (like I’m beginning to see on podcasts now) would not be something I would find acceptable.

quote:

Originally posted by PakRatJR:

quote:

Dear Prime member,

We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements.

Broadcast TV and radio once had limited advertisements. Y'll can see & hear what that morphed into.

quote:

We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.

Translation: "We'll raise the heat slowly, as you become more accepting of it."

quote:

We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here.

It's only $3.00 more per month, ...

For now it is.

We're already paying $140/year for Amazon Prime. We're not making that $176/year and I'm not going to be watching commercials at $140/year. So I guess our re-up to Amazon Prime will be short-lived.

I would pay even more if Prime would hae a way to filter out all the foreign-english_dubbed content.
I just can't take these.

Second, quit linking to every pay-more-for-it content of other channels/platforms and that includes FreVee even though it is free with commercials.

Streaming is fucking up a good thing more and more.

It's making more and more sense to go back to Directv for their streaming version instead of a dish.

We've been using a Roku for the last few years and it's nickel and diming us to death lately.

This is why I usually only stream "live" channels on Roku or Pluto.

When commercials come on I either get up or watch a different channel.

When you stream "on-demand" you're trapped...Tom

amazon fubar'd the Prime Music, initially with limited music but you could advance past shitty content without restrictions, now you get even more average content and limited number of skips, no repeat, no moving the song back a bit to catch something you missed. The experience is worse.

Prime Movies, we don't watch much, I'll catch Top Gear aka The Grand Tour some, and a few others. So now it's commercials for something I pay for already, agree with Ensigmatic, it's just a $40 a year membership increase, you can do the same for Prime Music.

We purchased Kindle Unlimited for my dad, he is of the generation that learned to read books and he likes them on the Kindle, well, Unlimited is limited, none of the books for Authors he enjoys are available without "additional fees" $120 a year subscription for Kindle Kinda Limited.

Funny thing is is you sign up for Audible you get much of the books he likes at no charge, so we may cancel Kindle Not Quite Unlimited and go that route...

I went ahead and bit the bullet. Mainly out of frustration with the viewing situation I have been having trying to watch the new season of "Fargo" on FX. I want to binge it on the on demand function. Same ads over and over about 10 minutes apart with fast forward disabled!

I’m stuck with Amazon Prime because I’m trying to make a move to rural land. Ain’t happening right now as I have to come up with the $ to build my building first. But once moved, well “town” is 30 minutes away to get many things and having it shipped is just much more cost effective, as well as saving me time, and mileage on the vehicles. Unreal. I remember when Prime was $99, then $140, now this. I don’t think they understand that we are being squeezed from every angle. 2024, health insurance cost, up. Homeowners policy up. Auto policy up. Bike policy up. Groceries, gas, utilities, already up due to inflation. And God help you if you need to buy a home, land, or a vehicle right now with these % rates. In other words, now is not the time for Amazon to be pulling this shit. It only takes one straw to break the camel’s back. I will never forget this time, Q4 of 2023. How everyone I do business with, I mean anything and everyone, put the squeeze on me financially.

This squeeze from every angle is going to have long term effects on the economy. I think we will finally see fast food joints closing, Starfucks franchises closing. Credit card debt is at an all time high. Vehicle repos are at an all time high. Loan denials at an all time high for vehicles and homes. Just not the time for Amazon to be pulling this shit. I’m not paying it. And I’m not watching commercials. Guess when renewal happens I’ll cancel Prime and just pay for shipping. If anything, this will backfire on them with me as I’ll spend less with them. They have a got damn monopoly, damn near, on shipping shit as it is. I’ll pay their blood money when I move to my rural land, but not now.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

We purchased Kindle Unlimited for my dad, he is of the generation that learned to read books and he likes them on the Kindle, well, Unlimited is limited, none of the books for Authors he enjoys are available without "additional fees" $120 a year subscription for Kindle Kinda Limited.

I used Kindle unlimited for a while, then I found that I have a much better selection of books that can be borrowed via Kindle, from the Public Library, at no cost.

If you haven't done this already, check your library (I use Seminole County) with the Libby or OverDrive app.

Or as I like to call it, a list of companies I will not use.

Just received the email minutes ago.

Amazon Prime cancelled.

Yeah, got mine but I signed up, sure it's extortion.

I halfway suspect they're using this to gauge customer sentiment before making their final decision.

They're sending this out a month ahead of time, allowing your "pre-register" for the increased payment. This is the first time I've seen that approach.

So basically, they could be seeing how many people fall into each of three camps:

A) Sign up for the new price without complaint
B) Don't sign up, but keep subscription, willing to deal with ads
C) Cancel Prime

Those metrics, combined with getting a feel of the conversations on social media, could then lead them to either finalizing the price increase, or pumping the brakes sometime over the next month and saying "Good news, we changed our mind/found another solution!"

You can also tell that they're really wary of losing customers over this, based on the lengthy email extoling all the (unrelated) benefits of Prime membership.

I use Amazon Prime for the free shipping, and the video is just an extra. We save the Prime membership in free shipping yearly, plus some, but I'm not gonna add $3 a month for ad-free videos.

^^^^
This.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I halfway suspect they're using this to gauge customer sentiment before making their final decision.

They're sending this out a month ahead of time, allowing your "pre-register" for the increased payment. This is the first time I've seen that approach.

So basically, they could be seeing how many people fall into each of three camps:

A) Sign up for the new price without complaint
B) Don't sign up, but keep subscription, willing to deal with ads
C) Cancel Prime

Those metrics, combined with getting a feel of the conversations on social media, could then lead them to either finalizing the price increase, or pumping the brakes sometime over the next month and saying "Good news, we changed our mind/found another solution!"

You can also tell that they're really wary of losing customers over this, based on the lengthy email extoling all the (unrelated) benefits of Prime membership.

I just got the email and agree with you 100%. Fucking thing is lengthy. Reading the list of things, most I don’t use. I mean it was $99 a year and for the shipping, etc, that was fine. I could justify it. $140, I said you bastards, but ok. I’m pretty close to going with ensigmatic and just cancelling the shit. I’ll pay for shipping on every item. If anything it will stop me from making purchases that I can live without.

Like Bezos doesn't have enough money. Now he has to sell ads to make more.

The root of all evil.

Another step closer to cancelling Prime. Primary utility of Prime is to buy stuff I want/need with fast shipping. Everything else is secondary / icing. If I can get additional value, great!

But more and more, the primary utility is getting eliminated: 1) more and more chicom shit to filter through as I search for what I want, 2) reviews are fake and crap (not all, but I suspect much), 3) hate the obvious bias (ie - less 2A related stuff). I've already started to use it more selectively. I buy direct and/or from other sources when reasonably possible to do so. And I no longer give a shit about ordering something single items and not queuing up things to reduce shipments. I used to do it but they fucked up so I no longer care. I'm going to use them to my full advantage.

This ad stuff just means that I will be using the video streaming service less and less, just like I've minimized my use of the music service except for purchase I've purchased.

Let's see this time next year - how are they going to fuck up their book service?