Watching Ads on Amazon Prime Video Is a Deal Breaker for Some | Hacker News Reader

Watching Ads on Amazon Prime Video Is a Deal Breaker for Some

wsj.com

36 pointsimpish920857 comments

What I hate here more than anything else is the bait-and-switch and bundling tactics.

If Amazon had just had video-on-demand where you would pay for video and be able to watch it, that would have been fine. But they bundled it together with Prime and offered all sorts of free or discounted content instead.

Now they're jacking up the price.

This sort of tactic, of eliminating the competition through steep discounting and then raising the prices once you have a foothold is exactly the sort of thing that antitrust law was designed to handle, and even in the "customer harm" framing of it this seems like a clear violation.

On top of that, while it's "Prime Video" supposedly included with our Prime subscriptions, most of the content requires extra payment, and in non-trivial amounts, or subscription to another channel (Paramount, Britbox, etc.).

Adding adverts is enough that we'll just dump them off the Roku device list.

Enshittification in action, right before our eyes.

Sub-Prime video.

Now customers pay double for Prime Video.

Is this incorrect?

I've been a Prime customer for as long as I can remember. I have used Prime Video a total of maybe 3 times. I'd much prefer if Amazon offered a cheaper Prime Delivery that's only for 2 day delivery. I don't care about any of the other "benefits" that I have no use for at all. But I will say, continuously increasing the price of Prime, and then nickle and diming people on top of that, along with the lack of quality control of products sold on Amazon, I am very very close to quitting for good.

> I'd much prefer if Amazon offered a cheaper Prime Delivery that's only for 2 day delivery. I don't care about any of the other "benefits" that I have no use for at all.

This so much.

I think I've watched TWO shows on Amazon Prime.

At this point, I'd be incredibly surprised if Amazon ever decided to unbundle the shipping from the video.

I watch Prime Video irregularly, I could absolutely live without it. If I encounter ads, I'll probably watch it even less than before which will probably hurt Prime Video's prospects even more. I'd be delighted if I didn't have to pay for it as well.

Never going back to watching ad-stuffed television. I have nothing but bad memories of how ads made cable unwatchable and I jumped to buying DVDs instead as soon as I could afford it. If ads become mandatory for streaming it's back to physical media for me.

I’m sure Amazon will be happy to sell you movies in your preferred format.

I'm sure they would, but I try not buy physical media from them because they ship it in a paper envelope and it often arrives damaged.

Last time I bought DVDs from Amazon they shipped me what appeared to be bootlegs.

> I have nothing but bad memories of how ads made cable unwatchable

I have nothing but good memories of how we used to pay for cable so we wouldn't have to watch ads. Then it went downhill.

DVDs are 576p at best, so you could probably get away with a smaller TV too

I've noticed some streaming platforms have ads for other shows/movies they've made. I don't love these but can tolerate them because:

1. They are only at the start of a show, so I'm not interrupted. 2. They offer a skip button. 3. They are ads for somewhat-relevant content and I don't tend to explore the space of other things to watch very much.

That said, it's a knife-edge for me. If they got even a smidgeon worse I probably wouldn't watch anything on those platforms.

The shipping benefit isn't even that good on Prime anymore with all the garbage sellers outside of Amazon fulfillment, and they give away free shipping on orders of $35+. Whole Foods becoming worse under Amazon made that benefit worth less. Prime Wardrobe limits make it hit or miss on whether you actually can use it to try stuff on. Prime Pantry, Prime Music, and Audible have separate upgrades with monthly fees to make them useful.

If Prime Video is also a nightmare, I'm not sure what the point of Prime still actually is. Prime Reading? Just go to the library. Prime Days are full of future landfill goods. Prime Gaming? Prescriptions?

boiling us frogs.

I despise ads, and cancelled my Prime immediately upon hearing the news about "additional ad free fee". I did watch a lot of their movies, but at the price it was hardly worth it to begin with.

There was no way I was going to keep paying a subscription to get 5-day shipping when ever other e-tailer gets me packages in 1 to 3 days.

I’d turn Prime off in my household if it were solely up to me, but in my experience it’s not 5-day shipping. Most things do arrive on-time, and when they’re late Amazon gives me $5-10 back. This probably ends up paying for half of our Prime membership over the course of a year.

I don’t plan to pay for ad-free Prime, and am hoping it just ends up being pre-roll so that I can load a show, ignore for a little while, and then watch the show. If the ads are interspersed every 20 mins I’m guessing I’ll just stop watching for the most part.

In rural upstate New York, prime takes a week for almost anything. Walmart+ is 2 days, and even things like Best Buy are faster. Prime delivery outside of NYC is not very good in my (somewhat limited) experience.

If this was like Wyoming I could understand it but I think it's got nothing to do with cost or distance but instead has to do with how much competition there is in your town. I think places that are close to a Cheesecake Factory get good shipping because that's a tracer for having better retail options.

7-10 days for Amazon Prime shipment to arrive here in Montana.

It’s a function of where you live.

If you’re in one of the cultural capitals of the US you get 1-day shipping. I mean, if they had 5-day shipping in Hollywood it would be a running joke on sitcoms that Amazon Prime was slow. If Jim Cramer got 5-day shipping you’d never hear the end of it on CNBC. If my Congressman got 5-day shipping in Washington, DC he’d know that I get 5-day shipping.

I live in a rural area that is a few hours from NYC by bus and just two hours from a huge AMZN warehouse. It’s notorious though that people in the same zip codes as those warehouses sometimes get 5 day shipping.

I get this, but do they not give courtesy credits for late items? I ordered something Friday and it showed arrival Saturday. On Saturday, it showed ‘delayed’ and that it would be delivered Tuesday. I called Amazon and they gave me a $5 credit. Surprisingly, it ended up being delivered on Sunday, which was actually within the 2-day guarantee.

I get that it would be annoying to keep having to call/chat Amazon for every order. But if they pay up consistently it would amount to 5-25% off your Amazon purchases (based on my experience, it’s usually around 10-15%). That’s not a terrible tradeoff for slower shipping. In most cases, I’d take the trade!

I subscribed to Prime as soon as it became available and it was always fast, but trouble started during the pandemic they would say I would get it in 2 days but it might be 2 weeks. In that case I could ask for a credit but not long after that they started claiming it would take 5 days.

I got numerous long winded emails about the "benefits" of Prime after I canceled and they hardly said anything about shipping as a benefit.

It makes a big difference when compared with alternatives because of this: if I absolutely have to get something right away I can drop what I am doing and drive to the store and get it sooner than AMZN. That's a hassle though. If it takes 5 days then it is not hard to get to the store because I am probably going somewhere close. 2 days is roughly the crossover where shopping online is more convenient to going to the store.

Since AMZN doesn't care if I have a smile on my face I'm going to shop at a store that invests in my community whenever I can.

In principle AMZN has the advantage of having a bigger catalog but in practice that bigger catalog is mostly spam product listings that I don't want to waste my time looking at.

My biggest behavior change since ditching Prime is that I am much less likely to order used books on AMZN but I am more likely to buy e-Books from platforms other than Amazon like Kobo (e.g. they had a Humble Bundle last week where you could get almost all of the Discworld books for $25) or get books through the fast interlibrary loan service at my uni.

> not long after that they started claiming it would take 5 days.

So when you are going to order something it shows 5 days, even though it’s designated as Prime? I had that happen a couple times and was still able to get credits when I tried, based on the fact that anything that is Prime should have 2-day shipping. I understand it is a hassle though, and it’s good to frequent brick-and-mortar shops to keep them strong.

See https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/7/23333406/amazon-prime-2-... if you actually read their marketing material for prime they don't promise it is two day anymore.

Wow, interesting (and pretty lousy that they charge people the same amount for Prime, even if the level of service is vastly different).

I love when they ask me to pay for Prime to get faster shipping, but selecting free shipping usually shows up just as fast.

Same for me, I cancelled my Prime subscription a few months ago because 1 day delivery is not a thing anymore. I liked Prime Video initially but it has become unwatchable (the fact there’s no way to filter out movies I don’t have access to is infuriating).

Funnily enough, the first order I made AFTER cancelling my subscription was free delivery for some reason, and actually got delivered in 1 day.

Is that a typo, or does Amazon Prime really take 5 days for you?

I'm in a suburb right outside Portland, OR. Prime is nearly always 2 days. Sometimes it's next day, even on weekends. Meanwhile, anybody else is at least a week, even when shipping from California.

I'm so addicted to the next day and Subscribe and Save delivery here I don't think I could give up Prime entirely (heck, we even have Same Day but I rarely use that).

But I trust they'll get the message when viewership drops enough.

I'm a video ad hater. After a decade and a half of streaming without ads, being forced to watch ads caused me to cancel DirectTV because the mobile app forced you to watch the ads. So far, I've not seen ads on Prime, except on shows that are clearly labeled "Freevee" and are from another network. All the actual Prime content appears to not have ads, other than the trailer for another show before the stream starts.

Is this going to change, or are people up in arms about the freevee thing?

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...

The ads start today.

FWIW, they’ve been running ads for their own content for several years, at least in beta tests. I remember seeing non-skippable preroll ads in 2019.

I still haven't seen any ads. Hopefully, by now, my profile indicates that running an ad in my general direction has a negative ROI.

I can't wait until we have AI-powered ad detection and removal that can kill ads that manage to creep their way into everyday contexts. Even stealth social media advertising. And if we ever do have wearable headsets, mine will be set to replace billboards and logos with paintings and art.

I understand the need for companies to make money, though. I just hope they continue providing ad-free tiers.

Ads on broadcast television are varied and usually diverse. They can be actually informative for products, services or sales you might actually be interested in. Broadcasters have had 75 years to figure out what is viable and what will alienate viewers.

Linear streaming ads are not close. They are repetitive, annoying, disruptive, jarring and as alienating as possible. They've also screwed up by adding the countdown timer as well - it doesn't help the viewer, it makes them tense while waiting for the ad to end or for the skip button to show.

Ads and commercials can actually be helpful if done correctly. I like when I see ads for new movies, online services I may have needed but didn't know existed, and even new snack flavors or whatever. Also, local ads are super useful.

Streaming ads are just a money grab right now with zero respect for the viewer. They just shove whatever they want at you, and if they don't have enough inventory of ads, they just shove the same one at you 20 times.

The question in my mind is when Amazon sees how badly Prime subscriptions are affected by this move, whether they'll reconsider or not.

Ads lead to incentives for many other dark patterns in a network. I appreciate that they label which content has ads and we actively avoid it. Since we can’t trust the misaligned incentives with the increase in ads, especially before prime shows as well, we’ve also started doing all of our content purchasing from Apple instead of Amazon.

I have had amazon prime account since it was released. There were many times where I was probably getting no value from it: I don't watch much TV and I stopped ordering stuff from Amazon with any regularity because it became riddled with scammy offerings and counterfeits.

I cancelled today. I don't care about the money exactly, but it was just the final insult to what has been a steady degradation in quality over the years. Moreover, it finally motivated me to cancel other subscriptions I've just been paying for no good reason for years.

Thanks amazon for getting me off my ass so I'll cancel.

If they ever make anything I want to watch I'll just buy/rent it. It's so rare, it'll definitely be cheaper than subscribing.

We've turned it into a game where we try all kinds of oddball searches on the website and watched how they affect the ads being shown.

Amazon now thinks I own an RV with a crappy battery that constantly needs charging, and I'm learning Spanish in between repair jobs.

> Amazon’s presentation said the average ad load per hour is expected to be between two and three-and-half minutes, which would be meaningfully smaller than traditional television and most other streaming services. Some commercials would appear before a program begins playing, while others would interrupt it.

I wouldn't mind so much if they were all preroll. I understand that they might interrupt a movie halfway through (because otherwise the preroll would be 6 minutes long), but I really hope they don't interrupt shows.

The worst part is shows made for networks that might have ads often have terrible cuts and pacing to account for the ad break.

I can't speak for this specific change, but I recently subscribed to CityTV on Amazon Prime and in addition to paying and extra $5/mo. there were ads. The Ad system was insanely broken. Ads played at least every 10 minutes and often the system seemed broken. For example an add would play, the show would play for 10 more seconds and then an ad would play again.

I cancelled the free trial after watching two shows this way.

While I'm no fan of TV ads, whatever they are rolling out at Amazon seems way, way worse than anything before.

The problem with prime is that it is not piecemeal (I am sure by design). If a customer is not happy with a change it might not matter because they rely on other areas of amazon too much. Amazon is just too big, sorry. I don't know what the right solution is but I don't think it's good for the consumer for companies to be in so many industries at once. Should a cloud computing service also be producing mmorpgs and movies?

It unfortunately seems to be a trend that websites start out ad free to lure people in and then hit them with increasing ads once they have loyal customers.

Being a "loyal customer" is increasingly a sucker's game. Need to be as mercenary about purchasing decisions as companies are about their ToS and business models.

Someone should investigate this trend, give it a controversial name, and then dedicate a large chunk of their career to publicizing and criticizing it.

So I have Amazon Prime. If I bought a movie on Amazon Prime Video a year ago (one of the ones you have to pay a one-time fee to "buy"), and I go to watch it now, I'll see ads unless I shell out an extra 3 $/mo for Amazon Prime ad-free? Can anyone confirm or deny this?

These guys cannot leave money on the table; during the Sony vs Universal Studios, the Betamax lawsuit period, Hollywood said theirs "... is a premium product." They will never stop until every dollar is squeezed out of the public.

Thankfully, almost everything on there is terrible. At least in the UK it is.

I cancelled my Prime account.

Amazon (the website) is already littered with Featured(ads), Sponsored (ads), and questionable reviews. If the Prime option is not selected, the shipping time can be over 30 days. And I've purchased enough low quality products to know that price and quality are not related. I'm embarrassed by the time I've spent verifying quality, manufacturer reputation, price range is correct, it will arrive on time, and it performs as advertised.

The Prime Video interface is 40% designed around making me spend money on "rent or buy" and subscription services, rather than stuff I've already paid to watch.

Unsubscribing from Prime doesn't feel like losing-out on a service. It feels like pain relief from a capitalist hellscape.

I was checking out movies on FreeVee. Most ads on there are 3-4 minutes long and cannot be skipped. It gets ridiculous. Makes sense if it’s a free platform, but we’re already paying for Prime and they are going to force ads on us now.

The only ads I don't mind are commercial breaks on cable/DVR because those can be skipped. When you don't have full control over your video stream that's when it becomes too big a problem.

This wasn't always possible with TV; before DVR people would actually watch the commercials.

Okay but we've had DVRs for 25 years now. Commercials are more or less a solved problem until you get into streaming where they can be made unskippable.

It’s a deal breaker for me. They just increased the annual fee for Prime and now this. Infuriating. I will seek out alternative video sources. Why stream if you are going to get ads anyway. Pathetic. Bad move. Boycott Amazon video and their limited ad feed.

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