Amazon Prime Video Ad Tier Sparks Class Action Lawsuit From Subscribers

Look, here's the thing. If Amazon Prime wants to charge me three bucks more for ad-free viewing, the scope of the ad-free viewing had better be a whole lot wider than it currently is. There are plenty of shows on Freevee (an Amazon service) that show ads regardless of whether or not you're paying to have ads suppressed. You don't get my three extra dollars a month and STILL get to show me ads. That's not how it workie, Bezos.

i fucking hate it was trying to watch a new show on season one and almost every episode had an ad for season 2 spoiling me

The value proposition of Prime Video for me as an existing customer is so low at this point that it's not even worth paying for it at all, let alone the extra $36/year to watch their shows ad-free. I've watched everything I'm interested in and the shows I liked have all ended, with one heavily qualified exception (Rings of Power). I'd cancel it entirely like I did with Netflix and "Max" if the shipping benefit didn't make Prime itself so worthwhile to me. Maybe I'll just delete the app from my media player and move on with my life.

0.02% of US prime annual membership subscriptions.

167m US subscribers @ $139

So if you made $100k in a year it’d be a $20 fine.

Do you have to be in CA to be a part of the suit?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Amazon is facing a lawsuit accusing it of misleading Prime subscribers by charging them an additional fee to stream movies and TV shows without ads.

A proposed class action lawsuit, filed Friday in California federal court, claims breach of contract and violations of state consumer protection laws on behalf of users who saw the terms of their subscriptions with Amazon change when it pivoted to making its ad tier the default for its over 100 million subscribers.

In addition to being “unfair,” the suit alleges that Amazon illegally benefited by advertising Prime Video as “commercial-free” for years prior to launching its ad-supported tier, which “harms both consumers and honest competition,” according to the complaint.

The proposed class action seeks at least $5 million and a court order barring Amazon from engaging in further deceptive conduct on behalf of users who subscribed to Prime prior to Dec. 28, 2023.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued the tech giant for allegedly duping consumers into signing up for its Prime service and then impeding them from canceling their subscriptions.

A federal judge in 2022 dismissed the proposed class action, siding with Amazon on arguments that its terms of use tell users that movies and TV shows they purchased may become unavailable due to provider licensing restrictions.

The original article contains 426 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Hazbin hotel aired, used the free trial month to watch that, canceled before they charged me, not going back to prime any time soon, same issue as most of the rest of the streaming services have. Way too expensive for the amount of content I actually want to watch on them.

I haven’t seen an ad yet, can ublock origin block them or have I just been lucky so far?

Canceled my Prime the day this hit. I even have the Amazon Credit Card which will be canceled next.

So far all I've seen is that instead of having an ad for one of their shows before what I want to watch begins, it's an ad for one of their products soi couldn't care less 🤷

I wonder if this lawsuit will hold up in court

Amazon is facing a lawsuit accusing it of misleading Prime subscribers by charging them an additional fee to stream movies and TV shows without ads.

They announced the change in advance, it's not like they lied about the service. Sounds like flimsy reasoning to me.