Amazon Sued Over Prime Video Ads (variety.com) 68
Amazon faces a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and deceptive practices because Prime Video now serves commercials by default. Variety reports: "For years, people purchased and renewed their Amazon Prime subscriptions believing that they would include ad-free streaming," the lawsuit says. "But last month, Amazon changed the deal. To stream movies and TV shows without ads, Amazon customers must now pay an additional $2.99 per month ... This is not fair, because these subscribers already paid for the ad-free version; these subscribers should not have to pay an additional $2.99/month for something that they already paid for."
The case was filed on behalf of Wilbert Napoleon, a resident of Eastvale, Calif., who says he's a Prime member. "Plaintiff brings this case for himself and for other Amazon Prime customers," the suit said. The complain alleged that Amazon violates Washington State and California state consumer protection laws that prohibit unfair competition and deceptive business acts and practices. Amazon's conduct, as alleged, "was immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and substantially injurious to consumers,â according to the lawsuit. The suit seeks unspecific monetary damages, including punitive damages, as well as an injunction to block Amazon's alleged deceptive conduct.
The suit was filed Feb. 9, after Amazon starting on Jan. 29 began running ads in Prime Video content in major markets including the United States unless users opt to pay extra ($2.99/month in the U.S.) to have an ad-free experience. Some analysts have forecast Prime Video ads generating more than $3 billion in revenue in 2024.
The case was filed on behalf of Wilbert Napoleon, a resident of Eastvale, Calif., who says he's a Prime member. "Plaintiff brings this case for himself and for other Amazon Prime customers," the suit said. The complain alleged that Amazon violates Washington State and California state consumer protection laws that prohibit unfair competition and deceptive business acts and practices. Amazon's conduct, as alleged, "was immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and substantially injurious to consumers,â according to the lawsuit. The suit seeks unspecific monetary damages, including punitive damages, as well as an injunction to block Amazon's alleged deceptive conduct.
The suit was filed Feb. 9, after Amazon starting on Jan. 29 began running ads in Prime Video content in major markets including the United States unless users opt to pay extra ($2.99/month in the U.S.) to have an ad-free experience. Some analysts have forecast Prime Video ads generating more than $3 billion in revenue in 2024.
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
Take the cost of your prime membership, and allocate the costs between shipping and streaming. Then take the streaming costs, and allocate some subset of those costs to the perceived gap between the value of "ad-free" and "with ads". Pro-rate it for the part of the year where ads are now shown.
In that portion of your allocation is the "harm". Now take that piece and allocate a portion of it - a LARGE portion of it - to the lawyers.
Finally, take the remainder - your award - and buy *most* of a starbucks coffee with it.
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Penalties for false advertising rarely have much to do with actual financial harm that can be measures.
Punitive damages never do.
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Pray that they don't alter it further.
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I solved this issue by cancelling Prime entirely, my membership runs out in two months, in Australia its going up from $59.00 per annum (to date no ads) to $79.00 per annum (with ads) I told them where to stick it and cancelled my renewal.
I already did that with Netflix when they jacked up the price too. I've kept Disney and Britbox
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my membership runs out in two months, in Australia its going up from $59.00 per annum (to date no ads) to $79.00 per annum (with ads)
If you have paid for annual membership then they should not be allowed to change the terms until after renewal time. However there is prolly some clause buried deep in the T&Cs agreement that allows them to do almost anything -- that is part of the trouble with these "agreements" they are entirely one sided.
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Judges in australia tend to throw those eulas out.
The basic theory is, a contract is not the piece of paper (ur click-thru text), rather those things are just the evidence of a contract. Whats agreed to is what a reasonable customer would believe he's agreed to. Things hidden in text are not actually what the person consciously agreed to, so judges will often times just throw the eula out on account of it being overly verbose and filled with jargen to reserve rights the customer might have declined to pay h
I quit using their service (Score:5, Insightful)
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My Stuff -> Prime
Sucks but this is where you go to only show the free content included with Prime.
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Re:I quit using their service (Score:5, Informative)
I also quit, and haven't missed the 2-day free shipping much. Most of the time, I still get free shipping, with a bit longer delivery time. Quite often, I'll get a follow-up email saying "Good news, your items will arrive early!" And I end up getting the stuff in 2-3 days anyway. Their infrastructure is so focused on fast shipping, that they don't even seem to know how to ship "slowly" any more.
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2-3 days being "fast"??? Is that for shipping from the other end of the country, or from abroad?
Here in Poland, open-to-all delivery services (rather than just warehouse-to-customer), if you ship by mid-afternoon, deliver by the next morning. And large sellers who have contracts with them tend to provide free shipping. Sure, Poland is only the size of a large US state, but it's not like the vast majority of your purchases go cross-state anyway.
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Sure, next day shipping is available, but it's not free.
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Most free shipping I run into is ground, which, again, within 200 miles, is usually next business day, but not guaranteed. Every store's policies will vary of course, but that's where my experience has been.
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Here in the US, same day or next day shipping is available, but *not* for free, outside of some promotional offers. Amazon Prime isn't free either, it charges about $140 per year for the privilege of free shipping on "Prime" products.
Fortunately ad blockers work with Amazon too (Score:2)
I used to just use my TV's app for Amazon, but in order to continue enjoying an ad-free experience, I need to watch videos on my computer (which is attached to my TV). It's a good work-around to this ad problem, but now I need to keep my PC running. At least it works :/
prepaid accounts + global rollout is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I will not be watching Amazon content anymore. I do not like advertisements and stopped watching broadcast television in the mid-2000s for exactly that reason.
While I support Amazon's right to finish destroying their platform's usefulness to me, they absolutely should not legally be allowed to change the price of a PREPAID service midstream. They should roll out the ad-tier option when each person's annual account renewal comes up.
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While I support Amazon's right to finish destroying their platform's usefulness to me, they absolutely should not legally be allowed to change the price of a PREPAID service midstream. They should roll out the ad-tier option when each person's annual account renewal comes up.
Exactly. This is classic bait-and-switch fraud. I'm glad somebody decided to litigate. Maybe it will help discourage other companies from pulling the same stunt, though to be fair, this is mostly only an issue for companies that choose to bill people annually. Everybody else can tell people 31 days ahead of time, and they're at least arguably not cheating anybody.
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If Amazon switched it to monthly, they'd probably have a lot of people drop the subscription for whichever months they don't buy something online, or even worse, people might leave buying a thing for later and then forget or change their mind.
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If Amazon switched it to monthly, they'd probably have a lot of people drop the subscription for whichever months they don't buy something online, or even worse, people might leave buying a thing for later and then forget or change their mind.
There is no "switch" involved. You can buy it monthly or yearly. You get a discount for buying it yearly. People who bought it yearly expecting to get commercial-free streaming for a year are suddenly being asked to pony up more money to get the service that they already paid for.
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[T]hey absolutely should not legally be allowed to change the price of a PREPAID service midstream. They should roll out the ad-tier option when each person's annual account renewal comes up.
This is a very good point.
It will depend on the Judge's view of their TOS contract and it's validity with regards to a one-sided change of terms.
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[T]hey absolutely should not legally be allowed to change the price of a PREPAID service midstream. They should roll out the ad-tier option when each person's annual account renewal comes up.
This is a very good point.
It will depend on the Judge's view of their TOS contract and it's validity with regards to a one-sided change of terms.
If it were a breach of contract lawsuit, then yes, but it isn't. This is a deceptive trade practices lawsuit. The suing party doesn't even have to be a customer. The case could just as easily be brought by any of their countless competitors who have been harmed. So contract law is unlikely to provide them with a "get out of jail free" card, IMO.
Darth Bezos (Score:5, Funny)
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
Failure of the BCP (Score:3)
That's a breach of contract the US FTC/BoCP should have immediately complained about: If the USA had truth in advertising laws, the FTC would have the power to act immediately.
Re:Failure of the BCP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they could have changed the deal at renewal time and started ads if you renewed at the current price.
Changing the terms after you agreed is no bueno.
We're guessing they paniced when they saw their AWS bill.
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Yeah, they could have changed the deal at renewal time and started ads if you renewed at the current price.
Changing the terms after you agreed is no bueno.
We're guessing they paniced when they saw their AWS bill.
When is "renewal time"?
The original announcement was on Dec 26th [slashdot.org] for ads to start on Jan 29th.
Billing is monthly, I easily could have cancelled prior to ads being shown.
I think it sucks that they're now showing ads, but I don't see how they broke the law.
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Because I pay a year's worth in advance?
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You cannot put something that circumvents or violates the law into contract, and this is no different. There has to be a meeting of the minds.
And now we know why Bezos... (Score:2, Insightful)
...dumped $4 billion in Amazon stock in the last two weeks
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*sigh* No we don't. You don't get to sell $4bn in stock on a whim. This would have had to be pre-authorised by the SEC long in advance.
Really poorly managed (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon really fell on their faces with the marketing and market positioning on this one.
They should have simply increased the cost of the normal Prime to amortize the difference, and created a new ad-supported tier people could downgrade to, or provided a discount to that pricing by doing so.
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Bingo. Announce new pricing effective immediately, along with a new tier available at the previous price for those who would prefer that option, but email existing customers to say that they'll receive three more months at their current price before seeing the hike. Three months later nearly everyone is automatically upgraded, a few have cancelled, and a few have dropped to the lower tier, but no one is suing you. How do we know that? Because it's exactly what every other streaming service has done in the l
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And that’s fine. They’ll see a price increase if their subscription renews after the three months. But what they won’t see are ads unless they opt-in to the lower tier in their own.
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They should have simply increased the cost of the normal Prime to amortize the difference
Prime is way to integrated in their other services. The people who pay for Prime just for shipping or Music would not have taken kindly to your idea. There are far more people who pay for Prime for than than people who watch their stupid video service.
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So remove Prime Video from the overall cost and have it be a sidecar service that's deeply discounted with Prime - say, the difference in the price hike.
Lots of ways to skin this cat, if they want to.
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Found the Amazon employee.
Users are also to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
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Many in this thread have said that they don't patronize amazon anymore. This is exactly what everyone needs to do.
Yeah but I need my cheap shit.
Sincerely
Everyone.
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Not that cheap (Score:2)
Being in Asia, I often order products from China. When I compare to Amazon, I find the Amazon products often cost 7x more. That applies to all kinds of stuff, but not the highest end products. Though it's possible I just suck at searching, I often can't find very premium products in China--light backpacking gear, yes--true ultralight gear, no.
I digress, but Amazon is not that cheap relative to the actual cost of products.
ridiculous lawsuits. (Score:2)
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People are complaining because they PREPAID and then Amazon started showing them ads.
The summary fails to make this clear, in the way that Slashdot summaries usually fail to do, but this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I suspended my prime membership because of it (Score:4)
I had prime for the shipping, and it was nice to have also some prime video. I occasionally watched some movies with it.
Once they said they were pushing ads, I canceled the prime subscription altogether.
I've had enough of the constant enshittification, dime pinching and ad shoving of these companies. I already revolted against youtube, spammed them with reports, and switched to freetube.
Ad companies don't have a right to our attention, only a hope. And I am certainly not going to pay to be served ads so that they can shove yet another bill on top of the bill to remove the annoyance they themselves created.
On a related topic, I now get all my shipments delivered to the post office, which is equally free of charge, and it guarantees that my stuff is kept safe, instead of being thrown behind (or in some cases _inside_) the garbage bin. I can last until saturday to get my stuff.
So screw you Amazon, that was the last straw.
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Everybody, stop watching PRIME for a few months. (Score:1)
Just cancel your Prime Account! (Score:2)
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I surf the On-Now (Score:2)
Part of Prime Video is On-Now - its sort of live-streaming, and its from FreeVee so there are ads, but when the ads come on you can switch to another channel
great! (Score:2)
Looking forward to getting some paltry class action award like $5 digital credit so I can rent half a movie.
We have altered the deal (Score:2)
bait and switch (Score:2)
it is one thing to add ads to new subscriptions and subscription renewals, but it was totally wrong to place ads on subscriptions that were advertised as and purchased because of being ad free.
If you watch Amazon content you're fucking retarde (Score:2)
And more or less deserve whatever you get. They should pay ME to watch it.
Not only that.... (Score:2)
...they took away Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision (for those shows that had that tech) unless you pony up that money, too.
Personally, I think every Prime member should order something little every day so their transportation network blows up.
EXCELLENT. (Score:1)