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Ads or a bit more money is entirely reasonable model
Maybe, but it's more than 'a bit more money' to me.
Currently paying about £9 a month.
They're saying that I'll now have to pay an extra £3 on top for the same thing.
Quite a hike I thought.
Cancelled.... for now.
😐
Maybe, but it’s more than ‘a bit more money’ to me.<br /><br />
And is a cumulative effect - in our house energy has gone up again, the car insurance is due and has gone up, haircuts cost has gone up, the kids swimming subs have gone up, etc. We earn well between us but are very much starting to cut down on extras.
The only way you can avoid funding Bozos’ next yacht is to get off the Internet and go live in a cave I’m afraid.
It's not just off the internet (as cave hinted), your bank, supermarket and the government are likely using aws for something so if you earn or spend money or get sick you'll likely be involved
The only real solution would be to move somewhere that Amazon can't sell to due to restrictions -cuba, Iran or North korea?
as said on the Netflix thread, I cancelled pretty quick after the email came in. Prime Video is crap, whenever I see a film I want to watch on there it's always "Buy or Rent". Amazon Prime is mostly a way that they charge slightly more for stuff you can get cheaper elsewhere, but when you've got the "convenience" of next day/free delivery you don't tend to shop around. (I do and usually find the same item cheaper from an ebay seller.) Now Christmas is over, last minute buying isn't necessary, so a few days delivery is fine. Gen V and The Boys are worth the cost of admission, so I'll sign up when they come around (or maybe torrent them from my NAS if I'm feeling stingy).
As I get more curmudgeonly I hate adverts with increasing venom, so I'm not putting up with that.
As I get more curmudgeonly I hate adverts with increasing venom, so I’m not putting up with that.
Says the 'Free Member'! 🙂
sod that bezo, sonarr is going to get a spanking
Amazon Prime is mostly a way that they charge slightly more for stuff you can get cheaper elsewhere, but when you’ve got the “convenience” of next day/free delivery you don’t tend to shop around. (I do and usually find the same item cheaper from an ebay seller.) Now Christmas is over, last minute buying isn’t necessary, so a few days delivery is fine. Gen V and The Boys are worth the cost of admission, so I’ll sign up when they come around (or maybe torrent them from my NAS if I’m feeling stingy).
Despite cancelling my amazon prime membership, I will defend Amazon's customer service on returns. They really have set the standard in that regard. Case in point; two gifts recived for Christmas - I bought my wife a gift which turned out to be a duplicate from someone else. A couple of clicks and the package dropped off at the corner shop and full, no quibble refund in the account within a couple of days. Gift 2 that we want to return as it's not the right sort / doesn't fit "sorry you've missed the 14day return window, you need to keep the useless item as not willing to swap for other item" ~£50 gift wasted.
No contest as to what is the best customer service.
Amazon Prime is mostly a way that they charge slightly more for stuff you can get cheaper elsewhere, but when you’ve got the “convenience” of next day/free delivery you don’t tend to shop around. (I do and usually find the same item cheaper from an ebay seller.)
+1
It is useful, I got 2x punctures on the car last week whilst visiting my parents in the Dales.
Bought a car puncture repair kit for £12, and it was delivered to their house, in a tiny hamlet, 20 minutes drive up a valley from the "main" road in under 16 hours from ordering!
The difference between that and 3 days delivery via a normal shop and royal mail would have been a towtruck to the village, and a day wasted even if the garage was open.
But really, there's probably 3x a year where it actually pays for itself like that. The rest of the time the products are cheaper elsewhere online or in an actual physical shop if you can peel yourself off the sofa.
But there’s going to be season 3!<br /><br />
so cancel it and when all episodes are avalible sign up for your free month trial and watch the whole series 😀
Canceled it once before then renewed it again for the last series of The Expanse. I've been meaning to cancel it again and the price increase email has just made me do that. Out of the streaming services I paid for it was the least watched, as I got fed up searching for something to watch, and usually when I did it was rent or buy now to view it.
so cancel it and when all episodes are avalible sign up for your free month trial and watch the whole series 😀
do that every year in december for the football and catch up with anything else on there i want to watch at the same time, leaving it running for an extra month this year as my wife wants to finish watching a longh series but normally theres not enough to make it worth it.
Prime has been a massive psychological successes for amazon to encourage shopping with them rather than anywhere else. I wonder if they have done the maths that if they keep nudging up the costs most will just continue with the service. It would be nice if it did nudge a significant number of customers to cancel, but they have such a dominant shopping presence now that I don't see how they can be curbed without international regulation to stunt their near monopoly.
Prime itself is probably a loss leader, they make their money from it by the big boost in sales it gives, if they actually try to make prime itself profitable it could have a negative impact on general profits.
Says the ‘Free Member’!
Web adverts are far less intrusive to my grumpy brain... however, I work on a site with adblocking built into the firewall. Which is nice. 😛
the main* reason i wont buy through amazon is its so difficult to avoid being signed up to a free period of prime<br /><br />*ok, one of many
Prime has been a massive psychological successes for amazon to encourage shopping with them rather than anywhere else
Yes, the big deal is that you get money of lots of stuff with the same sub. I could cancel the video streaming service, but I'd also be cancelling the free delivery and the big discount on music and probably a few other things too.
Gen V and The Boys are worth the cost of admission, so I’ll sign up when they come around (or maybe torrent them from my NAS if I’m feeling stingy).
So wait, you like the content, but you don't want to pay for it? You do realise that the people who make these shows are using money to do it, right? If people don't pay to watch them, then they won't get made. You aren't just depriving Amazon of money, you're depriving the writers, producers and actors of money and you might well be depriving us of good telly.
Better send Homelander to get me! 😂
You aren’t just depriving Amazon of money, you’re depriving the writers, producers and actors of money and you might well be depriving us of good telly.
Is this the bit where I apologise to you personally for cancelling Prime Video a few months ago?
Most if not all of Amazon’s profit comes from selling computing infrastructure and services to huge numbers of other businesses across the whole economy.
In terms of revenue AWS isn't that big:
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Actually we are paying for it. The debate is whether we should pay twice. Subscriptions and adverts
I think I will start using the oval hardware store more and cancel my subs. Can't stand their sh1te quality that seems to have crept in as of late.
The debate is whether we should pay twice. Subscriptions and adverts
Hah. You're not buying one item for a set price and paying twice. You're either paying the required price for a service, or you're getting the same service at a discount by agreeing to have ads shown.
All the moaners about price rises surely must have an incredible knowledge of how much it costs to run a streaming service and what's fair and what's not. I mean, they can't simply be moaning cos it's more expensive now, right?
In terms of revenue AWS isn’t that big:
What about profit?
Of course I'm moaning. A 33% price rise. Far above inflation. But market forces. I will just cancel.
I dont mind the price rise. I do mind that its part way through a subscription. that shouldn't be allowed to happen imo.
We’re paying three ways: subscriptions; ad data; and ad time. An additional subscription reduces the ad time, but you know they’ll keep collecting the data and will use it to more effectively target you with ads elsewhere.
Just like everything else you just need to weigh up the costs and benefits.
Exactly that. If they’d have said “We’re putting our charges up by £2.99 to continue to get the benefits of Prime including advert free streaming.” would you have taken it?
The reverse perspective is that they’ve given you a choice to avoid a cost uplift by accepting adverts.
Well it's down to the way they pitch it, isn't it?
What they actually want from you is an extra £35 a year (£2.99 x 12 months = £35.88) for users to continue having the same service they already have (which wasn't truly "ad free" as they already liked to stick trailers for amazon content on the front end of most things, but that was tolerable) but the email doesn't state that does it, always quote the lowest sounding number you can.
So basically throwing Ad' breaks into the middle of streamed content is what they'll be doing right? To me that's a degradation of the service, with an optional ransom to pay for users who don't want to be advertised to.
I'm not keen to pay extra, but I don't really fancy ditching the prime sub' either, the free delivery and other features still have some value to us. I will maybe watch less of their content if the interruptions from Ad's are too much, but they're certainly not getting extra money from me just to stop adverts.
It's worth noting that Netflix are apparently looking at inserting adverts too.
So this is going to become more common across streamers I think.
Funny how a lack of advert interruptions used to be one of the selling points for the streaming services, now it's going to be used to create more 'premium' tiers of user accounts and of course extra revenue streams. I'm sure it makes good business sense for these companies. But it does feel a little like customers acceptance is being taken a bit for granted...
I'll see how much the impact the service before deciding to ditch Prime or not.
Isn't that lack of adverts a "selling point" of the BBC? However, we still need to pay £159 per year whether we use the BBC or not.
you’re getting the same service at a discount by agreeing to have ads shown.
You can't say that people are suddenly getting a discount by putting the price up 33% and telling those people that they must now accept adverts in order to continue to pay the original price!
A discount is money off the original price, not putting the price up so much that the original price is now 33% less and calling it a discount! 😂
Meh it's a bit of telly and a shopping cult.
Vote with your wallet, what's the worst that can happen! You end up going back to Jeff cap in hand, please sir may I have some more 😀
What about profit?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasongoldberg/2022/02/04/amazon-reveals-its-most-profitable-business/
https://finty.com/us/business-models/amazon/
"This probably will come as a surprise to many. Still, every year since at least 2014, more than half of Amazon’s operating profit has come from the online retailer’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides online services and tools that software developers can stitch together to run websites and applications. It’s an impressive business in absolute dollar terms, not just percentages: AWS ended 2020 with $13 billion in operating income, which helped Amazon report a total net income of $21 billion for the year."
It's a chunk, but not all as you said earlier.
I believe that they first built their cloud infrastructure for their own purposes, then opend it up to third party developers, and were surprised by the interest, and that prompted the eventually release of AWS for retail users.
This contrasts with Microsh1t, who built their system seperately for retail users, so consequently it has the usual Microsoft niave implementations and problems, and AWS remains popular because of it's maturity and as a way of not getting involved with Microsoft, which is always sensible...
However, we still need to pay £159 per year whether we use the BBC or not.
Only for live telly, not streaming.
Funny how a lack of advert interruptions used to be one of the selling points for the streaming services, now it’s going to be used to create more ‘premium’ tiers of user accounts and of course extra revenue streams. I’m sure it makes good business sense for these companies. But it does feel a little like customers acceptance is being taken a bit for granted…
Once again, enshittification.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4&t=19s&pp=ygUQZW5zaGl0dGlmaWNhdGlvbg%3D%3D
Only for live telly, not streaming.
You still need a licence if your streaming includes iPlayer.
But, yes.
You can’t say that people are suddenly getting a discount by putting the price up 33% and telling those people that they must now accept adverts in order to continue to pay the original price!
Why should their price stay the same when everything else, including their costs, is going up? They could have just said "sorry, it's going up cos inflation" like everyone else and we'd just accept it because inflation. The fact that they've offered you a way to save money now looks like a negative. You'd have been happier if they had put the prices up for 6 months first THEN offered a discount for ads.
People aren't half fickle.
Sky TV was always a subscription service and it always had ads. No-one complained about that.
Sky TV was always a subscription service and it always had ads. No-one complained about that<br /><br />
On movies, downloads and pre recorded or paused content you used to be able to FF through adds. You can’t now unless you pay an extra £5 a month.
You still need a licence if your streaming includes iPlayer.
But, yes
Sorry, you're quite right and I was interpreting it slightly differently as BBC had already been mentioned.
Don’t you think it’s a little different adding advertisements <em style="box-sizing: border-box; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, 'system-ui', 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji';">afterpeople had already taken out subscriptions to an ad-free service though?
Hmm, well I pay monthly, so to me it's just a price change. They could perhaps have not added it to annual subscribers' accounts until they renewed, maybe. But there probably isn't anything in the T&Cs about there not being ads.
Do we know if the ads will be at the start and end of the episodes like the trailers are now, or will they interrupt the shows?
Why should their price stay the same when everything else, including their costs, is going up?
Not saying it should, but 33% is a little strong, no?
Don’t you think it’s a little different adding advertisements after people had already taken out subscriptions to an ad-free service though?
Only if they don't provide an option to reject the changes and cancel your contract without penalty.
Not saying it should, but 33% is a little strong, no?
Maybe, but that's already a different complaint to the original one - which was my point.
We’re paying three ways: subscriptions; ad data; and ad time
4 - if you count the extra "rental charge" for any decent films on there.
Sky TV was always a subscription service and it always had ads. No-one complained about that
Wanna bet??
Sky TV was always a subscription service and it always had ads. No-one complained about that.
One of the reasons I don't subscribe to them.
I'll be tolerant of the ads when they come as it's quite rare that I watch anything on Amazon, the wife may watch more things on it than I do though so I'll see if she notices and give her the option - I mainly pay for Amazon prime for the convenience of next day delivery, as I live rurally with limited access to shops.
Not saying it should, but 33% is a little strong, no?
Maybe, but that’s already a different complaint to the original one – which was my point.
It wasn't that clear what your point was, sorry.
You seemed to be suggesting that paying the same but receiving a different service constituted a discount all because they've decided to whack 33% onto the service you were paying for before.
That to me isn't what I'd call a discount, but ultimately, Meh...
This model of an annual charge, let us call it a license perhaps, and then adverts on top for many channels where needed. It seems familiar....
All this creeping division of what is available on what channel and creeping costs has me frustrated. It also has me wondering when the extraction and division of market stops...
You still need a licence if your streaming includes iPlayer.
Or ITV, Channel 4 etc. And they have ads too.
4 – if you count the extra “rental charge” for any decent films on there.
if you rent or buy a film you don't need to have paid for the subscription, and there's no ads so those 2 methods of payment are out too. You've just paid for a film.
I don't think this is sustainable, either from the public's position or the industry. More and more people are giving up their tv license, presumably due to cost as well as deteriorating quality of programs along with the number of repeats being shown. I did this 3 years ago and now stream at around £5 monthly without ads, chop and change quite regularly particularly if I see something interesting is on the horizon. Keen to watch 'Slow Horses' so will probably give Apple a go for a few months.
Are there any guarantees that they will not put ads into films that you have ‘bought’ . Maybe you will need to pay £2.99 in the future for those too
Are there any guarantees that they will not put ads into films that you have ‘bought’
It says in their statement that they won't.
Channel 5 doesn't have ads. Not sure about S4C these days though.
All this creeping division of what is available on what channel and creeping costs has me frustrated. It also has me wondering when the extraction and division of market stops…
Depends what you compare it against.
If you never had Sky/NTL then 3x £9.99 seems like a lot for netflix, prime and disney
If you already paid £50 for Sky/NTL 30 years ago then it's a bargain.
I don't think we'll see much of a change for a few years at least until someone invents* the next big thing. Middle classes will carry on with 3-4 sub's, everyone else will pick one to watch a blockbuster series, watch a few other things, then cancel and move on when the next big thing comes out. I suspect that's why they've started drip feeding more series with episodes weekly as it keeps people on their platform longer.
* the youtube premium model has got legs I think. Pay an amount each month and it get's divided by the hours of each show you watch. Just needs some sort of agreement so that actual "art" get's properly funded not just paid based on how it fails to compete with cheap productions.
watch. Just needs some sort of agreement so that actual “art” get’s properly funded not just paid based on how it fails to compete with cheap productions.
Has this not always been one of the suggested benefits of licence fee? That BBC would have more artistic creativity, take more risks and also produce viewing for smaller or minority audiences?
Channel 5 doesn’t have ads
Course it does
It depends. Sometimes it just skips straight through the breaks… I guess when no one is buying the ad slots. Have got lucky a few times watching Susan Calman and her little camper without seeing any ads at all.
Well, so far it's been an ad before the show and another a third in, and they've just been ads for Amazon prime. Usually 15 seconds.
I'm guessing they'll run it light at first so most get used to it thinking it's not too bad, and then ramp it up with other ads and longer.
Though the ad placement within the show isn't always great. In the old days shows were made with ads in mind so had natural breaks. Existing content made for streaming platforms maybe less so. They might start putting those natural breaks in again I guess.
I'm not missing it yet particularly.
Cancelled Prime and have deliveries for free to a local Amazon locker like someone explained up above somewhere.
Ironically though I've gone back to Netflix with ads. 😂
It's only £4.99 a month though and they aren't too bad generally.
Barely noticed them when they’ve appeared.
Means I still get to watch Prime as does my kids, one who is at uni and we get parcels delivered to anywhere for free the next day.
TV shows I can live with. I won't watch films on Amazon now though. Hate ads in films even very brief ones.
I was on an annual Prime subby so the rise hasn't kicked in yet. I haven't watched anything on Prime this month. I am 5 minutes walk from an Amazon delivery shop which I pass every day walking the dogs. So I see cancellation coming. An easy £95 a year saving.
Last thing I we wanted to watch was Succession. Available on Prime Video for £17.99 for Season 1. We bought the Season 1 DVD box set for £9.99 instead.
I think we will be going down the route of either buying DVDs (new or second hand) or waiting until a season is all available and sign up the that streaming service for 1 month.
Cancelled on Friday and received a £74 refund from my yearly sub which I paid in November. Ordered something yesterday which was due to be delivered free to my local locker (200 yards away) tomorrow, but currently showing 'out for delivery' so not really a difference.
Last thing I we wanted to watch was Succession. Available on Prime Video for £17.99 for Season 1. We bought the Season 1 DVD box set for £9.99 instead.
unless it's a bluray DVD then that's a drop in resolution, so not the same product...
Paid, too annoying.
Once past the initial two adverts, I didn't notice it again. I'm happy to leave it for the moment.
I've still not seen any ads. If it's anything like Freevee, you can go 3 episodes without seeing any.
That said, I'll be cancelling and picking up a 3 months at a time every so often. Gonna rotate around the various services for a while.
'Tolerate Ads or your Premium will be Extra' is my favourite Stereophonics track.
"unless it’s a bluray DVD then that’s a drop in resolution, so not the same product…"
I guess we are not too picky. On the freeview if I switch from BBC 1 to BBC101 I can see the difference but DVD quality is perfectly watchable.
Not as much of a drop in quality as getting it punctuated by adverts.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
And probably still half the channels are the same low resolution we've had since the 70s.
Talking of which. No Dolby Vision / Atmos unless you pay for ad free now.
Not that I care. I have an old school 1080 telly and av amp from 10 years ago.
Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.
freeview by radio broadcast is to continue for ATLEAST 7 years. I recon by then virtually all pensioners will “need” an internet connection for phone, care alarms etc and will be nigh on impossible to access many services without it. The reality is that many of those who would struggle with that today will have died off, moved into care, become reliant on others to support them by then anyway.
fwiw - I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything on Amazon Prime!
I've gone back to pirating everything. I was happy to pay for a subscription to netfix when it was good, and the free amazon postage was nifty. Now that I need 6+ subs to watch stuff, and all the back catalog has gone....no thanks.
Dear Amazon, I mute every advert you play and look away from the screen.
bit of a **** move, considering the entire reason there's so much choice of great stuff is because (most) people are happy to pay, thus giving the streaming studios massive budgets! Plus you don't [I]need[/I] 6 subs, you're just being a greedy ****. Perfectly feasible to just have 1 or 2 subs at a time and rotate around the services.I’ve gone back to pirating everything. I was happy to pay for a subscription to netfix when it was good, and the free amazon postage was nifty. Now that I need 6+ subs to watch stuff
martinhutch
Full Member
‘Tolerate Ads or your Premium will be Extra’ is my favourite Stereophonics track
*Manic Street Preachers