I’d seen rumours online but got the email this morning.
EDIT: seems like there won’t be ads for everyone straight away.
Live events, such as sports, and content offered through Amazon Freevee will continue to include advertising. Customers in the Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man won’t see ads in their experience at this time.
Wait til they find out I’m happy to pay nothing and still get the same content (often with less hassle).
All these streaming services seem to have forgotten that piracy is incredibly easy and a lot of use chose to use their services because they were originally convenient and affordable. Now that they’re more fractured than ever and way more expensive, why would I bother?
I remember not too long ago, maybe 4 or 5 years, I was having a big argument on reddit and getting killed for giving out about Prime’s ads between episodes… I’d completely forgotten about them until now. They used to promote their other shows with 30 second ads between episodes and reddit, or at least wherever I was, were absolutely cool with it.
You do you. But I would like to point out that prime encourages excessive consumption of crap we all don’t need. Maybe this bullshit will let you consider dumping prime altogether and perhaps you will find that it isn’t missed.
Personally I do buy stuff from amazon on occasion. Like windshield wipers of odd sizes. But the lack of two day shipping is a good moderator to help me curb my american programmed buy-fucking-everything-to-fill-that-hole-inside mentality.
I used to have their card just for gas. But I sold my truck and have an EV now. Maybe it’s time to close that account because costco is truly a detriment to my after tax take home pay.
Except their premium canned peanuts. God those are good. The stuff at the grocery store is always stale and 4x the price per weight.
If you can go in with a plan and stick to it, they’re a good deal. As long as you only buy stuff you’d get elsewhere and stick to the plan.
50 lbs of rice is way cheaper per lb than a 1 lb bag from the store. Their giant container of Saran wrap and tin foil will last a family years. Their take away containers are cheaper than Amazon.
You just have to figure out how to stop from going oh wait I could use one of those… ;)
If you can go in with a plan and stick to it, they’re a good deal. As long as you only buy stuff you’d get elsewhere and stick to the plan.
50 lbs of rice is way cheaper per lb than a 1 lb bag from the store. Their giant container of Saran wrap and tin foil will last a family years. Their take away containers are cheaper than Amazon.
You just have to figure out how to stop from going oh wait I could use one of those… ;)
What a beautiful excuse to drop prime. Unfortunately my own changing of behavior won’t change anyone’s, but hey, at least I guess it’s less money spent monthly.
I never paid for prime. I hate paying for shipping though so I usually wait until I need a couple of things to get over the minimum. I recently ordered a pair of ear buds. They were $34.95 so I added a box of $1 Kraft mac and cheese to avoid paying the $8 for shipping. haha!
Then again I’ve been avoiding Amazon like the Plague for at least a decade: I still remember their deleting of ebooks that people bought from their Fire Tablets some years ago and don’t trust those fuckers at all in any way form or shape.
Glad more people are figuring it out, and in a way that’s mainly mildly infuriating.
PS: Recently discovered Smashwords and am buying tons of ebooks from them as I can download all of them in open formats. IMHO, merelly the clued-on minority ditching Prime won’t hurt them enough to make up for the vast bulk of people who will just stick around and accept ads, so the best we can do to screw Amazon is to spread information about sites that can be used to get same kind of stuff Amazon sells, so this is my small contribution.
I recently wanted an audiobook and found out it’s only available on Audible(because of course), so I resubscribed from when I had it about 5-6 years ago. Plan was to get the book and cancel again. They have also removed audiobooks from my account. Granted, they’re still available on audible. They weren’t taken off the service. I can buy them again. But it just shows they aren’t mine anymore.
From now on, I will pirate something before I subscribe again.
Paying for content is one thing. Besides greedy studio execs, there are a lot of small potatoes people trying to make honest livings who work to produce the final products.
Ads, though, are supposed to defray COSTS. Marketers part studios to run ads. Cinnamon paying for ads is an oxymoronic situation.
I’ll happily pay for content if it’s something I want to watch and it’s a fair deal. Video streaming services are honestly neither of those personally, so fuck them.
But despite most people being against YouTube premium, that’s the one exception for me. Mainly because that’s where all the content and content creators I want to watch are at. I place a lot of value in supporting the creators I watch there. You may argue that paying for their Patreons would be better, but I watch so many great channels that I honestly can’t decide which one to support like that, and with premium they all get at least something from me. Yeah google gets a cut, but such is life. Throw in YouTube music and it’s far from a bad deal from my point of view, especially with the family pricing.
The buy page literally lists videos and music as being part of what you’re buying with Prime, and unlimited storage for photos and that twitch sub are also listed benefit if you click the view more button.
I don’t know why that would be considered “free” since they’re literally advertising those things.
How are any of these things “free” if you’re paying to get these “free” features?
Amazon Prime is meant to invoke the sunk cost fallacy in your mind. Why shop around when you’ve already sunk over 100 USD per year into “free” shipping? This mental bias towards shopping with Amazon is the cost and is part of an overall anti-competitive strategy. See “The making of Amazon Prime, the internet’s most successful and devastating membership program”. Jeff Bezos has been explicitly anti-competitive on this point:
“I want to draw a moat around our best customers.”
You don’t leave a moated walled garden unless the Lord who maintains the moat permits you. And even then, they’ll strip you of your DRM’d digital goods (TV shows, movies, audiobooks, ebooks) as soon as you cross the drawbridge. The strongest supporters of Amazon are the ones who have thousands of USD of such digital goods locked up with them since they can’t leave without being stripped of things they bought.
Greedy pigs, they can’t help themselves anymore. I swear it went up 20 or 30% in the last year or two, and now this. Does anyone have recommendations on where to find stuff if you are tech stupid with no computer (only a Roku TV and android phone)?
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