Amazon facing predictable class action lawsuit after adding ads to Prime Video
Who could've predicted that people wouldn't like to be forced into seeing ads?
Generally, when previously ad-free streaming services have added ads, they’ve done so by introducing new ad-supported tiers that are cheaper than the regular tier while (probably) increasing the price of the existing ad-free tier to incentivize users to drop down to the one with ads. Amazon isn’t like every other company that owns a streaming service, though, so when it decided to add ads to Prime Video at the end of January, it instituted a wacky new scheme that forced everyone into the ad tier and demanded that they pay up to go back to the old ad-free service they were using before.
It’s like, imagine if your landlord told you that your rent would stay the same but all windows would be removed from your apartment, and if you wanted to keep your windows you’d have to pay a little more every month. A great deal, right? For consumers?
Well, for some reason, some people aren’t very happy about what Prime Video is pulling. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a class action lawsuit has been filed against Amazon in California, claiming that Prime Video’s decision to introduce ads was “unfair” and that doing it now after years of promoting itself as a “commercial-free” service “harms both consumers and honest competition.”
The primary concern seems to be on behalf of users who signed up for annual subscriptions before the ad change was implemented, meaning they had already paid for the old ad-free version of Prime Video before being dumped into the ad-supported tier—which does seem like something that would be frustrating. As the suit puts it, these users were asked to “pay extra to get something they already paid for.” (Someone with experience covering the entertainment industry might argue that this is exactly why other streamers don’t do things like this, but maybe that’s why Amazon is an impossibly gigantic company with its tentacles wrapped around every aspect of modern life and we… have experience covering the entertainment industry.)
The Hollywood Reporter says the class action suit is looking to get $5 million and a court order stopping Amazon from “engaging in further deceptive conduct on behalf of users who subscribed to Prime prior to December 28, 2023.” That date is right after Amazon announced the change, which coincidentally happened right around Christmas and New Year’s when people might not necessarily have been checking their emails for updates on their Amazon service.