I have mixed feelings already about Prime Video, as a watching experience I find it quite annoying because I'll find a movie I'd like to watch only to find I have to pay another $5 to watch it. With the other services, I know if a movie comes up on the display, I can watch it without further cost.
I'm fairly sensitive to adverts, I really don't like seeing them, largely because I've isolated myself from them. The fewer you see, the more unsettling they are, the blatant attractive factor of them, do.not.want. And anther $40/yr is too much.
Apparently, dropping Prime with the shopping really does not impact the speed of delivery or cost. I'm already often selecting delayed delivery. With the increased prices, it's hard to justify the $140/yr.
"This deal is getting worse all the time." --Lando talking about his Prime membership
If you spend enough, you'll sometimes be offered a full full month of Prime for free. Same thing, once your first order ships, cancel.
I did this all 2023. I had Prime for nearly every single shipment over the year, and it looks like I spent a whopping $14 total for all of it.
Many other retailers have free shipping these days. Rarely do I need something next day. Rarely is Amazon able to deliver things next day anyways. You can very easily get free shipping from Amazon with a minimum purchase order. Their infrastructure isn't able to handle slowing down your package just because you aren't Prime, so you basically get just as fast service.
If anything, we've found way more value out of Instacart for quality of life these days.
I don't have prime. If you are willing to wait a couple extra days, you can usually get free shipping. BUT also, it usually ships faster than indicated anyways.
It used to feel like a great deal, not anymore.
$150 a year is just too much for what they offer when we didn't use the music or photos or very limited kindle offerings.
There's several ones listed here : https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions
I use the scripts (https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions#scripts) instead of the proxy solution, as i dont want to rely on a third party server to be working.
After getting rid of my membership, I have not really missed it nearly as much as I thought I would. It doesn’t actually affect me very much, and at the current, high, price for Prime it’s worth canceling just to save the money.
Anyway, as a user, if I need something today, I find a retailer and drive to them. If it's weird enough that there is no retailer I can drive to, then I wouldn't have got in in a day or two even from Amazon anyway, since it won't be in a local Amazon warehouse any more than it was in a local Walmart or AutoZone or PC Richards etc.
And these days, you no longer even get a good search result to find the right things, you just get pages and pages of no-name chinese crap versions of things. The selection used to be the one real killer feature of Amazon, but now you effectively don't even get that any more.
There is really hardly any reason to use them any more. I'm actually pretty suprised they allowed that to happen. Even when they were being evil in the sense of taking over the world, they were doing it by making sure their product was irresistable, maybe by unfair means, but still the case never the less. Like them or not you could not deny that. Now, it's no longer true. Their value proposition is actually gone. I never would have thought that would happen, but I'm glad it is starting to.
They already took away key/garage delivery by default.
And really, I still have plenty of other streaming options.
It's amazing we all don't develop PTSD with the way amazon product listings are going these days. "Sponsored" everywhere.
Try it. It takes several clicks, multiple word-heavy pages, hard choices, flat-out lies, and in the end maybe you just accepted to be reminded 60 seconds before the renewal date.
But I don’t care why they took it away. It was a great feature for me… I live in a gated community but I travel a lot, so it’s nice to have all my stuff stowed in the garage, without thinking about it.
They can’t manage Alexa, they can’t manage Key, now they’re doing ads. They’re also underwhelming on Whole Foods — selections are down, inventory is off, and they removed the Hubs. They seem off. Jassee might be ROI focused but he’s choking the customer delights. They don’t feel essential anymore.
Whatevs. Not impressed. It’s a bye for me.
Thank you, California!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-uses-six-dark-pattern-...
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-pu...
I was just talking to my wife about this. We were watching a Christmas movie via the free “Christmas Classics” app and the catch is that you see an ad every 5-10 minutes. These ads were so goofy and dumb that it felt like I was watching the pretend ads on Rick and Morty.
Usually there is one or two blockbuster movies, a few classics from the 80s or 90s. HBO used to be a little better in this regard.
I miss the red envelope Netflix, that was a deep quality catalog.
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Also in Canada the "most sites have free shipping" thing is not true at all for us sadly. Nor do they have as consistently fast shipping as Amazon. Amazon (via Canpar) does two delivery cycles each day in my town either in the early day or early evening depending on when you order. Canada Post has gotten way better thanks to Amazon competiton but next day is still a shot in the dark even when ordering regionally, and fedex/UPS conspire to pretend they attempted delivery even when I work from home.
So yeah as a Canadian I can't see myself ending prime any time soon. And I thank Amazon's competition for making the other shipping options better even if they are only 70% of the way there. Maybe one day competiton will plateau and end their ecommerce shipping dominance.
Upload was great for the first season, still ok for the second season and unbearably bad now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/13sedmx/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/10j2lkv/new_...
Prime fees were always a free money stream for Amazon to direct in to risky bets/build-outs rather than ongoing operations, iirc multiple billion USD per month.
Still cancel if you want, sure, but don't knock their competence the same way.
In the end what has actually happened is we watch less.
depends on what you watch. Some people are very into streams and barely watch youtube, so it's not even a comparison. I'm the opposite and can catch maybe one stream live a month.
>In the end what has actually happened is we watch less.
increase in price always leads to a lower demand. I'm sure they took that into account before the price hike.
I don't know about this. I don't have prime and rarely use amazon. I ordered something recently that qualified for free shipping. I honestly felt like Amazon intentionally held my package for 3-4 days before shipping it. I think i got it in 5 business days.
I will say, not having Prime has probably saved me hundreds of dollars as I only use it for things I really need. My above anecdote was of course just that, an anecdote. Prime is core to their business though, so don't expect quick shipping.
They gave up trying to provide 2-day shipping to our rural address over two years earlier during the pandemic, and they never restored that supposedly core feature of Prime. Given that behavior, I now see them for what they are: typical rent-seeking crooks.
Its a fucking joke. Netflix, while not having ads has the worst UX for finding genres, movies - cant sort, cant change view modes, cant favorite or easily recommend - they removed the downvotes, then they added them back in.
I asked a friend who is an engineering mgr at netflix some time ago about the UX - he told me the shitty UX on netflix is intentional to hide the poor quality of their content library.
And that was a few years ago - its never gotten better.
Streaming was great until MckInsey and the MBAs hit the market.
I share my brothers prime, so I havent personally had it since this incident:
Prime I cancelled prime before it was to renew. When it renewed - they charged me the $99 and I had just paid my rent and in that window didnt have the $99 in the account when the prime renewed (that I had previously canceled)
I was hit with a $25 overdraft fee when prime hit.
I called them, complained, got a refund for my prime account, and I charged them the $25 overdraft fee - AND I added that I wanted a $25 inconvenience fee for having to deal with all this - and they paid it
So I got the embarrassment of an over draft, but I got it refunded and I was able to get them to pay an inconvenience fee.
Click on: Prime Manage your membership, view benefits, and payment settings
This takes you to a page with button on the right: Manage Membership Update, cancel and more
clicking on that button displays a menu of options, including: End Membership By ending your membership you will lose access to your Prime benefits.
Cancelling my 10 year old prime subscription was the easiest decision I've made in the last year.
And: https://x.com/doctorow/status/1669073016419155973?s=46&t=UYF...
It's very likely what happened here. Chamberlain owns so many brands of garage door opener, and they're trying to lock down remote access to make money off of. For example forcing customers to use their ad-filled app.
Then again, I just use an adblocker for any twitch streams I watch live.