It’s been more than fifteen months since Amazon launched its Prime Video Store for movie rentals on its OTT platform. The rental store has a collection of relatively new and mostly English films, and you can watch these titles on a pay-per-view basis.
Much has been said about Amazon Prime Video’s rental strategy. Time and again, movie buffs have minced no words to express their discontent over some popular movie titles being made available for streaming on the Amazon Prime Video store (besides other platforms) on a rental / pay-per-view basis – even for paid subscribers!
Over the past few days, some Amazon Prime subscribers have been complaining about how some of the film titles which they started watching one day were shifted to the rental store. For instance, one user was watching the movie ‘Super Intelligence’ on Amazon Prime Video and the very next day, it was shifted to the Prime Video store and for which the viewer would have to pay now.
Amazon’s reply was that “As a matter of industry practice, rights for a title are granted by the studios/licensors for a finite amount of time. Hence, some movies leave Prime Subscription Service after a specific date…”
Now, this can be very annoying for Prime subscribers. Because one day, someone is watching a particular movie and the very next day, he/she might have to pay to watch the remaining half of the same movie.
To counter this issue, Amazon should come up with a solution that in case a subscriber has already started watching a particular movie (available on its free/regular menu), then even if the license for that title expires, then also that viewer should be given the option to watch it the next day, or perhaps, within a week – without paying anything extra. And even if the title has been transferred to the paid rental store, then Amazon can probably allow the user to watch the film on rental store, but at zero cost. This can help the OTT giant in reducing related complaints from subscribers and to retain its existing subscriber base. The ball is in your court Amazon!