As per the recent trends, talking about quality and quantity, Prime Video is indeed suffering, especially now that Netflix is taking the game seriously. But Prime Video’s biggest defeat might not even come from the wrath of Netflix.
This time, Amazon is living its courtroom drama, and that too with a massive Class Action Lawsuit. Quite literally in the mud.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday and claims that Amazon breached the contract and not only misguided the audience with a set of advertisements, but they basically violated state consumer protection laws.
Now, like most OTT giants, Prime Video also sought a shift from an ad-free to an ad-supported model, but there was a catch.
Prime Video forced its users, who had already been enrolled for an ad-free experience, to pay an additional $2.99 per month for this change. Prior to this shift, the users already paid $14.99/month or $139/year for a similar experience.
But in January, as they were tweaking their models, Prime stated that users had to pay that extra to continue the same benefits, and this lies at the nucleus of the lawsuit.
Prime Video had all the authority to give people an option to downgrade from the plans and opt for something ad-supported rather than forcing them to upgrade for the same benefits they were promised.
This practice is being considered a pure evil move by the platform as they are charging the users for something they already paid for.
Now, this change not only dissatisfies the viewers, but creators also showcase their complaints, as not all the content is made to be consumed in such a way.
As per the damages Amazon might face, let’s be honest, it’s just peanuts to them. The lawsuit aims to secure a minimum of $5 million in damages and a judicial directive prohibiting Amazon from continuing any misleading practices on behalf of individuals who became Prime members before December 28, 2023.
In terms of other OTT platforms, Netflix did implement it quicker than anybody but allowed the users to continue their benefits if they were already paying for a plan. Besides that, their ad-supported tier was cheaper than most platforms, and that resulted in huge subscriber growth.
And as Prime Video will be battling this in the court, it’s a good enough reason for people to turn their faces from the platform; it can badly affect their image. Quite ‘Farzi’ mannerism from the house of Prime Video.