Shocked and disappointed in Amazon Prime

[packman]

In general, like the app on my smart TV. Watch quite a few streaming TV shows - BUT --

My wife and I liked to watch the old 95 Cybill show. Watched two seasons, then yesterday when we clicked on the show icon, 99Cents a view screen appeared.

Called Amazon and they said the people they get such shows from can set the price either free streaming or a charge per episode.
In other words, if you are binge watching a show be aware that the service can suddenly decide to charge you for it.



Guess I'll have to look for another source.

[AllaN01Bear]

1. rrriiiiggght . hope you find your show elsewhere .

[stopbush]

2. File in first-world problems.

[packman]

5. Oh, come on - All problems are relative

and , yes, my life is that shallow.

[miyazaki]

6. Sorry about your smart ass replies here. Fuckin Yahoo message board quality here sometimes.

WTF.

[Codeine]

3. That's not Amazon's issue,

it’s a decision made by the provider of that IP. It’s a mid-90s sitcom; being irritated about losing the ability to see something that isn’t worth airing commercially seems overwrought.

[Blue_true]

13. A lot of original content stuff is being restricted and fees charged.

It used to be that a person could watch a key scene from a movie for free, say Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstine, or A Few Good Men. Now, the best scenes have copyright notifications and if one plans to watch them, a fee is required.

[Hoyt]

4. Generally like Prime. I can listen to all kinds of music and watch

some good TV programs without extra cost. That alone is worth the price, and I do buy a good bit of stuff that is a real hassle to shop for where I live. No shipping and quick delivery are a bonus.

My only real complaint is that I was watching a pretty good foreign TV series, but got sidetracked for a few weeks. Came back, but it was gone.

I too would be ticked if I was enjoying something that suddenly switched to a per episode fee.

[Submariner]

7. The old Mystery Science Theater 3000 is behind the Amazon paywall too

which is a bit much since they are getting the $119/year fee now.

[FSogol]

9. There is a free channel/app called Pluto TV that has both a MST3K channel and a Rifftrax channel.

Most MST3K episodes are available on youtube too.

[Submariner]

12. Thanks for the heads up on that

[Dr Vegas]

19. I won a RoKu streaming device

Last Dec, the Pluto Channel runs Mystery Science Theater as a subchannel all the time

[procon]

8. It's not Prime. Those who own the property rights set the rules.

I started binge watching a series just recently only to see it deleted. Turns out the rights holder shifted from Amazon to Hulu, so I was out of luck.

As a consumer, I hope all these digital content providers and the rights holders can come up with a better solution. In the future everything will be digital and we shouldn't have to go hunting down shows that move around from month to month in search of higher profits.

[FSogol]

10. Are their any good websites that show where things are currently playing?

I haven't found one.

It's a pain the ass to check Netflix and then check Prime and then....

[Midnight Writer]

15. Justwatch.com. Search across platforms plus daily new releases. Very handy and comprehensive.

[procon]

16. Great find! Thanks, that looks very useful. nt

[FSogol]

17. Awesome, many thanks. n/t

[Atman]

18. Prime will search all available channels

Just enter the movie and it will tell you if it's on Netflix of Hulu or other services you have.

[Blue_true]

14. Paywalls are the future.

At some level, a person will run into a paywall, I don't see how that is avoidable. Even really old stuff that a person grow a liking to more recently is being taken behind a paywall. A rule of thumb, if it is popular regardless of how old or recent, you are going to pay to see or listen to it.

[iamateacher]

11. Just watched the Disaster Artist on prime last night.

It was great.

[smirkymonkey]

20. I have Prime, but I also pay to watch a lot of films/TV shows.

usually $2.99 or $3.99. I don't mind so much because for me it's like going out to rent a video without the hassle of actually going out to get a physical video and returning it. There is so much more available other than the Prime only films and TV shows. I just like having the variety.

[Hekate]

21. Back when I first got a Kindle I wanted to try it out on free books, so that's what I told it...

...to show me. Lotta free books out there, if you like classics off-copyright (I have since switched completely to Gutenberg on my iPad, but that's another story). The thing with Amazon Kindle is, they quickly start slipping in books that are not free, and if you are not careful, you've downloaded something you will have to pay for.

All that happened to you is you got suckered by one of the oldest marketing tools there is, whether you want to call it upselling or plain old bait and switch. It's probably covered somewhere in that 40 pages of fine print everybody signs but nobody reads. And what good would it do you to read it through? In dense legalese they thell you: Neener-neener, if you want what we've got, we can change the terms any time and you can't, just like your credit card.

So I don't subscribe to Prime. I don't buy books from Kindle.

I've done a lot of shopping at Amazon over a lot of years, because they are an amazing resource for vendors of all kinds of hardbound books. I was able to fill out my library of signed first editions of my favorite authors, using both Amazon and Amazon UK. Never ever could have done it without them.

You seriously have my sympathy. I hope you find a satisfactory workaround -- my husband has found that the public library has a wide network and can often get him films and series that otherwise we would never see; it just takes awhile.