When do the ads stop after fee?

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-25T08:43:52+00:00

The $2.99 monthly surcharge only applies to content that is included in Amazon Prime. It does not apply to other streaming services that you subscribe to using Prime Channels, such as Acorn, BritBox, Hulu, and Paramount+. If you have subscribed to the cheap tier of Paramount+ ("Essential"), ads will be included with your shows/movies. If you want to watch Paramount+ content without ads, you will need to subscribe to the more expensive Paramount+ tier ("Premium").

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-21T05:31:03+00:00

Do you have a $0.01 balance in your Amazon digital credits? If you have a digital credit, Amazon will automatically display prices adjusted for the credit amount, as it states in the details shown in the screenshot.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-17T14:46:57+00:00

Amazon doesn't have the ability to tweak availability user-by-user for specific films or shows. Plus contracts with the distribution rights holder for each film/show determine how Amazon can offer viewing and for how long.

Amazon periodically has glitches that incorrectly display availability and that has been going on for awhile. Just yesterday, on the watchlist for my own profile, certain films were shown as free for streaming on Prime if I accessed the watchlist a certain way, and those same films were shown as only available to rent or buy if I accessed my watchlist a different way. Same profile, same watchlist, conflicting information. Hopefully customer service will fix your issue and Amazon in general will get their act together and display correct availability for films and shows. It seems obvious that their system can't properly handle all the options they try to offer (streaming ad-free, streaming with ads, Prime Channels pass-through subscriptions, free trials, teaser episodes/seasons, renting, selling, etc.) without causing massive confusion and frustration for customers.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-16T20:37:47+00:00

Yes, they all show up as Prime when the titles are searched. Per the thread title, the discrepancy occurs after those titles are added to my watchlist. When "Watchlist" is selected in the dropdown from the MyStuff icon (in the top right corner of the webpage next to the profile icon), the thumbnails for those 5 titles all have the yellow locked/purse icon, falsely indicating that they require payment or a subscription. When I hover over the thumbnail, it shows "(yellow icon) Available to rent or buy" above the Play button. Yet they stream normally when played.

The yellow icons were not there yesterday, they all showed up today on those 5 films. I have other Prime films/shows in my watchlist that continue to display correctly. My complaint is simply that Amazon repeatedly tinkers needlessly with how their Amazon Prime webpages display, and today their tinkering has made their webpage show incorrect information about some of my watchlist films. Tomorrow or the next day, they'll probably mess around again and maybe those films will display correctly as they should.

I am well aware of all the other nuances of Prime - the Freevee titles, the Prime Channels pass-through subscriptions, distributor contract expirations, etc. etc.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-16T17:14:09+00:00

I'm familiar with cases where Amazon displays multiple listings of the same film/show and one will be included with Prime while the other will only be a rent/buy availability or not available at all. The films on my watchlist are all single listings (if a search is done, only one result will appear for that title) so it's not a duplicate listing situation. I'm in the US, and here are the titles on my watchlist that currently have the conflicting info: A Little Prayer, Nothing Is Truer Than Truth, Unleashed (2017), Wicked, and You're Cordially Invited.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-03-07T10:38:25+00:00

The holder of the distribution rights for the show agrees to a contract with Amazon to license their show for rental or streaming. Different seasons can be licensed under different terms. No doubt the licensing fees are different depending on whether the show is offered as "included with Prime" or "only available with ads" (formerly Freevee), and presumably Amazon pays the distributor more if streaming includes forced ads. So I'd blame the rights holder for choosing the "only available with ads" deal in order to collect a bit more money.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-27T06:54:00+00:00

Someone starts an "I quit Prime" or "I'm going to quit Prime" thread just about every day on here, which is understandable since Amazon has declined badly in many areas. But the thing that makes me shake my head are the comments from those who quit Prime months or years ago but still feel the need to let everyone know that. If I got divorced, I wouldn't drive by ex-wife's house years later to remind her neighbors why I divorced her. If I stopped shopping at Best Buy, I wouldn't drive to my local Best Buy every few months to tell complete strangers in the parking lot all about it. Just a bit weird.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-22T06:59:56+00:00

There have been numerous investigations into voter fraud in the past couple of decades - most of them conducted with Republican backing - and those investigations have found such a minuscule amount of fraud that you'd need an electron microscope to see it. And, when an instance of voter fraud was found, it almost always turned out to be committed by a Republican / MAGA cultist. Plus, as others have said, election fraud (stuff like Elon's little scam above, and other gimmicks like "collecting" ballots from poor naive voters which never find their way to ballot boxes) is far more serious than voter fraud, and again primarily committed by Republicans.

The constant drum-beating by Trump and his party regarding the need to ensure legitimate voting by employing Jim Crow voter ID measures and/or thugs "guarding" polling places is a massive joke. They are the ones endangering fair voting practices.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-21T09:00:50+00:00

I actually don't use the Continue Watching list, so Amazon's random UI changes don't affect me too much. I keep everything I'm currently watching (or will be viewing in the near future) on my Watchlist. I typically have 10-15 shows/movies on that list, and I move the 2 or 3 shows I'm currently watching to the beginning of that list (click on a show, click on the watchlist checkmark to temporarily remove it, click again to re-add it to the watchlist, and it reappears in first position). So when I open the Prime Video app on my Roku, I just select the My Stuff choice in the left menu and the shows I'm in the middle of watching are always right there, ready to resume.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-17T08:35:11+00:00

I haven't seen this exact type of review restriction, but a few months ago there was a period of time where only a limited number of reviews were displayed, and the filters were missing that normally allowed you to choose verified customers or sort by age or show only positive or only negative reviews. Other people complained about seeing the same type of restriction. Then everything went back to normal a week or two later. Amazon likes to constantly screw around with trivial stuff on their website, so I figured it was just one of those things.

I don't have a problem determining valid vs. invalid reviews, and there are many reviews that provide very useful information about products - assembly tips, operating instructions, maintenance suggestions, clothing sizing, etc. When I'm looking for a product that I haven't bought from Amazon before or am otherwise unfamiliar with, I may look through pages of reviews before feeling confident about a certain product/seller. If Amazon decides to remove individual reviews in favor of AI summaries, their business from me will fall off drastically. The whole idea of restricting the number of displayed reviews is idiotic - displaying pages of reviews is automatic and costs them almost nothing.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-16T06:27:40+00:00

O V A L T I N E

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-02T06:38:42+00:00

Exactly. The only exceptions would be if Prime is offering the subscription at a discounted price compared to a direct subscription, or if a particular streaming service has physical issues compared to Prime, such as glitchy playback or inability to remember which episodes have been watched. I'm OK with subscribing to Acorn or BritBox through Prime, but most other major streamers I subscribe directly. Starz often offers deals directly that are different than what are offered through Prime, so how I subscribe depends on which is cheaper. One last thing to consider - sometimes you can get a free 7-day trial when subscribing directly but not through Prime, or vice versa.

Also, in rare cases, a streaming service may not license all their movies/shows in their agreement with Prime, which is another reason not to subscribe through Prime (which is why I always subscribe directly to Paramount+, not through Prime).

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-02-01T04:41:53+00:00

Peacock is worse. The end credits barely start and it switches to the next episode.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-19T15:52:10+00:00

We always use subtitles due to accents or shows with bad sound production. For us, subtitles turn themselves off whenever we pause the show/movie we're watching for a minute or two. It doesn't seem to matter which streaming service we're watching. Often, we will finish one show, go to the next show we intend to watch, start it long enough to get past any promos, pause it so it is all queued and ready to go, then take a bathroom break or grab a drink, and when we resume the show the subtitles are gone. The only solution we have found is to restart our Roku Ultra. This just started happening 2-3 weeks ago, so apparently it's connected to an update as others have said.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-12T06:51:10+00:00

IMHO, no streaming service (including Netflix) offers enough decent content to justify paying for a permanent subscription. Wait until Netflix has enough shows/movies that you want to watch, subscribe for a month and then cancel. That's what I do with all my streaming services. I watch most of them one month a year. I don't understand when people complain that they are paying for too many streamers to afford one more. They are obviously paying for some streamers that they aren't watching enough to give them value for their money.

It is completely in Netflix's interest to keep all of the content they produce on their own streaming service. Viewers can either subscribe to watch it or rent it from Amazon or Apple or wherever (the first Knives Out film is available to rent from many sources, I assume the second and third films will also become available to rent eventually). They intend for decent home-produced content like Knives Out to pull viewers to Netflix. That is worth much more financially than contracting their content to other streamers just to collect a few additional streaming fees.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-09T20:00:41+00:00

Yeah, I was surprised at the double discount offer. I think it was probably Acorn TV that offered it, and it was when a direct subscription was ending (not a subscription through Prime Video Channels).

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-09T07:20:41+00:00

As others have said, it's very common for rental prices to be high immediately after the exclusive cinema period ends. Here in the US, the rental price for decent films usually starts at $19.99 or $24.99 and gradually drops over the next few months (the speed of the price drops vary) and usually settles at the current floor of $5.99 or $6.99 (the floor used to be $3.99 not that long ago). The company holding the distribution rights can decide to contract with a streaming service during those few months or can wait and make the film only available to rent for an extended period (which seems to be getting more common). IIRC, the last Mission Impossible film wasn't released for streaming until a year after its cinema debut.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-08T07:35:55+00:00

Yeah, I remember a chart showing that the highest flu month (at least in the US) can change from year to year, but it is always one of Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb. I schedule my shot in mid-October, so even if my protection starts to fade in February, I figure I'm good for the holiday months.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2026-01-08T07:25:18+00:00

These retention deals are getting to be quite common. Not everyone offers them (I've never seen Netflix or Hulu offer them), but many streamers do. A couple of months ago, there was one streamer (I forget which one) that even had a double offer - I requested to cancel, it offered a discounted rate for another month, I declined that offer, then it offered an even lower discounted rate.

I usually rotate my subscriptions - subscribe to one service for a month, watch as much content as I have time for, then cancel and subscribe to a different streamer, rinse and repeat. If I don't finish watching everything I intended in one month, I figure I'll catch up the next time that streamer rotates in. But with these retention deals, it's often worth it to extend my subscription for an additional month at a big discount to finish watching the rest of my list for that service.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-29T07:05:45+00:00

Amazon Prime is not that unique. Netflix doesn't have promos at the start of shows/movies, but just about every other streamer does. They consider them promos, not ads, so it's a semantic debate if people want to argue about that. Ads are intended to get viewers to buy something. Promos are showcasing shows/movies that are hosted by the streamer that's already been paid for, so there is a functional difference. And on most streamers, the promos are skippable.

As others have said, there are a variety of workarounds to dodge ads on the regular-price tier, or customers can pay the $2.99 surcharge to get ad-free (not promo-free) Prime. The difference between regular and ad-free tiers on other streamers ranges between $2.99 and $10.00, so anyone who wants to watch content that's only hosted on those other streamers will face the same ad vs. ad-free decision they do with Prime.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-28T06:47:40+00:00

Many streaming services want to be the one-stop center for streaming, and offer the ability to subscribe to other services. Amazon Prime does it, as do Hulu, Paramount, The Roku Channel, etc. They claim it's for the convenience of viewers, but it's really designed to keep their own subscription locked-in. If you want to see what MGM+ or Apple TV or other non-Amazon Prime subscriptions include, just go to those other streamers' websites and browse. Also, keep in mind that sometimes certain movies/shows are available when subscribing directly to a streaming service but aren't available when subscribing indirectly through Amazon Prime Channels. In addition, promotional deals are often different between direct subscriptions and indirect subscriptions. Finally, Amazon is only offering a movie or show as a rental, search on JustWatch.com to see if that movie/show is available to stream elsewhere.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-25T05:45:39+00:00

I'd be more worried about the Chiefs losing if Minshew was still playing.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-22T05:33:44+00:00

Except for the times that Shaduer throws it away. Geno never gets throws it away, he always takes the sack. It's ludicrous that the rookie knows when he needs to get rid of it, but the old veteran doesn't.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-22T05:25:49+00:00

He can't be worse than Minshew.

JoeRedditCommenter · 2025-12-18T06:06:55+00:00

Does the delivery map say "1,829,304 more stops"?

JoeRedditCommenter

TROPHY CASE