Amazon's Prime Video ad-supported tier earned it a class-action lawsuit

Recently, Amazon added an ad-supported payment tier to its Prime Video subscription service. While other services have done the same, Amazon has run into a little bit of legal trouble. Right now, the new Prime Video ad-supported has landed the e-commerce giant with a class action lawsuit.

So, let’s go over some of the details of the new payment plan. There are two ways of getting Amazon Prime Video, and that is through the standalone service and through Amazon Prime. The stand-alone service costs $8.99/month with ads and $11.99 /month without ads. If you are a Prime subscriber, you will pay $14.99/month to view Amazon Prime Video content with ads and $17.99/month without ads. Amazon did mention that it does not plan on increasing prices this year.

Amazon Prime Video ad-supported plan sparked a class action lawsuit

This lawsuit was filed on Friday. Many users are outraged at the way Amazon handled this new ad-supported tier. The company made the ad-supported plan the default for all Prime Video users. That’s pretty annoying as is. What further frustrates users is the fact that Amazon didn’t introduce a cheaper ad-supported plan. It added ads to the current plans and is now charging people $3 extra/month to remove the ads. So, there are people who logged on to their account only to start seeing ads. People on the ad-supported tier also lost access to Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.

That’s bad enough for people paying for Prime Video monthly. It’s a bigger problem for people who get the yearly plan. These people buy an entire Year’s worth of Prime Video at once. So, they had already paid for an ad-free experience. “Subscribers must now pay extra to get something they already paid for,” according to the complaint.

At this point, this case is still brand new, so we’re going to have to wait for more details to arise to get an idea of the outcome. Right now, we know that the plaintiff is seeking $5 million and a court order banning Amazon from engaging in any deceptive practices. Amazon has yet to comment on the matter.