Amazon is reportedly going through a proposed class motion lawsuit which was filed on Friday in California federal courtroom and offers with its Prime Video service’s transfer into advertisements.
Final yr, the retail big introduced plans to include advertisements into Prime Video – not in contrast to many rivals resembling Netflix, Disney+ and others who’ve accomplished the identical with a number of tiers, together with ‘with advertisements’ and ‘advert free’ accounts.
One key distinction nonetheless is that lots of the others added the ad-free tiers to their current roster of choices – that means for those who already had an account there it remained the identical. The ‘with advertisements’ choice was merely an extra tier added to the line-up.
Amazon was totally different. It rolled out the change final month which noticed its advert tier out of the blue turn out to be the default for its over 100 million subscribers. Those that wished the ad-free expertise they’d earlier than must pay an extra $2.99 monthly. These with annual subscriptions had been additionally impacted by the change.
The proposed class motion claims breach of contract and violations of state shopper safety legal guidelines on behalf of customers who noticed the phrases of their subscriptions with Amazon altered. The grievance states: “Subscribers should now pay additional to get one thing they already paid for” and labelling it “unfair” and “misleading”.
The proposed class motion seeks at the very least $5 million and a courtroom order barring Amazon from partaking in additional misleading conduct on behalf of customers who subscribed to Prime previous to December twenty eighth final yr.
Supply: The Wrap, THR