We are contacting you regarding a past Prime Video purchase(s). The below content is no longer playable on Prime Video.
In an effort to compensate you for the inconvenience, we have applied a £5.99 Amazon Gift Card to your account. The Gift Card amount is equal to the amount you paid for the Prime Video purchase(s). To apologize for the inconvenience, we’ve also added an Amazon Gift Certificate of £5 to your account. Your Gift Card balance will be automatically applied to your next eligible order. You can view your balance and usage history in Your Account here:
Companies issuing refunds in the form of gift cards is just straight-up insulting
And it may be illegal in some states to not offer the customer an actual refund.
£5.99 refund. Quite clearly not in the US.
Sssh… Everyone lives in default country
Default country is best country.
Take me down to %DEFAULT_CITY where the grass is %DEFAULT_COLOR and the girls are %DESCRIPTIVE_ADJECTIVE
TAKE… ME… %DEFAULT_LOCATION
Take me down to null island where the grass is black and the girls are null
Religious figure bless default country.
Default religious figure bless default country
Death to default country and its default god! Alternative god reigns supreme!
I know they probably actually meant the States of the US, but…
They did say states with a lowercase s. ‘States’ = regions within a country, ‘states’ = can mean countries. Technically they aren’t defaulting to the US.
£ is from a country that does not have states
Like the person you’re replying to said, some people use state and country as synonyms sometimes
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Yup the term state to refer to a nation or sovereign territory is an American thing, for sure dude.
By suggesting that English is only spoken widely in the US, you yourself are engaging in US-Defaultism! Checkmate, citizen of !
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country = states != States
Amazon is from a country that does.
But it IS a state. Sorry if you’re not a native English speaker but just because your vocabulary is lacking doesn’t mean they are wrong.
A gift card is not a refund.
TBH I would expect stronger consumer protections in the UK…but I definitely don’t know about this type of refund specifically.
The UK, for all its problems, does typically have some of the best consumer protections in the world. I can see Amazon being forced to overturn this if there’s enough uproar (which there might not be tbf, seeing as they gave extra credit as compo).
Many countries other than the US are comprised of a federation of states. And also those that aren’t are generally considered nation states or sovereign states, which are still definitively states. The United States of America do not have an exclusive right on statehood.
Plus even though it may be implied that the original replier intended the context to mean the United States of America… it is a valid response with further implication that one should check their local jurisdiction’s laws if they were so inclined to do so.
Wait a minute, the US doesn’t have a blanket consumer law federally?
This sounds like a pain.
Federally this is against Australian Consumer Law. Didn’t offer the service you paid for? Better believe that’s a refund.
And is that amount of money enough to replace the item that’s been taken away? Like if the DVD were widely available at the same price at the time of the digital purchase, but you got the Amazon “purchase” instead (for convenience?) then what are the odds that you can still get the DVD for that price today?
Remember, streaming only has a business model as long as it has a better user experience than piracy. That’s why iTunes took off in the era of Napster. When a streaming service’s user experience drops below that of digging up pirate treasure off a shitty ad-ridden torrent site, that service is not long for the world.
I cancelled Netflix and prime and went back to piracy a few months ago, it’s been a nice blast from the past
In addition to piracy, I’ve also been checking out DVDs from my local library. It’s kinda fun.
Surprised myself because I half expected I’d miss the convenience of Netflix, but I haven’t missed it even a little.
“Was I a good streaming platform?”
“No.”
The benefit of the library DVD is it takes away the “What will we watch tonight?” conversation. You’re going to watch the DVD.
It just switches the question to the library: “What will we borrow tonight?”
Source: experience from my Blockbuster days.
We used to rent movies every weekend when I was a kid, and we supported our local video rental store instead of Blockbuster. It was so much fun to decide what to rent! The staff there always knew so much about movies too, and we’d follow their recs often. We watched a bunch of classics and silent films that there’s no way would get visibility on streaming libraries today. I wish I’d kept a journal of all the movies we watched, I remember almost no titles now.
lol I remember those days. Standing there trying to decide what movie to rent. Good times…
Yes but you have that discussion somewhere else. By the time your ready to be watching something you have made that choice
Checking one out is fun, too. It feels like an event vs. just watching anything out of boredom
Shows are harder to come by though
That depends on your library
You can also buy used DVDs. Just got a stack of studio Gibili movies for a fraction of the price they cost when they were new. Still haven’t watched all of them, but some I have watched more than once.
It was nice when you could actually watch almost everything on it. Once everyone else started taking peices of the pie it just feels like cable with more hoops now
Every time I open a streaming service now, the things I want to watch are locked into an extra subscription. I generally end up just walking away rather than watching anything, and when I do dig around and find some thing else that is available on “my tier,” it absolutely wasn’t worth it.
Forget even piracy, I’m just not watching anything anymore. When streaming makes my chore list look more attractive, they’ve definitely fucked up.
I would change that to:
“Was I a good streaming platform?”
“Yes, during your first year. Then all companies went greedy monkey savage and ruined it”
The thing that sucks is that a lot of new stuff isn’t on physical media at all.
It can be:
Step #1: download it (🏴☠️)
Step #2: burn it
Step #3: enjoy owning a more lasting copy for almost free
Well, yeah, but we were talking about going to the library.
I’m surprised what is, though. One of the movies I checked out was Knives Out.
I’m about ready to do the same.
I bought a raspberry pi, a SATA SSD and usb adaptor, and installed Plex now I’m the new netflix for my family, they send me movies and shows they want to watch and I put them on there, then they connect to my server and watch
It’s been really good
Netflix will also be raising prices soon. Again.
Netflix recently stopped shipping discs, that was all I kept them around for anymore…
I’m just always spooked by viruses and shit.
Use yts.mx, if you use any other site, try checking comments first if they have them, if not you can use torrent file viewer to check the download is actually a video file before downloading
Lastly you could try anti virus, but don’t rely on it to do your job for you, they can catch most but not always all viruses
You can’t get a virus from a video or music file. Viruses have to be executable.
Paying 0.99 per song was how a better user experience? Music piracy was pretty big till Spotify. No service was even close before.
Being able to easily purchase a single song from a reputable source in the comfort of your home instead of going out to physically buy an entire album and then rip it to your computer was a better user experience, yes. Most users are technologically illiterate, and trying to pirate stuff just lead to them getting viruses.
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If you have the local MP3 file you can do just about anything you want with it. Use it in just about any device. Transfer it anywhere. And never lose it.
I have Mp3s that are over 20-30 years old and have never needed to get them again.
And yes I go to piracy almost immediately if I can’t get a local file. Just because of how many different ways i’ve used them over the years.
shitty ad-ridden torrent site
let me introduce you to usenet trackers
That was my first thought too. A seedbox, Sonarr & Radarr and a Usenet site and I’ve got everything I need for $15/month.
What is seedbix, sonarr &radarr?
A seedbox is access to a server that someone else runs, and they typically have a policy of not asking too many questions, not keeping too many logs, and offer assistance in keeping things secure. It can be used for any number of things. I use mine to host bit torrent files and to run applications such as Sonarr & Radarr. These are open source apps that manage TV shows and movies.
I don’t even have to torrent, I have like 3 sites I can just go to, search for content on, and stream video from like a shittier netflix. Adblock keeps them relatively sane, and I sometimes have to try different server sources, but otherwise it works fine.
If you can’t save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.
Or buy it on physical media. More and more studios are pulling their disks and it is getting harder to find. If you have a disk, it can never be recalled.
I haven’t looked into it, but doesn blu ray need some kind of connectivity to manage its cryptography?
The encryption keys are stored on the disk I believe. I use MakeMKV and load the files into my media center software (Jellyfin). That works for DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K disks just fine. Every once in a while if I get a 4K early, the keys haven’t been updated yet and I have to give it a day (usually less) before it rips.
But it can just stop playing… I have a handful of discs, still in cases, look pristine, no scratches, and yet can’t be read by either my computer or DVD player. No recourse. It’s a separate problem of course, but similar.
Disks can degrade or be manufactured badly. If they never play you can usually get a warranty replacement. Old disks can degrade, but I have many 20+ year old DVDs that play fine.
technically you dont own the disks either bro have you never read the back of a DvD box
I mean, yeah, but so what? We are talking about an article where Amazon pulled a video someone purchased down so they can never watch it again. I have never heard of a company recalling physical media and demanding it’s return.
This is a non-story.
“Who knew $EvilCo would fuck me over for a sub-$10 profit?!”
I never stopped stealing media, and I never will.
you can’t steal media, it’s still there but just copied over.
Sucks for online games though…
Unless you can physically hold an offline device containing everything you need to replay it you don’t own it.
According to my local (Dutch) laws, I don’t need to own a physical copy. A YouTube purchase is sufficient for me to legally download a copy over p2p, I’m just not allowed to upload it.
We’re still being charged “thuiskopie” taxes on storage devices, so I’m still allowed to make copies for personal use, either via the app I bought it on, or as an MKV found on torrent sites.
This is banking on someone else providing the data you want when you want it. Things on torrent sites do disappear especially if they are more niche media.
Yeah, but I usually buy it somewhere and then torrent it. Except for YouTube, most UIs aren’t all that dashing (or just slow, like Prime).
Or just buy the disk
Amazon’s Music service, while it takes some hoops to jump through, actually does let you download music. Though I don’t know if that’s a general policy or on a per music/per artist basis.
and save outside of their app as a non DRM’ed file because otherwise its extra hoops for the same problem
Everything should allow you to download what you purchased. The fact that the music industry has pushed streaming so goddamn hard is because they’re mad that people can still download MP3s.
And above all of this, let’s not forget that a major negotiating point of the Hollywood strike was getting residuals per stream, something that never existed when people actually had their own media. It’s greed on every single side in that corrupt, hell town and I’m at the point where I don’t even watch TV or movies any more, not only because it all sucks, but because of this bullshit. The greed and the corruption needs to be punished.
It’s easy to scoff at this whole “You will own nothing, and you will be happy” phrase, but it’s really gone too far already.
I’m really tired of hearing “you don’t own it you own a license to it” like it’s some revelation for people complaining. We’re aware that the system has been constructed to benefit media companies at the expense of consumers.
To be honest; I never really bought the argument anyway. From a legal standpoint I don’t give half a shit. From a layman’s standpoint it’s bullshit. Nowhere do they use terms like “rent” or “lease”. They explicitly use terms like “buy” and it’s not until the fine print that the term license even comes up.
They know they’re pissing on you and telling you it’s raining and the goobers doing their legwork by repeating the sentence like they just came up with it annoy me to no end.
Nowhere do they use terms like “rent” or “lease”. They explicitly use terms like “buy” and it’s not until the fine print that the term license even comes up.
This! It really should be illegal to present something with the phrasing “buy” unless it is provided to you via a license that prevent it from being withdrawn. To “sell” cloud hosted media without having the licensing paperwork in place for it to be a sale is fraud.
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Guns don’t kill people… I do.
Yeah, I understand that hearing the same simple explanation of “you don’t own it…” gets to be annoying. Especially in places like this where most people are pretty well aware of the situation.
The primary issue seems to be that enough people support this type of service willingly for the sake of convenience and are generally ignorant to the potential long-term issues. It feels pretty exploitative as a consumer.
But I don’t see how making the distinction between ownership of the content vs the license is providing legwork for those services. In my mind, that distinction is key for understanding that the service is not for me. And I may just be looking at this too optimistically, but I would hope the same would be true for users who don’t read the fine print, or happen to have not understood the issue until something like this post is presented.
This sounds worse than communism. At least communism said “everyone will own everything”.
We’ve been screaming about it for 20+ years now and no one seems to be listening.
I’m hoping that someone will tie digital ownership rights to a block chain sooner or later and offer me movies, music, games and books that I can actually own resale rights to - but as publishers are already drinking from the rent-seeking model teat where every single license is a new sale I’m not terribly optimistic about that particular future.
block chain
No. Never. Stop asking. Crypto is not a currency and blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.
Well put
Adding blockchain into the mix changes nothing. Whether your digital ownership is stored in their centralized database or a distributed database, they still have control over everything because they’re the ones streaming it to you. They can just as well block your access & block resale.
The only way to actually digitally own something is to have a full DRM-free copy of it (ianal though this still might not be enough to allow resale).
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Adding blockchain into the mix changes nothing. Whether your digital ownership is stored in their centralized database or a distributed database, they still have control over everything because they’re the ones streaming it to you. They can just as well block your access & block resale.
So you push digital goods to a robust public platform like IPFS and tie decryption to a signed, non-revokable, rights token that you own on a block chain. It’s a transparent and consumer friendly model compared to what we accept now. I know people are over block chain hype but this type of publishing model is where it’s actually useful.
Transferable digital rights tokens and chain of custody are places where block chain tech actually works.
Edit: People seem really hung up on crypto as currency which I’m not asking for at all. I’m asking for control, ownership and resale rights to digital goods I’ve paid for which isn’t possible at all on current digital publishing platforms. I appreciate that people hate crypto shit, that’s fine, but at least read the content you’re replying to.
Fuck no. I ain’t paying a transaction fee each time I want to take a breath. If you don’t want to be robbed by streaming companies, blockchain is the last (or maybe not even a) thing you should consider as a solution.
Hyperbole much?
It’s only hyperbole until it isn’t.
So you push digital goods to a robust public platform like IPFS and tie decryption to a signed, non-revokable, rights token that you own on a block chain.
What you describe is fundamentally impossible. In order to decrypt something you need a decryption key. Put that on the blockchain and anyone can decrypt it.
Even if you can, pirates would only need to buy a single decryption key and suddenly your movie might as well be freely available to download. Pirates never pay hosting fees because it’s using the same infrastructure as customers and they can’t be taken down because they’re indistinguishable from customers.
This doesn’t make any sense, who distributes/gives out rights tokens? And if they lose publishing rights, why would the new owner of the publishing rights care about the rights tokens they didn’t sell?
Blockchain doesn’t fix anything new here, there’s no point in decentralizing the rights ownership, verifying ourselves as owners of the right to watch the media was never the issue here.
Getting companies to be willing to give out non revokable rights tokens is the issue, and no company wants to do that because it’s not profitable for them. It’s not a technological issue that blockchain is going to solve
it’s quite fun to see the whole thing you want to engineer just to have an excuse to use a blockchain.
Have you ever heard of Torrents? USENET? eDonkey? Those things are more resilient than your blockchain, they’ve proved themselves by being around more than 20 years and still in use.
Keep it in your hard drive and carry it with you, this was not a hard problem 20 years ago, but we’re being conditioned to regression in expectations and functionality. Better than yet another blockchain overkill and works offline.
PS: just like the creeptobros say: “not in your disk, not your file.” or something like that.
I think it makes sense in some areas. For example private ownership of cars is completely unsustainable in the literal sense of the word.
But when it comes to digital goods, clearly it’s all for the profit of the media cartels. There’s no justification.
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Agreed that majority transport should be shared&public but smaller personalized transport will still be needed (eg a doctor being called to an emergency)
I could also see a system of self driving cars (not trucks but very small city cars) as a kind of public uber. Kind of like how gondolas work in some mountain cities. And of course just one per let’s say 10 or more people as opposed to 1 or more cars per family like we have now.
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That’s the real danger. Shared ownership is great but not if you privatise the whole thing.
You don’t own the video file. You own access to their video file, which they also don’t own, they only own the right to distribute it. If their distribution contract ends and doesn’t gets renewed, then they can’t let you access the file. At least they refunded you. This system is one of the issues with the ongoing writers and actors strikes. Amazon can decide to stop making a video available, which cuts all dividends revenues to actors and writers. So having a video available for you to watch costs money to Amazon (or Netflix or Max…) but not enough content makes users unsubscribe, so they ride that thin line for maximized revenue. This means that older movies that aren’t blockbusters get dropped in favor of new content. Now new content doesn’t means good content, remember, it needs to be as cheap as possible. Aaand this is why steaming companies are spiraling down and everything is going to shit. Filmmaking is an art form turned into an industry. But art isn’t about maximized profit, it’s about art first. But you can’t make that art without millions of dollars and that requires the art to take a step back to maximize profit, but not too far back. It’s a really big issue in the film and entertainment industry.
— I’m an IATSE local 600 camera operator.
Sometimes I think I made the right decision to just get a huge harddrive and download all my favorite entertainment in drm free format. Movies, music, games, books. I saw this coming a mile away a decade ago. The only thing that will really hurt me is if/when Steam inevitably goes full corporate cucks and starts going hard on the DRM locking down my library.
Gift card. GIFT CARD! Those bastards “refund” with gift card instead of actual money! I hope EU will haunt their asses. Big corpro hunting season is open.
They removed books from your Kindle in the past. Who could have seen this comming?
facepalm
Yeah seriously. The day news of this broke, I switched my book library over to Calibre+DeDRM and put my device in airplane mode.
Check out Libby by overdrive. E-book convenience and supports your local library.
Mofos
Return me ALL my money for that, fuck your girftcard coupon shit! That is the least you can do and still doesn’t change the fact that I can’t buy to own anything there, so why the fuck would I?
Jellyfin and torrents for the win!
Gift cards and store credit are such a kick to the balls. Unless they let you buy shit AT COST then they’re literally not out anything.
They gave the guy £10.99 in credit for a £5.99 film, so they’re probably taking some sort of loss.
Admittedly, I missed the second £5. That said, don’t you need to pay for a Prime subscription to get access to this service in the first place? They’re gonna get that money back pretty quickly.
They gave him regular Amazon credit, so he can spend it on physical goods if he likes.
The house always wins.
It’s store credit in principle it costs them nothing
Do you think Amazon gets its goods for free?
I buy DVDs for this reason now
Dvds won’t last years either unless you copy them over
Nevermind the fact that the standard definition playback looks like a smeared turd when you play it on a modern high resolution display. I’ll stick to ripping Blu-ray.
I think when someone casually says DVD they’re including Blu-ray, like if you say Kleenex, you might be talking about Puffs or Scott or something else…
Nope, DVDs are like $3-5. I don’t care about resolution. I watch old shitty movies.
They generally credit the original payment method. It could be likely that he paid for the movie using an Amazon giftcard balance.
You’re saying you can’t buy to own anything… at Amazon?
Not in their cloud, no.
Then buy something physical – there are literally millions upon millions of products he can spend the credit on.
Yeah that’ll happen for anything streamed and licensed.
If you want to own something, you need to own it physically. Buy an actual disk. People won’t and I’ll be surprised if they are still making blurays at all in ten years but that’s the only way you can actually buy media now.
I’m actually still kinda surprised about this. My understanding is that the licenses from rights holders to streaming platforms generally included an indefinite right to stream to people who’d purchased content, even if they may not offer it for continued purchase or as part of the general included streaming library.
That’s definitely how it works with games on Steam or GOG.
Unless you bought after-market keys like on G2A and it turned out to be stolen/keygen’d. Valve will remove your game if your key is found to be stolen (whether you knew it or not). I imagine you know this but just felt it bore mentioning.
Good point, yes, that’s an exception. A justified one if you’d ask me but I guess YMMV.
iTunes as well. There are a few things I can still stream that are no longer sold.
Streaming isn’t the same as downloading. It has different rights and with movies it’s especially complicated. The rights to a movie can literally be so complicated that no one knows who owns it.
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If you want to own something, you need to own it physically.
Minor sticking point: it’s still a “limited license.” You don’t really “own” anything and if that physical copy is damaged or destroyed you’re just SOL.
Streaming, digital, physical, everything has a drawback! Backups are your friend.
Yes, you don’t own the copyright. You do own the physical disk, and you also have a right to backup a personal copy.
It’s not a sticking point, it’s a feature. Take care of your shit just like all your other shit. No one says it’s a sticking point to say that a kettle you buy could break, that’s just normal part of ownership of a thing.
Feature, sticking point, call it what you want. I’m just saying there’s nuance to it.
Wow. This is why owning DVDs is better. And if you can’t buy, download via torrents. Imagine these bastards rolling up to your home and reclaiming a movie you physically purchased. We gave them too much power. Time to withdraw it. Convenience is not worth this shit. Get uncomfortable and get your entertainment away from these streamers who don’t give customers what they paid for.
DVD rental stores could surely make a comeback given these new developments. Libraries still loan movies as well. Remember, Barnes & Noble didn’t run all independent bookstores out of business. And after Amazon savaged Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books suddenly came into existence (2015 - 2022). Greed driven corporations aren’t the answer.
Companies LOVE punishing their customers while the pirates sail on without trouble
Punishing them by giving them £5? The bastards.
Is he not paying a monthly subscription on top of all this? They’re getting their money back pretty quickly.
Again, he got a full refund AND £5. He lost nothing of value.
He would have to pay a monthly fee regardless of these events in order to watch the movie he bought. Now he doesn’t have to, since he can’t.
I suppose you’re right.
I think in supposed to double down when I’m wrong on the internet… “How dare you make such outlandish claims! I’d Bezos doesn’t send the user £1M plus a ticket for a space trip, then the user shouldn’t settle!”
Was that good? 🤣
I doubt that he’s paying a subscription for a single movie, besides he got refunded 5 extra bucks, which amounts to at least something
So now all of the movies to OP’s name have a chance to get removed. How great /s
Are you fine with me taking anything from your home as long as I pay you the purchase price + £5? Some of us assign a greater value to some of the things we own than the purchase price.
Lol. “Taking from your home”. Last time I checked, my home didn’t have a monthly access fee for me to use the things I bought.
Now he is freed from that requirement as well. A triple win.
What are you talking about? Amazon’s digital video purchases don’t require any monthly access fee. He paid £5.99 with the idea that he’ll get to keep it indefinitely, just like a physical DVD. I don’t get why you think it is ok for a seller to revert the sale of a digital item at any time for just the purchase price + £5 but (I presume?) not other sales?
Ignoring all the rest, the issue is simply that it was never bought. He bought a licence to access it. If he expected to “keep” anything, he was an idiot.
I don’t think it’s okay, but if I’m dumb enough to waste money on this stuff, it’s nice to get something extra for my stupidity.
Before YouTube Music, I purchased quite a lot of albums on Google Play Music. Paying normal CD prices, no renting.
My Google Play Music library consisted of 60% uploaded and 40% purchased music.
After my Music Library migration to YouTube was done ( this sentence alone, is enough doom and sorrow for any music lover ), my uploaded music was merged with my purchases and both were put under quarantine within the “uploads” tab.
No way to recognize purchases or even the possibility of downloading any of my uploaded or purchased music.
The money I paid for the music?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: i bought 2 - 4 albums every month on average. For a few years. Sometimes more. So, it’s not like they only got a few bucks … At least from my pov. lol
Can’t have shit in the cloud
You don’t own what is in
the cloudanother person’s computer
If companies won’t sell you a DRM-free copy of media, just pirate it. It’s the only way to actually own it.
