Amazon Prime Video 12+

A decent app, this - pretty good at keeping on streaming films and TV even though my internet connection is painfully slow (roll on the upgraded connection, due soon!).

My only issue is that there is no option to switch off subtitles entirely. I have coped with having to switch them off every time a new episode kicks in, but trying to watch Babylon 5 free with ads, and having to switch off the subtitles after every ad break is deeply frustrating, and makes it a rather less immersive experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad that subtitles are available - they’re utterly necessary for accessibility - but to have a control in-app to allow those of us who don’t need them to switch them off if we so desire would be a wonderful thing. And hopefully not too complex to program…

Not only do the pictures change but also the titles to some of the films. When you’re looking for something to watch, every time you click on a video, watch even just a few seconds, realise it’s rubbish or seen it before, exit and return to the list, the list has refreshed leaving you to start from scratch. Not just scratch, but a different starting point amongst a bunch of slightly different categories.

To make things worse most of the videos are listed in most of the categories, most of the categories include videos that don’t belong in those categories and even if you only watch a few seconds they appear in your watch list. I.e. if you want to use the watch list you have to constantly delete entries of the videos you bailed on for whatever reason. Many of the paid for videos are not in English and don’t say that in the summary. This app is extremely frustrating and clearly designed to give the impression that there’s a lot more to watch than there actually is.

The truly annoying feature is the suggestions, they are heavily influenced by everything you click on, particularly the stuff that turned out to be of no interest. And to top it off there’s a “because you watched <some film name>” category that frequently includes the film <some film name> listing.

We pay for Prime and yet are now being subjected to having to sort through shows/films not included in our paid-for membership. The button that used to exist “free to me” (which, obviously is a misnomer because we PAY for Prime) used to make navigating the app acceptable. With the removal of this option and the necessity to rummage through things that you need to additionally subscribe to, rent, or buy, the platform has become so annoying we’re considering cancelling our subscription. We don’t pay to be subjected to extra advertising and have an interface that makes it harder to find things to watch. If this doesn’t change imminently we’ll be cancelling our subscription (which we’ve had for over a decade) when our renewal comes up.

It would be nice if companies we pay for a service, that already make immense amounts of profit, would quit degrading their services by including advertisements and trying to make it as difficult as possible to watch content we’ve already paid to access. We would appreciate being treated like customers rather than a commodity to bleed as dry as possible. We don’t need Prime; if you’d like to keep your customers, I’d suggest treating them with a bit more respect and consideration.