Amazon has made a MAJOR change to Prime Video in the UK – and users are threatening to cancel their accounts over it

Amazon Prime Video subscribers in the UK will now have their streaming interrupted by ads.

From today, the streaming service will roll out ads to all subscribers who don’t pay an additional £2.99/month fee.

Amazon has confirmed that these will be just as disruptive as regular television breaks; play before, after and during TV shows and movies.

Subscribers in America have been seeing ads for a week and the update will be rolled out to more countries soon.

On social media, UK customers have reacted indignantly to the change, with one saying: ‘I’m paying over £100 for prime and will be canceling it when my contract ends.’

How do you know if you are affected?

If you’re an Amazon Prime Video subscriber in the UK, the only change you’ll see is the inclusion of ads in your content.

Prime Video is one of the benefits that Amazon Prime subscribers receive at no additional cost as part of their subscription.

Amazon announced these changes would happen last September, but only recently confirmed the details of the change in an email sent to customers.

In this email, Amazon confirms that the price of a Prime subscription remains unchanged and that no additional action is required.

This means that UK subscribers will continue to pay £8.99 ($11.34) per month or £95 (£119.87) per year for the service.

In the email sent to customers, Amazon said: “Prime Video movies and TV shows will have limited advertising.

“We aim to have significantly fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers.”

However, Amazon subsequently confirmed that ads will play at the beginning, middle and end of each show.

This follows the introduction of advertisements in other popular streaming services such as Netflix.

Instead of making ads standard, Netflix introduced a cheaper plan with ads that customers could buy for £4.99 per month.

Similarly, Disney+ introduced an ad tier, first to US users in December 2022, and then in the UK and eight other European countries in November, also for £4.99 per month.

How can you remove ads?

If you don’t want to see ads while watching your favorite show or movie, the only way to remove them is to pay an additional fee.

Amazon Prime subscribers will have to pay £2.99 per month or £35.88 per year to remove the ads.

That brings the monthly cost of an Amazon Prime Video subscription to just under £12 per month.

This is more expensive than a standard Netflix account or Premium Disney+ account, both of which cost £10.99 per month and come with no ads.

To upgrade to ad-free, go to your ‘Account & Settings’ page on Amazon Prime and select ‘Go Ad-Free’.

This will remove ads from all Amazon Prime Video profiles associated with your Amazon account.

Unfortunately, Amazon says this won’t even remove all ads.

Some titles still contain “promotional trailers shown before a movie or TV show,” which can be skipped with a paid ad-free subscription.

In addition, live events, such as sporting events, and any content served through Amazon Freevee, where available, will continue to contain advertisements.

On social media, many Amazon Prime subscribers say they are unwilling to pay extra to remove ads from the service.

“Amazon Prime just asked me if I wanted ads that paid an extra 2.99 smh,” wrote one subscriber to X (formerly Twitter).

Another wrote: ‘I don’t know how many ads you put in your streaming service to force me to upgrade to an AD FREE plan… that’s not happening.’

Some subscribers have gone even further, claiming they will abandon the service altogether due to the addition of ads.

One commenter wrote bluntly, “I will not be renewing Prime at my next annual renewal.”

While another added: ‘Amazon Prime is already a sub-par streaming service, but charging people for an ad-free experience will certainly negate this.’

Will there be more changes?

Amazon Prime has not announced any further changes to its subscription model pricing.

The introduction of ads is currently affecting customers in the US, UK, Canada and Germany.

However, the model will be further rolled out to other countries in the coming year.

Amazon has confirmed that people in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia will get them later in 2024.