Thursday, January 19, 2012

We had Prime for about 30 Min.

I love Amazon. I shop on Amazon all the time. I had prime membership for about a year because I joined their mom's club and because I bought diapers every month or two they continued to offer me Prime Membership for a year. That all ended in December (Thankfully, after Christmas). In December we decided to get a Roku box for our t.v. so that we could get BYUtv which would allow us to watch conference from the comfort of our own home without having to have cable or watch it on our laptop computer.  With the Roku box we also are able to get the Amazontv app which would make it possible to stream movies from the Amazon library.  I had been tempted to pay for Prime membership since getting the email that says prime members would get to stream a large library of movies for free. Prime is about $80 for the year. That is a lot less than what our Netflix costs us each year so it sounded like a good deal.

Last night I finally took the plunge and bought prime membership thinking we would then be able to drop the Netflix. But after setting up the app and looking at what was available, my husband and I were greatly disappointed with Amazon. First of all, most of the things we would want to watch aren't free even for Prime members. But what we were the most put off by was the lack of a queue or list where we could collect the shows and movies that we would like to watch eventually or that we know the kids would like to watch.  This lack of a queue means that each time you want to watch something you have to search for it first. And in the searching you come across a lot of things that aren't for little eyes to see.  Just flipping through the movies listed as new arrivals was almost pornographic. Thomas the tank engine videos were right next to a slasher movies or a scantily clad female bodies. Not something any of us need to see.  Even just using the search engine where you have to click in the title of the film resulted in a lot of films other than the one you want to come up also.  This doesn't happen with Netflix. I fill my queue online and the recommendations that pop up on the homepage are all based on things we have previously watched so it is very family friendly.  When the kids click on the Netflix app on the tv they get our queue with is full of movies already approved by me for their viewing.  There aren't any adds or recommendations there. I like that!

So after just a few minutes on Amazon's web page and tv app we could tell this wasn't what we wanted. We like Netflix and it is worth the extra money to keep things clean for our family.  I quickly went back to the Amazon website and canceled Prime. Since I hadn't actually used any of the Prime benifits in the 30 minutes since I had clicked that order button, they refunded my money and canceled it. I did leave a comment with that cancellation so they at least got my opinion of the service and they could see about changing things for my demographic.

For now I will have to go back to filling my shopping cart with over $25.00 worth of items so I can qualify for free super saver shipping. And for now we will continue to pay for Netflix.

1 comment:

Kodelle said...

We also love Netflix for the same reasons. Ilove not having to deal with commercials or ads. And its fun to watch TV shows I grew up with. MacGyver anyone?