Australia’s client watchdog has sued Amazon, claiming the tech large launched adverts in Prime Video utilizing allegedly unfair contract phrases.
The Australian Competitors and Shopper Fee (ACCC) mentioned Amazon had damaged client safety regulation by making the unfair contracts with over 1,000,000 annual subscribers between November 2023 and August 2025.
“Shoppers who needed to keep away from advertisements have been left with no selection however to pay extra to take care of the service they’d initially signed up for”, ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb mentioned.
Amazon has been approached for remark.
For greater than a decade, Prime Video was a commercial-free streaming providing that was included as a part of Amazon’s standard Prime subscription, which is bought as an improve on its core supply service.
Prime grew to become out there in Australia in 2018. It began to roll out promoting within the service globally in early 2024.
When Amazon started that 12 months to incorporate advertisements inside Prime Video, it informed subscribers in Australia they would want to pay an extra payment every month with a purpose to maintain the service freed from advertisements, driving the month-to-month value as much as 12.99 Australian {dollars}.
At that time, the ACCC mentioned over 850,000 folks in Australia had already paid for a 12 months’s value of Prime service.
“These subscribers have been supplied with a degraded, ad-supported Prime Video service for the stability of their pay as you go time period until they paid for the ad-free possibility”, the ACCC added in a filing, external.
The ACCC mentioned Amazon did this by counting on 5 unfair phrases in contracts with over 1,000,000 prospects signed between 1 November 2023 and 18 August 2025.
“These contracts included 5 phrases allowing [Amazon Australia] to unilaterally make materially antagonistic adjustments to its providers (together with, however not restricted to, Prime Video) and the phrases governing these providers, with none contractual entitlement for subscribers to obtain refunds or different significant redress,” the ACCC mentioned.
Amazon’s therapy of its customers has come underneath authorities scrutiny earlier than.
Within the US, the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) lately has taken authorized motion towards Amazon on claims that the corporate would signal folks up for Prime without their consent, external, after which make it troublesome for folks to cancel a subscription.
The corporate on Tuesday additionally agreed to pay an FTC fine, external to resolve claims that it created a “Kafkaesque ordeal” for individuals who have been victims of on-line purchasing fraud.
Within the UK, the federal government has beforehand investigated Amazon’s methodology of listing goods for sale, and the proliferation of fake reviews of products.
