Lately I've been getting a little fed up with the various shows that Netflix is force-feeding us. It is quite easy to identify that they have an agenda both politically and just in a general sense. I should simply pull a "Frozen" here but the other day (when I was a little drunk) I decided that I didn't want to financially support a company that tries to do this. Only to discover that their major competitor doesn't work over here.
When i pulled up the "TV and video" section on my PS4, it was nice to see that Prime was already there. It also let you browse the films without signing up (can't watch any of them) and they also offer a 1 month free deal, which seems to be the industry standard now. It looked like a good enough catalogue, and I immediately spotted Seinfeld, which is always a good selling point for me.
I want to say I prefer the AP interface over Netflix' but i think that is just a case of familiarity breeding contempt or whatever the cliche is. I went through the sign up process only to discover a few things that i definitely didn't like, and one was a game breaker.
The videos that are "not available in my region* are still presented to me and really these should be in a totally different category or just not on the menu at all. It was kind of ass that even though the movies were not "available in my region" i still had the option of purchasing them for $12 or something like that. Guys... do you want to chase me back to torrents or something?
Because i was "roaming" or whatever it was called, it was a real bitch to get my credit card deets to work. I nearly gave up but was just drunk enough to be motivated to get through this. You are one of the largest companies in the world Amazon - and a vast majority of these transactions take place online, using credit cards. This should not happen, ever.
It is my understanding that Amazon Prime is a fantastic deal for people who live in USA because you get it for free simply by signing up for "Prime" delivery that as far as I know gets you faster shipping or something. However, since Amazon all but doesn't exist as an online ordering company over here, our only option was to pay for just the streaming service, which was going to cost nearly double what Netflix costs.
I figured I would do the free trial anyway and see if it was worth the extra $5 a month only to discover that I was told by every movie / TV show i chose to watch that "your internet connection is too slow and to expect frequent pausing." I know this to not be the case but thanks for blaming me for your system's inadequacies.
Basically, after all that work I ended up staring at the swirling loading Amazon thing for 20 minutes or so until i just deleted it from the system and cancelled my membership all in the same hour as signing up for it. Thank goodness for the free trial I guess.
There were a bunch of "troubleshooting" pages out there but honestly, if I have to do that simply to get your product to work in the first place, you can forget about it, especially if I am paying for the service.
tl;dr
Amazon Prime might be a wonderful streaming service in USA and I know plenty of people that enjoy it there. However, if your product costs more than Netflix, has an arduous sign-up process, and is non-functional (and also the company blames it on the user), I have no interest or patience to get involved with it. I quit the service in the same hour that I signed up for it.