WINNERS & LOSERS: It's been a couple of years since Amazon unexpectedly introduced ads to its Prime Video streaming service, then asked people to pay to remove them. But there's still plenty of anger over its actions. In Australia, the country's competition regulator is taking the company to court over the matter.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accuses Amazon Commercial Services Pty Ltd, the local operator of Prime, of breaching Australian Consumer Law.
The regulator says that Amazon did this by including unfair contract terms in Prime subscription agreements. It then allegedly relied on those terms to put advertising into Prime Video. Amazon.com Services LLC is also named because the ACCC believes it was knowingly involved.
According to the ACCC's statement, the case focuses on annual Prime contracts used between November 1, 2023, and August 18, 2025.
The watchdog says those agreements contained five terms that let Amazon make materially adverse changes to Prime services or the contracts themselves, including Prime Video, without giving annual subscribers a contractual right to a pro-rata refund or other meaningful redress.
