What streaming channels are you currently watching, or have canceled lately?

Just as an FYI, if you ever do contemplate canceling Prime, we had Prime for a long time, and I also enjoyed the terrible old Riff-able movies, of which Prime has a lot (including actual RiffTrax movies). When we decided to cancel since we just didn’t really buy enough to make it worth our while, I thought I was going to lose out on access to that old movie back catalog. But it turned out that though you can’t watch new stuff like Fallout or the new Carrie without Prime of course, pretty much most of the old stuff is still available with ads. Since you already have the ad tier, you might hardly notice.

It’s similar to the Prime business model when buying Amazon stuff. They make it seem like cancelling Prime will make your life miserable, and maybe that’s true if you’re used to buying like one $9 item and getting it with free shipping the same day. But if you can just wait until you have $30 worth of stuff to buy to get free shipping, they give you an estimated shipping date that’s like two weeks out and say “are you sure you don’t want Prime? Get the free trial!”. But here’s the thing-- sometimes they do slow-walk the order, but it usually comes way sooner than their bogus two-week estimate.

It’s a pretty good scam-- you cancel Prime and they keep you as a customer by still giving you 80% of what you got with Prime, but keep trying to convince you how much better life will be with the Prime ‘VIP treatment’.