Amazon revealed last week that their lineup of Prime Exclusive Phones would no longer contain lockscreen ads. Existing customers that purchased one of the discounted phones have started receiving updates that remove ads on their devices as well. As Android Police reports, Amazon is now being extra diligent in making everyone happy with the change by refunding the fee paid by customers who opted to pay for ads to be removed after purchasing one of the Prime Exclusive Phones.
All of the phones offered under Amazon’s Prime Exclusive lineup could be purchased at a higher price without any of Amazon’s changes. For customers who regretted taking the savings and wanted to remove ads after the fact, Amazon offered the option to pay a one-time fee to have ads permanently disabled. This is similar to the option that Fire tablet owners have to pay $15 to remove “Special Offers” from their devices.
Customers who took Amazon up on the offer to pay for ads to be removed from their Prime Exclusive Phones are now receiving emails informing them that a credit in the amount they paid was being applied to their Amazon accounts to make up for the fact that all customers are now having their ads removed for free.
On face value it sounds awesome but something doesn’t smell right.
I have a suspicion there’s a legal matter afoot within the software.(spyware?)
Or
Some lawyer has threatened a lawsuit based on customer’s rights.
I am just curious on what you think.
It is simplier than that, Google will ban developers who monetize the lock screen, old news. Just took a while to take effect:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/google-bans-android-developers-from-adding-lock-screen-ads/
I’m not really sure this would impact this scenario, Amazon would not be relying on Google to deploy this lock screen or its ads….
If Google is involved, it could be theyre cracking down during Google Services certification.
In fact they are. The ads are pushed through the special offers app, which is updated through the play store.
If you didn’t pay to get your ads removed, you had to subscribe to Prime for 6 months. Where is the refund for that?
I’d prefer to have the ads and save $20 on the phone. Who looks at the lock screen?
I do and presumably allot of others considering the comments Ive read about removing them on fire devices.
If Amazon didnt think they were working, they likely wouldn’t have made their devices come ‘with offers’ by default.
How do you unlock your phone if youre not looking at it?
Touch the thumb scanner as you take it out of your pocket.