The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has sued Amazon, alleging it used unfair contract terms to introduce advertisements on Prime Video and forced subscribers to pay extra to continue watching without ads.
The ACCC said on Tuesday it had filed a case in the Federal Court, alleging that Amazon Australia included unfair terms in its annual Prime subscription contracts between November 2023 and August 2025.
According to the regulator, these contract terms allowed the company to make changes to Prime Video for more than one million subscribers without offering compensation.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb alleged Amazon relied on some of those terms when it introduced advertisements on Prime Video in July 2024. Subscribers who wanted to continue watching content without ads were required to pay an additional A$2.99 a month for an ad-free experience, despite having already paid an annual fee of A$79 (US$54).
“We allege that Amazon AU included multiple unfair terms in its contracts with Australian annual Prime subscribers, and it then relied on some of these terms to bring ads onto Amazon Prime Video,” Gottlieb said.
According to reports by Reuters, ACCC’s investigation into Amazon Australia’s subscription contracts began after it received complaints from consumers following the introduction of ads on Prime Video in 2024.
In 2025, Amazon agreed to pay US$2.5 billion in penalties and refunds in the US and changed the way subscribers cancel their Prime memberships to settle a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission.
Currently, Prime Video ads are available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. In all these markets, subscribers have the option of paying an additional fee for an ad-free viewing experience.