×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
Canadians Considering Getting Amazon Prime for Anime / Review




Anime News Network Forum Index -> Industry -> Retail
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 11:02 am Reply with quote
I just signed up for an Amazon Prime membership here in Canada so I finally know exactly what AP has to offer Canadians in terms of anime.

The "good" news: we don't get Amazon Prime's anime channel Anime Strike here which means we don't pay an extra fee even though we do get SOME Anime Strike titles.

The bad news: okay, we don't pay extra, but we don't get ALL the Anime Strike titles. For example, here is Anime Strike's summer line-up which shows what we get in Canada (the no's are bolded):


Katsugeki! Tōken Ranbu: July 1 - no
Love & Lies: July 3 - yes
DIVE!!: July 5 - yes
Altair: A Record of Battles: July 7 - yes
Vatican Miracle Examiner: July 7 - no
Made in Abyss: July 7 - no (DAMMIT!)
Welcome to the Ballroom: July 8 - yes
Hitorijime My Hero: July 8 - yes
Princess Principal: July 9 - yes
Lights of the Clione: July 12 - ?
Hell Girl 4: July 14 - ?

In addition, Anime Strike will continue its stream of the Sagrada Reset, Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul, and Re:CREATORS anime. (We get all of these in Canada).

I don't know if we'll get Lights of Clione and Hell Girl 4 because they haven't premiered yet. I'll update this thread once I know one way or the other.

In addition to the shows above, Canadians get:

Chi's Sweet Adventure (subbed)
ONIHEI
Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend Flat
Grimoire of Zero
Sword Oratoria: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side
Armed Girl's Machiavellism
Anonymous Noise
ViVid Strike!
Atom: the Beginning
Kabukibu!


Last edited by Blood- on Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:55 am; edited 2 times in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
DarkRoseFairy



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 271
Location: Alberta, Canada
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 7:21 pm Reply with quote
Thank you Blood- for the information; I was debating on getting Prime or not, this really helps.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 7:34 pm Reply with quote
You're welcome!

Well, it didn't take long for me to run into a technical issue. On the very first video I tried (Love and Lies ep. 2), I wasn't able to turn on the subtitles. I contacted Amazon Prime help and they got back to me very quickly. We were able to determine that the problem wasn't at my end. I tested Princess Principal and was able to get subtitles no problem. So supposedly anybody trying to access that video would have the same problem. The person I was dealing with said she was sending a message to... whomever... to get the problem fixed.

Just curious - has anybody else tried to access that episode and not been able to get the subtitles?

Update #2

I haven't had time to write about this yet, but I encountered a second technical problem with an AP video and this lead to one of the worst customer service experiences I've had in a long time.

The problem came when I tried to customize my subtitles. There is a way to do this and I followed it. But when I played the video I could tell my preferences didn't "take." So I called the Amazon Help line like I did with the first problem (described above).

To understand what happened, you have to realize that as a Canadian you sign into your amazon.ca account, however, when you sign into your Amazon Prime account, it takes you to www.primevideo.com. Therefore, if you have a problem and contact Amazon Help for a video issue, the automated system assumes you a US customer.

So when the first rep I talked to found out I was Canadian, she said I had to speak with someone at amazon.ca and she transferred me.

That second rep said she worked in the retail section of amazon.ca and I needed to talk to somebody in the video section, so she transferred me.

What happened then was that I was transferred BACK to Amazon US. Okay, remember, this is now the third rep I'm talking to. When I explain the problem, she says, "I have to transfer you..." By this time I was absolutely livid. Every time you get transferred, you have to wait for somebody to come on the line. And then to find out from the third person you are dealing with that you have to be transferred AGAIN just sent me through the roof.

Oh, but wait. There's more. So I get to the 4TH REP (and the first male) and after forcefully but politely relating all the rigamarole I'd been through, he tells me...

...he has to transfer me to somebody else.

By this time, I have to assume that Franz Kafka heads up Amazon's customer service department.

So finally this fifth rep who works at Amazon US's video section is able to help me ... sort of.

By this time you've probably forgotten that my original problem was that my customized subtitle preferences weren't "taking." She never was able to explain why that was so or how to fix it, but she did point out that you can also change subtitle options (like the size of the font which was my main objective all along) right in the video itself. That function at least works.

So it means I'll have to change my subtitle options on a video by video basis instead of setting my preferences and just leaving it. By the way, being transferred and talking to FIVE DIFFERENT REPS took up 56 minutes of my life that I ain't ever getting back.

Oh and I almost forgot: there was some sort of weird time lag thing going on that regardless of which rep I was talking to, it would take a few seconds for them to respond to what I had seid. This lead to a few instances of confusion where either I or the rep I was dealing with wondered if we had been disconnected. It made an already frustrating experience even more frustrating.

Yeah, one day into my 30 day free AP membership and I can't say I'm massively impressed.

Update #3

The number of anime offered has decreased. For whatever reason,
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Scum's Wish, The Great Passage, BATTERY the animation, Shin chan Spin-off vol.1: Aliens vs. Shinnosuke, and the three Nanaho titles are no longer listed.

Also, no sign of Lights of the Clione being listed, which was supposed to have premiered yesterday.

Update #4
(July 22)

This is annoying. The new episodes of both Made in Abyss and Vatican Miracle Examiners are supposed to drop on Friday. Indications are that subscribers to Anime Strike in the US have access to these episodes. As of 12:11pm EST today, a day after the when the episodes were supposed to be available, there is still no sign of them for me. Not impressed.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Industry -> Retail All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group