Australia Takes Legal Action Against Amazon Over Alleged Unfair Contract Terms

Australia’s consumer regulator has filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging the tech company introduced advertising into Prime Video under contract terms deemed unfair to subscribers.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) claims Amazon breached consumer protection law by imposing detrimental contract conditions on more than a million annual subscribers between November 2023 and August 2025.

“Consumers who wished to avoid ads were forced to pay extra to retain the service they had originally signed up for,” ACCC chair Gina Cass‑Gottlieb said.

A spokesperson for Amazon told the BBC that the company was “reviewing the case filed by the ACCC in detail.”

“We have cooperated with the ACCC throughout its investigation and remain focused on providing the best experience for our Australian customers,” the representative added.

Prime Video, which had been part of Amazon’s Prime subscription—a package that builds on its core delivery service—offered a commercial‑free experience for more than a decade.

Prime was introduced in Australia in 2018, and Amazon began rolling out advertising within the service worldwide in early 2024.

When Amazon added ads to Prime Video that year, it informed Australian subscribers they would need to pay an additional fee each month to keep the service ad‑free, raising the monthly price to 12.99 Australian dollars.

At the time, the ACCC noted that over 850,000 Australians had already paid for a year’s worth of Prime service.

“Those subscribers were provided with a degraded, ad‑supported Prime Video experience for the remainder of their prepaid term unless they paid for the ad‑free option,” the ACCC added in a filingexternal.

The ACCC alleges Amazon employed five unfair terms in contracts signed between 1 November 2023 and 18 August 2025, allowing the company to unilaterally make materially adverse changes to its services—including Prime Video—and the governing terms, without providing subscribers any contractual right to refunds or meaningful redress.

Amazon has faced similar scrutiny from governments elsewhere.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently pursued legal action against Amazon, alleging the company was enrolling customers into Prime without consent and then making it difficult to cancel the subscription.

The company also agreed to pay an FTC fine to resolve claims that it created a “Kafkaesque ordeal” for victims of online shopping fraud.

In the United Kingdom, the government has investigated Amazon’s listing practices and the spread of fake product reviews.

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