Subscribers lodged thousands of complaints related to inaccuracies in Amazon's Prime Video catalog, including incorrect content and missing episodes, according to a Business Insider report this week. While Prime Video users aren't the only streaming users dealing with these problems, Insider's examination of leaked "internal documents" brings more perspective into the impact of mislabeling and similar errors on streaming platforms.
Insider didn't publish the documents but said they show that "60 percent of all content-related customer-experience complaints for Prime Video last year were about catalogue errors," such as movies or shows labeled with wrong or missing titles.
Specific examples reportedly named in the document include Season 1, Episode 2 of The Rings of Power being available before Season 1, Episode 1; character names being mistranslated; Continuum displaying the wrong age rating; and the Spanish-audio version of Die Hard With a Vengeance missing a chunk of audio.
The documents reportedly pointed to problems with content localization, noting the "poor linguistic quality of assets" related to a "lack of in-house expertise" of some languages. Prime Video pages with these problems suffered from 20 percent more engagement drop-offs, BI said, citing one of the documents.
Following Insider's report, however, Quartz reported that an unnamed source it described as "familiar with the matter" said the documents were out of date, despite Insider claiming that the leaked reports included data from 2023. Quartz's source also claimed that customer engagement was not affected,
AdvertisementArs Technica reached out to Amazon for comment but didn't hear back in time for publication. The company told Insider that "catalogue quality is an ongoing priority" and that Amazon takes "it seriously and work[s] relentlessly alongside our global partners and dedicated internal teams to continuously improve the overall customer experience."
Other streaming services have errors, too
Insider's report focuses on leaked documents regarding Prime Video, but rival streaming services make blunders, too. It's unclear how widespread the problem is on Prime Video or across the industry. There are examples of people reporting Prime Video inaccuracies online, like on Amazon's forum or on Reddit. But with some platforms not offering online forums and it being impossible to know how frequently users actually report spotted problems, we can't do any apples-to-apples comparisons. We also don't know if these problems are more prevalent for subscribers living outside of the US.
Beyond Prime Video, users have underscored similar inaccuracies within the past year on rival services, like Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix. A former White Collar executive producer pointed out that the show's episodes were mislabeled and out of order on Netflix earlier this month. Inaccurate content catalogs appear more widespread if you go back two years or more. Some video streamers (like (Disney and Netflix) have pages explaining how to report such problems.
Streaming services have only gotten more expensive and competitive, making such mistakes feel out of place for the flagship video platform of a conglomerate in 2024.
And despite content errors affecting more than just Prime Video, Insider's report provides a unique look at the problem and efforts to fix it.
Amazon reportedly trying to fix “sloppy mistakes”
Insider said it spoke with an anonymous person involved with Prime Video library who described the inaccuracies as "extremely sloppy mistakes" that have affected Prime Video for years.
Subscribers' biggest related complaints were around "incomplete or inconsistent titles" and "season integrity," which Insider described as problems with "missing episodes, inconsistent playback options, and wrong content availability." These season integrity issues yielded 10,000 "customer friction records," the leaked Amazon documents reportedly said. It's worth noting that Insider's report didn't concretely define the size of the problem, and Prime Video has millions subscribers.
"To solve this, we need cross-org investments in 1) Inconsistency detection & alarming, and 2) Global/regional programs on competitor selection monitoring for season products and keep our avails current, consistent and high quality," one of the internal documents said, per Insider.
Amazon this year launched a campaign to address the errors, with reported goals including "automating existing pillars with the tech teams to improve accuracy/precision" and using "abandonment data to drive title completeness."
AdvertisementAmazon is also reportedly planning to create a "human-led language expertise program to scale sourcing of language experts for a wide set of languages" to address the localization problems.
Higher standards
Streaming is in a cable-like rut, and subscribers are ditching their services faster than ever. That puts more pressure on streaming platforms to elevate the user experience (not just prices), including getting the basics right.
Improving behind-the-scenes tech and practices that benefit user experiences and user interfaces is something streaming companies may need to prioritize.
Disney, which plans to become Hulu's sole owner, recently integrated Hulu content into Disney+, a notable convenience for anyone using both services. The effort to make that happen included re-encoding all of Hulu's videos and developing a new content library system for all of Disney's streaming services, as detailed in March by The Verge. Disney, of course, plans to use this system to keep better track of what subscribers are watching across its streaming platforms, but the updates could also lead to improved streaming quality on the 16-year-old Hulu app, Disney told The Verge.
As people watch the cost of streaming rise, subscribers' standards are entitled to rise, too. Accurate titles and descriptions are just some of their expectations.
