Catalog errors on Amazon’s video streaming service are so bad that they’ve kept some viewers from finishing shows on the platform, according to internal documents obtained by Business Insider.
The video streaming service is riddled with mistakes including missing episodes, inaccurate translations, and wrong titles, the outlet reported. In response, the e-commerce giant has launched an initiative this year to address these errors and reduce customer complaints.
In 2023, 60% of Prime Video customer complaints were related to catalog errors, according to the documents. About 10,000 complaints were related to “season integrity,” which involve “missing episodes, inconsistent playback options, and wrong content availability,” the outlet reported.
The documents also showed that content displaying the wrong localized display page—a page designed to be displayed in a specific geographic region—resulted in a 20% increase in engagement drop-offs.
A person familiar with the matter told Quartz that the leaked documents are outdated and that customer engagement did not drop due to catalog errors.
The news comes as growing churn rates have become an ongoing barrier for streaming services to turn a profit.
Amazon, which already spent a whopping $19 billion on its video and music services in 2023, wants to invest in building software to “proactively identify known customer defects related to inconsistent or incomplete seasons,” according to the documents.
The Prime Video team hopes this initiative will help cut the number of complaints it receives by 15,000 a year.
“Catalog quality is an ongoing priority,” an Amazon spokesperson told Quartz in an emailed statement. “We take it seriously and work relentlessly alongside our global partners and dedicated internal teams to continuously improve the overall customer experience.”
What the errors look like
- 🧙♂️ In 2022, some viewers complained that only episode two of the service’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was available on the night the show’s first two episodes were set to debut.
- 🇪🇸 Bruce Willis’s “Die Hard with a Vengeance” had missing Spanish audio.
- 🚫 Customers also complained about mistranslated character names.