Something unusual is happening over at Amazon at the moment with digital sales of shows such as The Flash, Arrow, and more.
A reader alerted us on Friday that he has a season pass to season 5 of The Flash through Amazon. While episode 10 – “The Flash & the Furious” – aired on Tuesday, January 15, the episode has yet to be delivered to his account. Currently, if you go to the season 5 page on Amazon, you see the following: (Highlighting added by Batman-News)
This title is currently unavailable
Our agreements with the content provider don’t allow purchases of this at this time
We dug a bit deeper and all of the Arrowverse shows are impacted, but it goes beyond that.
The same reader pointed us to a thread on Reddit discussing the situation, and it was discussed that these issues spread to numerous shows produced by Warner Bros. Shows such as The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Friends, and more have been hit.
We then turned to other sources such as iTunes and found all of the shows were available through those outlets without an issue. This is not an industry-wide problem, or some issue with technology, this does seem to be localized to Amazon.
What Comes Next?
There is a precedent of Amazon and Warner Bros. having an adversarial relationship. In June 2014, Amazon suspended preorders for certain Warner Bros. Blu-rays and DVDs while new pricing was negotiated. The impasse was rectified just shy of two weeks later and sales resumed on the impacted titles.
The assumption in regards to the digital sales would be that some form of contract issue has come up between Warner Bros. and Amazon, but no information is being shared with consumers. Unlike when a dispute arises between a network and a cable provider, there at least some form of message is placed on the screen informing that there is indeed some sort of issue. And for people such as our reader who prepaid for an entire season, not being delivered the episodes he purchased is frustrating. There is no indication if he will be receiving a refund or if there is a possibility of the episodes being delivered at a later date.
The key in any situation such as this is communication. As it stands now, customers are left with nothing but confusion and no idea if there is even a possible resolution to the issue.
Batman-News has reached out to both Warner Bros. and Amazon for comment on the situation, but neither had responded by the time of this publication. Should they do so we will update with their comments.
Thanks to the anonymous reader for the head’s up.
