Simon. You are definitely a Premier users. Have you tried reading the current crop of stories on the front page that are just for Premier users?
Also, in your profile page you should have a button named, 'Premier Account Status'.. It should be rather large and unmissable. Click that to go to the page that shows you all the details we hold on you and also that's where you will find the 'reduce ads' button.
I hadn't realised the difference, but I see now some topics are marked 'premier' underneath:
"January 28th, 10 | Kit, Premier | 1 Comment | views: 466"
its a bit like my lbs banning me for not allways getting my stuff from them.
in fairness, it's more like them banning you for drinking the free coffee but never buying anything 🙂 They derive quite a lot of revenue (though not disclosed) from the ads, and the logic seems to be that it doesn't matter how annoying they are, as you'll click them anyway!