Is Amazon Prime Too Hard To Cancel? A Jury Will Decide. (msn.com) 43
Subscribing to an online service is often as easy as a click of a button. Is it illegal if it takes a maze of clicks to cancel? That issue is at the heart of a civil trial beginning this week that will scrutinize the tactics Amazon uses to entice consumers to sign up for its signature Prime service -- and to steer them away from leaving. WSJ: The Federal Trade Commission alleges the online giant has duped nearly 40 million customers, in violation of consumer-protection laws. It is seeking civil penalties, refunds to consumers and a court order prohibiting Amazon from using subscription practices that could confuse or deceive customers. The case, which will unfold in a Seattle courtroom, is a top test of the agency's enforcement campaign against allegedly deceptive digital subscription practices.
Amazon's Prime membership, the largest paid subscription program in the world with at least 200 million users, has helped the company become an integral part of consumers' shopping habits. The FTC, which sued Amazon in 2023, alleges the company tricked people into signing up for the service without their knowledge or consent, including by obscuring details about billing and the terms of free trials. It says Amazon created a labyrinth to make it hard to cancel, which the company dubbed "Iliad," a reference to Homer's epic about the long, arduous Trojan War. The FTC says Amazon required customers to navigate four webpages and chose from 15 options to cancel a Prime membership. The company streamlined the process in April 2023, ahead of the filing of the criminal complaint.
The FTC won an initial pretrial victory last week when a federal judge ruled that Amazon did violate consumer-protection laws by taking Prime members' billing information before disclosing the terms of the membership. But he said jurors still would have to consider whether the customers gave their consent to enroll and whether Amazon provided a simple cancellation mechanism.
Amazon's Prime membership, the largest paid subscription program in the world with at least 200 million users, has helped the company become an integral part of consumers' shopping habits. The FTC, which sued Amazon in 2023, alleges the company tricked people into signing up for the service without their knowledge or consent, including by obscuring details about billing and the terms of free trials. It says Amazon created a labyrinth to make it hard to cancel, which the company dubbed "Iliad," a reference to Homer's epic about the long, arduous Trojan War. The FTC says Amazon required customers to navigate four webpages and chose from 15 options to cancel a Prime membership. The company streamlined the process in April 2023, ahead of the filing of the criminal complaint.
The FTC won an initial pretrial victory last week when a federal judge ruled that Amazon did violate consumer-protection laws by taking Prime members' billing information before disclosing the terms of the membership. But he said jurors still would have to consider whether the customers gave their consent to enroll and whether Amazon provided a simple cancellation mechanism.
I just tried it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: I just tried it (Score:3)
Re: I just tried it (Score:5, Informative)
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I somehow ended up with two Prime memberships (I suspect one belonging to my deceased wife). I got tired of paying for both of them, went online, cancelled one of them. No confusion, no problems, no nagging "are you sure?" stuff. I consider this a non-issue.
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Limits of applied psychology? (Score:1)
Are you sure that you actually cancelled your Prime account? How long until you are sure that you really did it?
I think this is a sort of joke, but my guess is that you only got far enough to convince yourself that you could cancel it, but somewhere along the way you changed your mind and decided not to. Sort of like "I can quit gambling/drinking/gaming whenever I feel like it, so I'm not addicted." If you had gotten too close to actually cancelling your membership, then they would have pulled out the big p
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Nope. I had prime video and it's super easy to cancel it. It even asks if you want to cancel that very moment or wait for some reason. No matter what, you get access for the amount of time you've already paid, typically until the next bill cycle would hit. It's not fucking rock science and they make it easier then most.
There is literally an option to manage subscriptions from the drop down menu off the home page. They really couldn't make it much easier but then, people are pretty fucking retarded, so maybe
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From context and common (but increasingly rare) sense I think you meant the defense attorney, not the prosecutor.
And you sound like a typical puppet dancing to your strings. Don't you ever wonder who is jerking you around?
But it definitely doesn't seem like we have anything to discuss here.
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I've seen companies that do in fact jerk you around for cancellation. Gyms are by far the worse. Amazon, on the other hand, has never been that hard and they do a better job then most with returns as well.
But I get it. Half the population requires you write things out in crayons and big block letters so they can understand the most basic of things.
No worries though, they can easily afford this lawsuit if they lose.
Also, I say favor the prosecutor because they brought the case and anyone who really thinks ca
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I heard 2.5 billion reasons you're wrong about the merits of the case. Just joking, but that's the number already reported for the settlement. And of course I'm sure it includes a "But Amazon is not really guilty of anything seriously bad" clause. 'We're just settling for $2.5 billion because we found it between the couch cushions.'
As I noted, in my first reply in the thread, I have no recent direct experience. I looked at what Amazon was doing with my personal data and decided I didn't want any part of tha
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Re:I just tried it (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the summary did say that Amazon streamlined the process in April 2023 ahead of the filing. How was the process before that?
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Well the summary did say that Amazon streamlined the process in April 2023 ahead of the filing. How was the process before that?
The pretrial summary judgment: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.courthousenews.com... [courthousenews.com] (the description of the cancellation process starts at page 9 and contains flowchart pics so I'm not quoting).
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It was, of course, fucking shit. And it was extremely non-obvious how to do it. It wasn't in the kind of obvious location that it's in now.
Frankly, it could still be more obvious.
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Not only cancelling Prime is easy, but they will also refund you if you get charged after your free trial ends and cancel before using your paid subscription. I actually never paid for Prime, but took advantage of these free trials several times and cancellation never was a problem.
Of course they will try to make you stay, and you have to click a couple of confirmation buttons. But that's standard commercial practice, everyone does that.
If you think clicking two buttons instead of one is hard, you probably
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Ahh, that's right. You can cancel "right now" and get a partial refund. Try that with any other service, it's unheard of it. Typically, you get access until the next billing cycle because you pay before you get access.
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Maybe they do that now, but they certainly didn't a few years ago. It seems the threat of this lawsuit is already working.
A few years ago Amazon Prime's tiny is-this-card-valid fee and a monthly fee start showed up on my credit card. I checked my account and confirmed I didn't have Prime. I called Amazon and they confirmed I didn't have Prime. They couldn't say if someone else's account used my CC nor could I block that. I contacted my CC company and disputed the charges and changed some passwords. Th
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First experience with the Prime free trial and the following cancellation was in 2016 (called Premium at the time), I did several times after that and I never had a problem. I never had a problem with Amazon in general, except for the following, who were mostly my fault:
- Forgot to unsubscribe after my trial period of Audible so I had to pay the monthly fee for a month, didn't get a refund but no problem cancelling, Maybe I could have got a refund by calling support, but I didn't bother and used the voucher
Re: I just tried it (Score:2)
From TFS: " The company streamlined the process in April 2023, ahead of the filing of the criminal complaint."
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Last i tried it I had three problems with it. #1 was it is not intuitively located and it's easier to Google how to cancel it to jump right to the page than it is to navigate Amazon's own site to find it. #2 was it was unclear that your subscription will remain active until the end of the billing cycle until after you've cancelled, which may encourage customers to delay cancelling which increases the odds they will forget and get billed for another month. #2 was there was an excessive number of "please don'
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July court decision (Score:2)
This is the way (Score:3)
It should be as easy to leave as it is to join.
many times over the years I've had prime trials (Score:3)
and every single time, un-enrolling was super easy.
But one thing is what I think, and a very different one is what a judge and/or jury think.
JM2C
YMMV
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If you are to smart or know the situation to well, you will never make the jury. They want morons that know nothing for these trials. I could easily demonstrate to a jury how easy it is to cancel and the prosecutor would dismiss mean from the case for "reasons".
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Did you cancel with one click? Because that's how easy it is to join.
I agree, canceling is easy! (Score:2)
I have done this several times over the last few years and never had a problem. In fact I have received refunds at times when I canceled that I did not expect.
Amazon should win this, but they will still be out the money they spent for lawyers.
#$%^&* trial lawyers making life more expensive and complex.
Loser pays does look
Canceling Prime is actually the easiest part. (Score:1)
I canceled Prime several months ago, but it was part of what I called "Amazon Divorce," because I was sick of them and it took about a month, on and off to cut them out my my life and delete my data as much as possible. Canceling Prime was fairly easy, however my account went back to 1998 and I also had been using other services. So it took awhile to delete all my reviews, delete all my browsing and shopping history, save my wishlists to a file and delete them, ensure all my MP3s were backed up, research
Well I'd never make that jury... (Score:2)
The first thing I would do is bring my laptop, demonstrate how fucking easy it is to actually cancel prime (it's easier then most, actually) and the prosecutor would take one look at me and send me home.
Another way to cancel (Score:2)
My bank allows me to create virtual debit cards at will. I get a card number, expiry date, CVV number but no physical card. The virtual card is linked to a subaccount of my actual account and is limited to whatever funds I have moved to that subaccount.
I tend to use these for subscriptions. If anything is too much hard work to cancel, I simply delete the virtual card that feeds it. This is almost no effort and has instant effect.
I use similar method for regulating spam. When a company asks me for an email
As someone who HAS canceled... (Score:3)
I recommend it! Life after canceling Prime is still great! I haven't missed it and won't go back.
Most orders even arrive in the same amount of time, for free (as long as they're over $35). I can live with that restriction.
So if there's anybody out there who's a little timid, I'd say, jump on out, the water's fine!
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And if you still need an item quicker you can trivially find someone drop shipping it on eBay through Amazon. The prices tends to be a couple dollars more, but they ship to you through their Prime membership. $2 increase in price vs $15 in shipping.
Patent for "One-click buy" (Score:1)
Well, Amazon patented and trademarked "One-click buy". Maybe somebody else patented "One-click unsubscribe" and doesn't want to sell them the license to use it :-)
It took me 5 seconds to find the link. (Score:1)
Anyone complaining about the difficulty of unsubscribing to Amazon Prime likely doesn't have the mental fortitude to make financial decisions in the first place and should not be allowed to make online purchases. It took me all of 5 seconds of searching to find the link.
Every SIngle Amazon Story (Score:2)