Posted on 01/20/2016 1:51:59 PM PST by Citizen Zed
Amazon upgrades customers to Amazon Prime and charges more than $100 for it without their permission or knowledge, a class claims in court.
Gregory Harris filed the suit Wednesday against Amazon.com, alleging unfair competition and violations of consumer law and the federal Electronic Transfer Act. The complaint in superior court is the Top Download for Courthouse News on Friday.
Harris claims Amazon charged him $107.91 for Prime without his permission. The flat annual fee for Amazon Prime includes free two-day shipping, video and music streaming, unlimited photo storage, and access to a Kindle lending library.
Harris says Amazon upgraded him after he visited the site in June 2015, and represented that "he would not be charged for membership and only the products that he purchased."
But after he entered his debit card information he noticed he had been charged for Prime, he says.
Harris says he canceled the membership, but that if he had not noticed the charge, Amazon "would have taken additional unauthorized, multiple, and recurring payments."
"Defendant's misrepresentations to plaintiff and others similarly situated caused them to use defendant's services, which plaintiff and others similarly situated would not have used absent these misrepresentations by defendant and its employees. In so doing, defendant has violated California consumer protection statutes," the 16-page complaint states.
Amazon said late last year that more than 3 million customers had signed up for Prime membership in the third week of December. The Seattle-based company said there are "tens of millions" of Prime members worldwide.
Harris seeks class certification, "corrective advertising," restitution, actual, punitive and statutory damages, and attorneys' fees and costs.
He is represented by Beverly Hills attorney Todd Friedman.
Amazon spokeswoman Ana Rigby said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
I had the same thing happen. Called customer service and they cancelled it.
I never saw any fine print. Same thing happened to me. I saw a monthly fee, not an annual fee.
Amazon just announced they are hiring 1200 new full time employees for their Kent, Washington facility.
If you use Amazon enough, it will pay for itself with free shipping fees for most things. And you get the free streaming prime video library as well.
Happened to me, stopped buying from Amazon just because of it.
Exactly. No 'free trials' which lead to automatic payments.
Free shipping? The price almost alway has mark-up in it to include the cost of shipping, you may not see it but you are paying for shipping. Many items offered on Amazon prime have other third party sellers selling for less than Prime prices.
Well I understand why you wouldn’t want to be charged for something you weren’t aware of signing up for.
But let me say this about Prime. Amazon probably rues the day I signed up for Prime. I have MS, shopping at stores is hard, so Amazon is my store, for most things.
I always comparison shop with Walmart (their shipping is free if order is over $50...but not 2 day delivery) and other stores, Amazon usually beats their price. Do I miss
shopping in a store, heck no. Even before the MS, shopping was not on my “fun” list of things.
No need for a shopping list...if I notice we need something, I just order it on Amazon, hopefully with Prime, and then forget it.
I, personally, don’t see how they can afford the Prime memberships (hopefully everyone doesn’t use it as often as I do.)
I work for an online retailer, and I know what shipping rates are for UPS/FedEx, etc. I’ll just say they lose a lot of money on me during the course of a year.
And as long as I’m touting Prime...their Prime Music is a great new addition. We already were using Prime Videos, but I searched Amazon for a CD I was going to download and was informed it was free with Prime Music...so I listened to it free.
Me too. Noticed a charge, investigated, and somehow I’d been signed up for “prime”.
I asked how it happened and they simply could not tell me (or wouldn’t). Based in their inability to tell me how it happened, I started making noise about a data breach at Amazon.
I got an immediate refund at that point.
This happened to me TWICE in the past month!!
FYI. If you have an email address that ends in*.edu you get Prime for $50.
They just hit me for $107.17. It was NOT authorized. They’re THIEVES, flat and simple.
You should check this out:
http://amazonprimelawsuit.blogspot.com/
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