You just have to pay attention.
They got me once, but I had no problem canceling it right away.
Posted on 06/22/2023 7:29:51 PM PDT by anthropocene_x
Federal regulators have sued Amazon, alleging the company for years "tricked" people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel.
The Federal Trade Commission, in a legal complaint filed on Wednesday, says Amazon illegally used "manipulative, coercive, or deceptive" designs to enroll shoppers into auto-renewing Prime subscriptions. Regulators also accuse Amazon of purposefully building a convoluted, multi-step cancellation process to discourage people from quitting.
"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.
The Prime membership costs $139 a year or $14.99 a month, with perks including access to faster two-day shipping and video streaming. Prime subscribers tend to spend more on Amazon than other shoppers. According to the FTC, Prime membership fees account for $25 billion of the company's annual revenue.
Amazon recently agreed to pay more than $30 million in fines to settle FTC's allegations of privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring.
In Wednesday's lawsuit, the FTC says Amazon's website used so-called dark patterns, or "manipulative design elements that trick users into making decisions they would not otherwise have made."
For example, the FTC describes the platform bombarding people with prominent options to sign up for Prime, while options to shop without Prime were harder to spot. In some cases, a button to complete the purchase did not clearly say that it would also enroll the shopper in Prime.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
You just have to pay attention.
They got me once, but I had no problem canceling it right away.
Good
Amazon does 2 things I hate:
1) Jacks up prices in your cart within a day or two
2) ALWAYS tries to trick you into Prime
Otherwise it’s been pretty good I must admit
(well.... except for Leftism)
I don’t follow this whole claim. I’ve been a very happy Prime member since it first came out. Free shipping, Prime movies, etc. If you regularly buy on Amazon, it is a no brainer to subscribe. (There are other complaints about Amazon, like using USPS to deliver, usually late.)
Why don’t you have Prime?
Because Amazon is evil and I only use it when I absolutely have to.
And when UI do I make sure I order at least $25 to get free shipping.
Hmmm, I’ve got prime but the last thing I ordered (today) had a shipping charge. Prime has consistently become a worse deal over years to me.
Canceling in October.
Not usually in a hurry enough to pay the charge
They give me a free 30 days every now and then
I’ve got an order for car 🚗 parts in now
Scheduled for Monday but they’re now bringing it Saturday supposedly
I just always spend $25 so they give me free shipping
Spend at least $25 you get free shipping usually in 3-4 days
Two day shipping that can take weeks and they are ok with that
They should probably look in to that too.
Amazon’s weak link is delivery. Solve that and you can have every last bit of my business. Between the horrible contracted delivery companies, porch pirates, and wrecked or damaged goods, it’s not fixable.
I have already placed 30 orders this month for myself and my family. The only time I have some thing that comes in late, and I dread it, is when they redirected to be delivered by the US Postal Service. Those packages never show up time, but otherwise, the rest is very timely.
Even my bank was unable to help me cancel prime,we ended up needing to cancel our debit card.It was the only way to stop the billing
What happened? Did Bezos fail to make his usual contribution to the Democratic party?
The occasional unique one time purchase not so much. Still worth the effort.
Prices in my cart go down just as much as they go up. Sometimes substantially.
When I finally quit my local newspaper, they make it as hard as possible to quit and the customer service rep seemed to want to argue with me before finally relenting. My opinion is that you should be able to quit the same way you joined. If you do it online you should be able to leave online.
My biggest problem with Amazon is not being able to turn off the (@*@#(*@# one-click purchase. I have bought a few Kindle books and had to get a refund with one little clumsy twitch on my phone. Give me an option for traditional purchase of putting into the cart and then buying as a separate action. You can turn off one-click on everything except Kindle ebooks.
Amazon is designed to not want to hear from you. So I don't. I no longer get so angry. American Express does the heavy hand.
We have been happy with Amazon’s customer service. It has been excellent. Just ordered a treadmill and got it in two days and in great condition. Was worried about that from the people who said to beware. We used our free Prime trial to order the treadmill. Sent UPS.
Yes, that’s my observation as well: as many downs as ups. In fact I’ll put future or likely purchases in my cart just to see how the prices change from day to day. Up or down, the shifts are usually a few cents. It’s a mystery.
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