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  • Why would it be two buttons on the right, and what behavior would you expect if “Cancel Anytime” was a button?

    The goal of this is to get you to sign up for Prime, so there’s nothing yet to cancel.

    This is “annoying” design in the sense that getting an upsell is annoying, but I don’t really see it as malicious/asshole.

    • I would still say it's an asshole design. They are trying to copy a well established internet Design Trend where a 'Not Now' sort of a button is slightly greyed out near the advertisement. I would assume the next trick would be to sneakily add the prime fees in the total and some unsuspecting user would fall for it. Not to mention, the whole fiasco of how hard Amazon made it to cancel the prime subscription. Fuck these companies.

      • Nah, next is, you must watch three one minute ads and answer 10 questions about the content of the ads correctly to continue without prime and there will be a captcha displayed under the questions, which will be timed out after question 10 and you will have to start over from video one to get another try. However, when the server notices your IP already got the ad once, it will throttle the bandwidth, so the video buffers every 3 seconds. When you finally made it to the checkout, some items became unavailable or slightly more expensive and you have to go back to the basket to update it.

      • It’s not possible to know from this screenshot alone if “Cancel Anytime” is a clickable target or if it’s just text, but when taking a quick glance at least to my eyes the options seem pretty clearly delineated.

        Amazon sucks and they are plenty predatory, I’m just saying this is a pretty mild example of hostile UI if at all.

    • It's absolutely, 100% intentionally misleading. They even recognize that internally and are currently being sued for just that.

      In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the agency accused Amazon of using deceptive designs, known as “dark patterns,” to deceive consumers into enrolling in Prime, which provides subscribers with perks such as faster shipping for an fee of $139 annually, or $14.99 a month.

      The FTC said Amazon made it difficult for customers to purchase an item without also subscribing to Prime. In some cases, consumers were presented with a button to complete their transactions — which didn’t clearly state it would also enroll them in Prime.

      Getting out of a subscription was often too complicated, and Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would have made canceling easier, the complaint said.

      Internally, Amazon called the process “Iliad,” a reference to the ancient Greek poem about lengthy siege of Troy during the Trojan war.

      https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/06/21/amazon-prime-without-consent/

      • Don’t forget when they were automatically signing people with an Amazon Echo to Amazon Music. I had to cancel that twice and neither time was there ever a comment or email stating I was enrolled.

      • The examples in the FTC complaint are all well and good, and as I already said, Amazon sucks and their predatory practices are well-known, but this specific example, the one we’re talking about on this post, is pretty pedestrian.

        If the OP were to post the 7-step process it takes to cancel a prime membership, that would be firmly and wholly in asshole design territory, I know, I’ve had to go through it myself. But just posting a screenshot of a mild upsell that has a clear set of binary options on opposite sides of the screen and saying “Amazon bad” doesn’t really contribute much - everyone knows Amazon sucks, and there are plenty of examples of them sucking, this just really isn’t a very good one.

    • Common UI has "yes" and "no" (or whatever terms) next to each other, often in different colors. This is mimicing it so you think it's two separate buttons when it's one button for "yes".

      And has "cancel ..." like you'd expect on a cancel button. If you stop reading or are skimming (we all do it) you think it's the cancel button. This is very likely a deliberate choice.

      Different color, common placement, the word "cancel ...", you go on autopilot, and now you're subscribed! And good luck trying to cancel.

      • And has "cancel ..." like you'd expect on a cancel button. If you stop reading or are skimming (we all do it) you think it's the cancel button. This is very likely a deliberate choice.

        But there’s nothing to cancel here, so in this context there’s no basis for assumption that there would be a cancel button - cancel what? A subscription you don’t yet have? It’s not a logical conclusion.

        Sure, we all skim sometimes, but this isn’t a 40 page terms of use document. There are less than 100 words in this entire screenshot. It takes less than 30 seconds to read everything on this page and make an informed decision.

    • On a quick inspection the left barely looks like it’s worth reading and it’s easy to miss the link, so you’re led to thinking there’s a yes and a no button on the right. Click the no button and you’ve subscribed to Prime.

      Obviously if you stop and actually look at everything you’ll realise what’s up. But this relies on you rushing and being misled in to signing up, which clearly works for them.

      • I see your point, and of course each user’s interpretation is going to be different.

        But I think you made another good point in your second paragraph - the effectiveness of these is dependent on user ignorance.

        I’m not saying by any means that it’s the user’s fault if they fall prey to hostile UI, but there is some responsibility on the user to actually read what they’re clicking before they click, in the sense that you can protect yourself from a lot of scenarios like this just by taking a moment and reading.

        I understand that’s easier said than done, trying to help my parents with technical support items is infuriating to watch them click “ok” on a dialog box and then ask you afterwards what it said - like, there’s an easy solution: read, then click. Not the other way around.

  • I downloaded the Amazon app a while back. The first message that popped up with a "join prime" screen. I very nearly tapped the join button because it was the only button on the screen and I wasn't paying attention - I had to scroll to find the "maybe later" button. They seem to love their hostile UI.

  • Unfortunately this is a nightmare to regulate. Whatever regulation a government will come up with, amazon (and all other big tech) will do everything to maliciously comply.

    Look at the french regulation on book prices. The french "directorate for competition, consumers, fraud punishment" told amazon that they could not sell books with free shipping. Books have regulated price in France to garantee equal access to everyone everywhere. The DGCCRF claimed that offering free shipping de facto lowered the price of the books and was unfair to small local book shops. The next day, amazon introduced €0.01 shipping for books...

    I'm all for regulating these assholes to ensure fair competition. But regulating them is not as simple as some people make it sound like. I would hate to be a lawmaker.

81 comments