FTC sues Amazon for 'tricking and trapping' people in Prime subscription

www.npr.org /2023/06/21/1183470389/ftc-sues-amazon-over-prime

"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..."

21 comments

The number of times I've clicked "no, I do not want Prime" or some variant thereof on Amazon is insane. At least early-one, the option for Prime was generally pre-checked.
I don't know about tricking people, but they definitely made it extremely obnoxious not to subscribe.

I've been a prime member since they offered it. It's gone up a bit since I started but they've also added more value to it. Prime video is nice as an "extra". Prime subs for twitch. Same day, overnight, 2 day shopping either for free or trivial cost. Their returns are fairly painless.
I have never even thought about cancelling it. Is it that hard?
I guess I've also never experienced being "tricked" into subscribing.
- If you aren’t subscribed literally every checkout has it checked “try prime for freee for 7 days and get free shipping”
  Eventually I messed up checking the “no I don’t want prime, give me regular shipping rates” and resubscribed.
- I cancelled mine and in my experience wasnt hard i think just going to account, pressing "prime membership" then cancel then it was like "are u sure you wanna cancel :(" then press cancel again then done and get an email BUT
  I think this article is about the U.S.A. so the experience might be different there
  I cancelled recently (i had a free trial to get something quickly and then cancel it) so maybe whatever they were doing to make it difficult already stopped by then
  Also I agree with someone who says they really really try to get you to get it. Now Amazon also keeps trying to get me to get a business account?
- you haven't experienced it because you were already subscribed.

I’m curious how difficult it is to cancel a Prime membership nowadays. I’ve canceled twice in the past, and as I recall it was just a matter of clicking an easy to find link. Has the process changed?
- It leads you through 3-4 different pages, hides the "Yes, cancel" button in different areas, and gives a lot of "Keep subscription" buttons with different wording.
  It's not difficult, but at multiple steps you think you're done but your not. I had an issue a month or so back where I thought I canceled, until I saw a prime charge on my account. I imagine for someone not used to some of the tactics it's pretty bad.
  
  Thanks, that’s really interesting. The cancellation process used to be much more straightforward. I wonder when they changed it.

Finally, Lina Khan has been a breath of fresh air, here's hoping she's there for a long time. she's got quite the backlog to address.

I always had the cancel window up as I subscribed to my free useless prime garbage. Subscribe then instantly cancel. Few Google searches pointed to directly where to cancel, your average human can't seem to google things. It's really not hard.
- It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is. It should be just as easy to cancel as it is to subscribe. It should be the same amount of steps, or less.
  
  It was 2 clicks for me to get to the can el page from a simple Google search.
- What an obtuse statement you've made, How Many People Use Google – 2023
  
  I googled 'how to cancel Prime's
  First link - https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GTJQ7QZY7QL2HK4Y
  End membership is also the first button on that link....
  There is no tricking here for cancelling prime..only people who can't use basic search terms.

21 comments