"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…"

  • cybersandwich@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • May@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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

      1. I think this article is about the U.S.A. so the experience might be different there

      2. 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?

  • tal@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • blivet@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • Squirrel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • blivet@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Thanks, that’s really interesting. The cancellation process used to be much more straightforward. I wonder when they changed it.

  • mohKohn@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.