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I canceled in January. It takes several clicks through buttons and sometimes small links. It alternates the styles with negative or positive wording sentences,

• Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  This is where RBI's (central bank of India) e-mandate regulations are very useful, Now Amazon has to route the subscription (recurring-payments) to the issuer (bank) with explicit permission from the subscriber which are authenticated using MFA, Deductions for subscription are informed 24 hours prior by bank SMS with a cancellation link for the e-mandate. For amount > INR 5000 MFA is required for every subscription transaction. So if I want to cancel the payment to Amazon Prime subscription, All I have to do is click the link from the bank's SMS. The only drawback for now is that not all international services adhere to this e-mandate regulations and so automatic subscription payments is impossible for such services (One time payment would still work).
• dageshi 5y ago
  Yeah, I cancelled a month ago, I was impressed, I think if my parents had tried to cancel they'd have found it nearly impossible.
  • y-c-o-m-b 5y ago
    I also cancelled a month ago. It doesn't stop there though. I've ordered stuff from Amazon since then and every order still prompts me to use Prime or select it for the fastest shipping. Interestingly I'm still getting my packages on average of 2 days without Prime. The only downside is having to spend the $25 minimum for the free shipping, but I tend to buy things that exceed that price anyway.
    • loeg 5y ago
      > Interestingly I'm still getting my packages on average of 2 days without Prime. Yeah, the way they make Prime work and affordable for them is to locate warehouses everywhere, close to recipients. People have been observing 2-day non-Prime delivery times for years now. They'll also usually offer you a month-long free Prime trial once a year and you can do a batch of holiday shopping or whatever.
    • jimmaswell 5y ago
      I spend enough on Amazon that it's still worth the extra percentage cash back on the Amazon card, but I'm not sure how much longer if these price increases keep up.
      • anotherman554 5y ago
        You have to be spending 7,000 a year to break even on prime, because the Chase Amazon card gives 3% cash back if you don't have Prime.
        • jimmaswell 5y ago
          Looks like I came very close in 2021. Difference is worth it for small order delivery and the occasional use of Prime Video then.
    • dont__panic 5y ago
      Likewise, cancelled in Feb because I'd like to buy from smaller merchants directly when possible. I can buy toilet paper from Amazon still and get free shipping, so... no loss, really? Amazon was already nagging me to bundle separate shipments together on "prime days", so it literally makes no difference to me. The dark patterns on cancelling my subscription were so disgustingly manipulative that it made it really easy to be happy with my decision to leave, though. I admit to feeling a tinge of regret when I quit a service that politely allows me to cancel because that actually gives me some respect for the service. With Amazon, Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram, they try SO hard to make it impossible to leave that it cemented the decision completely in my mind and eroded the last bit of respect I had for those platforms.
• ChildOfChaos 5y ago
  Yeah the text is confusing too when you have the free trial, it makes it sound like your benefits stop immediately, making you want to wait till the last minute to cancel, when you can cancel straight away and keep for thirty days. As a non prime member they make it hard to buy things too, with extra screens trying to offer you another trial for a week for 99p and always defaulting to offering that and paid delivery. For me, Prime is way too expensive, i don't want there crappy video streaming service.
  • carlmr 5y ago
    I wish they had prime delivery without the video for the old price. I really don't care about that.
    • r00fus 5y ago
      I kind of wish the inverse - they have some really good shows on Prime video, but I don't buy much anymore on Amazon (local stores have really stepped up the same-day delivery game).
    • Frost1x 5y ago
      Don't worry a competitor will quickly swoop into the market and offer such an alternative, forcing Amazon to decouple these services, improve their video streaming or reduce bundled costs. They are in no way in a monoplistic type situation with such high barriers to entry that competition doesnt regulate them. /sarcasm
      • r00fus 5y ago
        Reading that resulted in a rollercoaster of emotions. Yeah, government action will be needed for above to happen, but Bezos already seems to have bought them off...
      • silisili 5y ago
        Walmart will deliver to your door today, for free, or send things two day shipping. No video service that I'm aware of, cost is 98/yr. Target, Home Depot, and Costco are currently upping their delivery game as well. Amazon is huge, no doubting that, but has nothing close to a monopoly for online shopping. Competitors have really amped up in the last year or two.
• duskwuff 5y ago
  "Are you sure you want to cancel?" [YES] [NO] "Wouldn't you rather enjoy the many benefits Prime offers you?" [YES] [NO] "Are you sure you won't miss those benefits?" [YES] [NO]
  • nazgulsenpai 5y ago
    "Special offer: 3 Months for 75% Off!" [CONTINUE] [cancel anyway]
    • HeckFeck 5y ago
      [Cancel Screen] Are you sure you wish to leave Prime? You may be consigning your soul to eternal perdition! [Return to Bezos the Blessed] [No, I wish to spend hereafter in the lake of fire]
      • jrootabega 5y ago
        You are eligible for Pascal's Discount!
      • ineedasername 5y ago
        [Lake of Fire Screen] We understand, maybe you aren't spiritual. That's okay! We value your business regardless. But you should consider that Jeff Bezos is a powerful billionaire that may one day bring about the Singularity and become Roko's Basilisk. We're not fucking around here, and we're upping the stakes: Some gods may be merciful, but Roko Bezos is not one of them [Spend no money outside the Amazon ecosystem ever again] [Consign an endless number of sentient emulated versions of yourself to an emulated lake of fire]
  • jrootabega 5y ago
    "If we asked your twin, who always lies, what you would say if we asked if you really wanted to cancel your subscription, what would he say?" "Do you often sing or whistle just for fun?"
    • 5y ago
• b112 5y ago
  This is the sort of thing which results in chargebacks, after an end user is positive they canceled. Even for Amazon, too many of these can cause issues.
• HeckFeck 5y ago
  It is a linguistic maze. The readership here is literate and even we endure mental strain navigating this viper's nest. I've went to buy a paperback and found myself signed up with Prime with just one wayward click, and I was being very cautious. Now imagine how it is for those less familiar with letters. How many folks only notice they've a Prime subscription when the montly bank statement arrives? It's a shame. I used to think so highly of Amazon.
  • maicro 5y ago
    Yeah, my Grandma (chemo-brain-fog-addled at the time, now just terminal-cancer-brain-fog-addled...) accidentally signed up for Prime while buying a Secret Santa gift, had to help fix that (she didn't even know that she had an Amazon account, much less that she had a monthly Prime subscription).
    • Nexxxeh 5y ago
      Slightly off-topic, but I'm sorry for your situation. I'm glad your grandma has you to help.
  • jjoonathan 5y ago
    We need to fix this. We should take this completely out of companies' hands. The incentives are too perverse and too prevalent for anything good to come out of playing dark pattern whack-a-mole through legislation or, worse, "promoting dark pattern awareness" or some other brand of blame-dodging hogwash. Companies are stealing money and getting away with it. We have the technology to stop them. We should stop them. I suspect the easiest way to do it would be to give credit card company cancellation buttons legal bite: unless someone signs physical papers and does credit checks (e.g. for housing and utilities), nonpayment must be respected as a request to cancel and not creatively misinterpreted as an invitation to extend credit, charge fees, and accumulate interest.
    • quinnjh 5y ago
      What is the technology to stop them?
• ecf 5y ago
  A bonus is that they use language which leads you to believe your services will immediately end, even if you’ve purchased a year-long subscription and have months left. It wasn’t until the second or third panel where I found a statement (in the smallest text size possible) that told me services would stay active until previously-billed time ran out.
• gzer0 5y ago
  In light of all of these dark patterns, I have gone a different route. I use burner virtual cards, through privacy.com. This way, I can terminate my card instead of having to deal with the nonsense that cancellation has become. This might have some repercussions, such as account terminations, however, I only use this method on websites that I have disposable accounts with. It is well worth my time to keep using virtual cards for as long as these dark patterns exist.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • beeboop 5y ago
    The problem is that the fine print on Amazon Prime says they'll use any card you have on file to continue it if the one you initially selected doesn't work.
• spike021 5y ago
  I know someone who recently left one of Amazon's services {Video, Games, Music, etc.} and they basically had a free membership for dogfooding. When they left Amazon, the free membership was automatically set to renew on the monthly date for the full price of $20 or whatever it was. i.e. they'd been charged 0.00/mo on X date every month while working for that org and then they checked after quitting and noticed it was set to auto-renew on the next date for the full price. They didn't get any kind of notification about it beforehand. Canceling that was apparently the same kind of affair as this. I guess part of it comes down to their ex-org's bug surrounding how a dogfooding prod subscription is granted/revoked but in the end they were treated just like a real customer.
• qbasic_forever 5y ago
  I canceled around December and it was shockingly easy. Just a few clicks and it was done. It even gave me a prorated refund for nearly the full amount of the cost of renewal (I forgot to turn off autorenew and it had been a couple weeks after the renewal). It was actually the easiest cancellation experience I've ever had. I kind of wonder if they have an algorithm to check your purchase history and if you've given Amazon enough profit over the years (which I certainly have with over 23 years of purchases and at least 15 years of prime) then it just makes the cancellation a piece of cake.
  • green-eclipse 5y ago
    Maybe different countries have different laws or regulations on this sort of thing? I don't know.
  • ksala_ 5y ago
    I think people just have a different definition of hard. I cancelled my Prime membership several times in the past (not using it too much, changing countries etc) and it’s definitely not a single button - the process is clearly done to have some attrition and make you reconsider cancelling it. But you just have to click your way past 2-3 screens worth of reminders of how amazing your subscription is and after that you’re done. Personally I would not call it hard (hard for me would be one of those services where I have to ring support to cancel!) but it could be easier. I was definitely amazed by the refund part, that was nice and something I didn’t expect. Iirc the refund is also based on your actual usage of prime features, not just how much longer your subscription is going to last, which is extremely consumer-friendly.
• jjeaff 5y ago
  I just cancelled Audible (an Amazon property) and the process was similarly confusing. In fact, it seemed to not even allow me to cancel unless I used my credits first. So I had to go purchase a book with my final credits and then come back to the cancellation page. Then after clicking through some non-obvious buttons to cancel, it gave me one last button that I almost clicked because they made it seem like it was a confirmation button. But it was actually a button meant to undo my cancellation. Very dark pattern.