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Europeans will be able to unsubscribe from Prime with two clicks

throwaway294566 4y ago
Now unbundle delivery from movies/series/stuff and I'll be a member again.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  I'm honestly surprised they kept going with this for so long. I expected them to do this for two or three years tops, but it seems to work out I guess? I signed up for Amazon student after I finished college (still had access to a mail account and didn't know about the program before, or maybe it didn't exist yet) so I got prime for 25€ for a couple years. I watched one show on prime and never used it for music. Only really wanted the free and faster shipping. As soon as student ended I unsubscribed as it wasn't worth 45€ to me.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I think it's because if unbundled it would collectively cost a lot more, and nobody actually uses everything (or even more than one, maybe two) much anyway, so it's sort of a costless value-add to bundle them. 'Huh yeah maybe I'll use that occasionally.' I'm sure they'll have run focus groups or whatever with proposed unbundled pricing to see which services people would pay for and how it stacks up.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    There's huge value to them in being the only people who know how many people subscribe for the video and how many people subscribe for the shipping. In every vertical they can negotiate using the full Prime subscriber numbers, not the "number of people who have ever played a single Prime Video show".
- orra 4y ago
  It feels incredibly anticompetitive they were able to bundle Prime Video with Prime Delivery. Amazon have significant market power in online commerce, and for them to use that muscle into online video is ridiculous.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    It’s almost exactly like when Rockefeller managed to use strategic rail infrastructure to attack and intimidate oil competitors until the entire industry became monopolized and had to be dismantled. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      That's the conventional narrative. But if you read "Titan" by Chernow, it's substantially different. Rockefeller never had a monopoly. He was accused and convicted not of having a monopoly, but anti-competitive behavior. Also, during the long trial, his market share kept slipping, and he was unable to stop the slide. His competitors had never been vanquished, and had figured out how to compete with Standard Oil. https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303 https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/140... What's ironic about the book is Chernow reaches the standard conclusions that you wrote, but his actual text says the opposite. I suspect that Chernow's preconceived notions about Standard Oil were so strong he was not convinced by his own research and narrative of what actually happened.
      - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
        That’s super interesting. I’m not familiar with the book - but the point about the monopoly doesn’t surprise me. Things are never that simple. From a legal standpoint no one actually reaches a full monopoly unless it is a government instituted/regulated monopoly, no? Like, I mean monopoly as a pursued ideal and total victory state for a business, but not as an achievable goal. My point mostly related to Amazon - they’re really not a monopoly, but they’re definitely strategically pursuing a direction which left unrestrained would give them that monopoly. In this specific example it is Amazon using their AWS cloud infrastructure to bundle video streaming into Prime to then create a mix that strangles competitors. In the case of Standard Oil what I remember were strategic investments into directly unprofitable rail infrastructure and then SO using that to exert pressure on smaller oil competitors to force them to sell at a loss. I’m no expert but I think this is what makes anti-trust so difficult to prove reliably.
skrause 4y ago
In Germany it just became law three days ago that if company allows to sign up to any service online, they also have to offer an easy-to-find way that allows to cancel the service online. No more writing a letter, sending a fax or calling a phone to cancel a service or subscription that you signed up to online.
- rusticpenn 4y ago
  Damn, i should start canceling my tv contract…
- tchalla 4y ago
  Thanks. Can you post a link to the news?
  - dewey 4y ago
    https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-verbrauchervertraege-1829172 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-verbrauch...
    - loevborg 4y ago
      Also https://www.heise.de/news/Kuendigungsbutton-Vertraege-koennen-nun-per-Mausklick-beendet-werden-7159914.html https://www.heise.de/news/Kuendigungsbutton-Vertraege-koenne...
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  >No more writing a letter, sending a fax or calling a phone to cancel a service or subscription that you signed up to online. That's why I preferred Apple subscriptions to normal magazine subscriptions. Apple is a one click cancel. An old school subscription is writing a letter.
  - throwaway12245 4y ago
    Writing a letter would be pretty easy.
timeon 4y ago
Wish it was possible with The Times.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  The New York Times also has this issue, funnily enough.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I just let it lapse when my credit card number had to be changed.
    - glandium 4y ago
      Speaking about that... I was very surprised that when my card expired and I got a new one, which has the same number, a different expiry date, and a new security code on the back, all I had to give Amazon was the new expiry date, not the security code...
    - tzs 4y ago
      That doesn't always work. The major credit card companies have updater services which are support by most major payment processors which as long as the underlying account has not changed will provide merchants who have the card on-file notifications of card number changes and expiration date changes. Some issuing banks don't participate but most of the major issuers do. At the small place I work this is delightfully old fashioned. There's an HTTPS API we can use to submit cards we want to check. The submission format consists of one line per card, with each line being formatted as a bunch of space-padded fields. It would be right at home on a punched card being feed to some FORTRAN or COBOL code on an IBM 360. There's another API to get responses. We poll that once a day. Responses are in a similar punched card like format, containing one line for each card. The time for a given card's response to show up varies from one day to several. There is no "there will be no response" response. I think the big companies get a more modern interface. I've had a couple of occasions where I needed to have my current card cancelled and a new one issued, and almost as soon as I got off the phone with the bank I've gotten a notice on my phone that the old card in Apple Wallet has been updated.
the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
Fun fact, in Austria this was law for many years now. You can unsubscribe to almost any service on onlinekuendigen.at. To unsubscribe from prime you just fill this out: https://www.online-kuendigen.at/amazon-prime-mitgliedschaft https://www.online-kuendigen.at/amazon-prime-mitgliedschaft
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  I love their cookie banner at the bottom: "We don't use any spy-cookies so we don't have an obnoxious pop-up covering half the screen. Do you like that? [Yes] or [Yes]" That said, this seems to be a private initiative that simply helps you send letters/e-mails, not some official setup.
  - the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
    The website is operated by a private person. The law however is pretty clear that a company needs to accept a signed notice of termination in any form and a court ruled that accepting that email works and nobody actually needs to read that email, the SMTP receipt works. So what that website does is it collects email addresses for companies and support systems, provides a template and lets you sign with the Austrian digital signature (or just a scribble on the screen). Then it sends it for you. If they don't respond they follow up automatically and tell you how to automatically file a complaint with the regulator. I have been cancelling a lot of services this way and never had an issue.
    - nicbou 4y ago
      Germany has similar services. In my opinion, they're just a band-aid
      - the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
        The service doesn’t matter as much as the law and the enforcement. This does not require me to hope a company plays ball.
hkh28 4y ago
It's interesting that this is highlighted in a British paper, as this is due to EU regulations that the UK will soon not be bound by. And the British government has already announced that they are ready to "seize the benefits of Brexit" by cutting down on such business hostile regulations as privacy [0] and human rights [1]. I would guess that this change will be rolled back in the UK as soon as it becomes legal. [0]https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-laws-to-boost-british-business-protect-consumers-and-seize-the-benefits-of-brexit https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-laws-to-boost-br... [1]https://theconversation.com/why-uk-approach-to-replacing-the-human-rights-act-is-just-as-worrying-as-the-replacement-itself-185633 https://theconversation.com/why-uk-approach-to-replacing-the...
- logifail 4y ago
  > The Human Rights Act 1998 came into force just over 20 years ago in October 2000, vastly improving protections for human rights in common law, statute, EU and international law Q: For whom?
  - brtkdotse 4y ago
    For humans, it’s right there in the name /s
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    Human rights apply to all humans, but of course putting them in law mainly benefit the people who otherwise wouldn't have them respected. Anyone disadvantaged in society, in general.
  - lin83 4y ago
    People the British government don't like and who they have subjected to torture and extra-judicial killings, the biggest example being people in Northern Ireland opposing Union with Great Britain.
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      thats not the biggest example. the list is quite long and it wont even make the first page.
WalterBright 4y ago
I went to McDonald's the other day to buy a McBurger using their kiosk. I didn't count, but it seemed like it took 20 clicks to just by a burger, with screen after screen after screen. I'm sure McDonald's play-tested this a lot, but I'm baffled as to how they managed to converge on this monstrosity. It's also unclear which button to pick to pay. There's no "check out", "pay", "shopping cart", button.
- gruez 4y ago
  20 seems to be on the high side for me. I used the machines before, and based on what I remember it should be: 1. start 2. burgers section 3. scroll down to hamburger (if it already isn't there already) 4. choose the burger you want 5. no, I want just the burger 6. add to order 7. view order 8. pay 9. credit card maybe add a few more if there's more upsell screens near the end, but nowhere near 20.
  - xgkickt 4y ago
    I suspect there's a minimum time to order so that people are waiting to order rather than waiting for their food, so the kitchen doesn't get overrun.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      That doesn't make sense IMO. The only benefit it would have is smoothing out spikes, but I think you'd rather have people wait for food they've already paid for than turn around because the queue for even ordering is too long.
      - blendergeek 4y ago
        In a fast food establishment such as McDonald's customers are very sensitive to wait times. This may lead you to the conclusion that we then want to quickly rush all customers through ordering and then take as long as necessary to make the food. Unfortunately, customers hate waiting after ordering more than they hate waiting before ordering. If a customer walks in and sees either no line or a very short line to order, the customer will think, "oh it will be no more then five minutes, I'll be in and out". If there is actually a 45 minute wait after ordering, then yes you just scored on sale. However, the customer will now feel tricked, having been let down on the promise of quick; the customer is now late back from lunch and has a bad feeling as they leave. This does not convert to more future sales. Smoothing out the spikes is exactly what you want to be doing. The drive-thru has this built in. Customers come through in a queue and can easily see how long they will have to wait by counting cars. It makes a lot of sense to implement something similar with the self-serve kiosks. I work at a fast food establishment with self-serve kiosks. When we are understaffed (as we often are nowadays) and we are busy, we will turn off some of the kiosks rather than let orders build up. We would much rather lose a few customers today than lose these customers forever as they have to wait 45 minutes for their food because we rushed them through ordering without proper queue management.
dane-pgp 4y ago
> "By design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership." I'd almost respect them more if they said "Okay, you got us, we deliberately added as many complicated steps as possible to minimise the number of people who successfully cancelled". There needs to be a Freedom of Information Act which applies to large companies, requiring them to record all the decisions they make, the goals they set, and the metrics they use to achieve them. Of course most of the data will be commercially sensitive, but if a company refuses on those grounds, the requester should be able to appeal to an ombudsman who will check whether there is a public interest in disclosure, or whether the data needs to be sent to the relevant regulator for further investigation. Requesters would have to pay some fee for such an appeal (perhaps 100 x minimum hourly wage) which would be paid back double if the appeal was upheld. This could create the right sort of incentives for whistleblowers, and the appeal fee could be crowdfunded to make it more affordable.
- throwaways85989 4y ago
  It needs to be even more standardized. So far in fact, that it could be part of a API, that could be handled by software, so that a robot could cancel the contract for the user. User should be able to create and cancel contracts via automated negotiation.
  - thechao 4y ago
    I always thought that all govt processes — high to low — should have an API for filing paperwork, with a publically available "wirk queue" that anyone could query. The govt would be mandated to use its own APIs, and motion in the queue would require publically available information. It always ends up looking like a snazzier version of Brazil, in my head.
    - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
      I assume you're referring to how AWS got started?
- saagarjha 4y ago
wizofaus 4y ago
I've unsubscribed from Prime twice now, and both times the only reason it took so long is that I couldn't believe they didn't have a simple "suspend subscription" option and kept hunting around for it assuming I was just going blind... In both cases I fully expected to re-subscribe once life circumstances changed and/or a new season of a certain show was released. Surely it would be useful for Amazon to know the unsubscription was temporary...
- tzs 4y ago
  It could be worse. You've still got your Amazon account, right? Compare to Rackspace. To stop getting billed there you have to cancel your account. If I ever need some short term cloud resources my first stops would be places that I've already got cloud resources and places where I no longer currently have anything but still have an account. In other words, places where I already know something about how to use their offerings, and merely have to log in and start configuring. By making me delete my account Rackspace has guaranteed I'll only be looking at them when a project's hosting is going to be expensive that I need to check out all the major providers to find which one has the best deal. I'm not sure if Rackspace intended this behavior or if it was an accidental consequence of another change. It used to be that if you got rid of all your hosts and storage and other paid services your billing would go to $0/month. At some point they added a $5/month support fee, and that billed even if you weren't using any services. Cancelling the account then became the only way to stop getting billed. When I cancelled I got some sort of survey asking why I cancelled and I explained that it was to stop that $5/month fee, so it is possible that if that was just an unintended consequence of the new fee they've fixed it.
dewey 4y ago
There was a time where I unsubscribed from Prime and every single purchase flow then included the following screen where you had to confirm that you really don't want to have Amazon Prime and just buy it as a regular customer. Regulation in these areas is really very much needed. https://annoying.technology/posts/81a1c96e0cebfd64/ https://annoying.technology/posts/81a1c96e0cebfd64/
- pseudo0 4y ago
  They also passive-agressively set the default to a paid shipping option for non-Prime, so every order you have to manually pick the free shipping option. It's very obnoxious, especially combined with the multiple "sign up for Prime" pitch attempts.
iancmceachern 4y ago
They need this for the New York Times
tester756 4y ago
I feel like I read titles like >Europeans will be able to avoid X where X is some internet/tech/privacy related mess way too often. where are US lawmakers/bureaucracy? why things like seems to be forced mostly by EU lawmakers/bureaucracy?
- dsign 4y ago
  It is easier in Europe to have people-friendly politicians because companies can’t get away so often with buying them. It is both the laws and the culture. Case in point, Stefan Löfven, who was Sweden’s prime minister until a few months ago, traveled today in the same coach class airplane I used. I don’t know if he could have afforded/used something better, but politicians in private airplanes gift the press a field day. So democracy in some parts of Europe is a little bit more the business of the people than the business of the businesses.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  You have two parties, and they are the same in each state. Each country in Europe has three to five main parties plus a lot of minor parties. They are mostly independent and the ideological range is much wider. When is their own lifestyle what is in risk, politicians do care.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  The EU needs to prove they're doing something so people don't think about how much they're diluting the euro and stealing from the masses. If the resulting regulations makes it even harder for small businesses to keep up with all the red tape, entrenching big American businesses in their position - that's even better. The US government sucks as well in different ways, but nobody is seriously threatening to leave (especially because of all that money spent every year on the army).
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Mostly because you're uninformed https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1538011050636783616?s=20&t=vtC5UPANhBHzTsTuAHLlyw https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1538011050636783616?s=20&t=...
wronglyprepaid 4y ago
I'm in Europe, I can unsubscribe with 3-4 clicks, depending on how you count: 1. Click user icon in top right hand corner (I would not count this one) 2. Click "Account & Settings" 3. Click "End membership" 4. Click "End on {Month} {Day}, 2022" Two clicks will also be nice, but not sure there was a problem that needed fixing. Maybe it is worse in some parts of Europe than others, or maybe I get a different menu because I'm an immigrant to Europe and not a European. I have also done it many times before and the process was more or less the same, prime just simply does not have enough content to subscribe for more than one month at a time, so I always cancel immediately after subscribing.
- noAnswer 4y ago
  There are (where) a bunch of scummy companies (dating sites, magazine subscriptions, ISPs) that have (had) an easy onboarding process, but you needed an notarised letter written with your own blood, send to them only on at full moon to end the subscription. If we only now could get the cheaper mobile plans new customers get, that would be nice. I really hate to ask once a year "Can I get the new plan?" "No, ok I will cancel my plan." Only to wait for their call back where they give me the cheaper/upgraded plan.
- jquery 4y ago
  I’m in America and it’s six clicks but pretty straightforward nonetheless: 1. Click “account” 2. Click “Manage Prime Membership” 3. Click “Manage Membership” 4. In the drop down click “manage membership” (ok, this is a bit silly, but no misdirection so far) 5. Click “end membership” 6. Click “cancel my benefits” I could see an argument to be made that step 5 should be the last step. But it took me less than 20 seconds to figure out how to cancel my Prime membership even though I’ve never done it before. All that said, I also appreciate the argument by EU regulators that a subscription cancel flow should only be 2-3 clicks at the most.
baby 4y ago
There really need to be some consumer protection action in the US. This, dark patterns, and hidden fees are really insane.
- astrange 4y ago
  California has mandatory easy cancellation. You can change your address to there and usually get it - or pay with PayPal or iTunes.
amelius 4y ago
Amazon patented the one-click purchase, but now the EU strikes back with the two-click unsubscribe. They patented the wrong thing!
bamboozled 4y ago
But they won't because it's a freaking good service. Human rights atrocities aside, it's very convenient.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I've been a Prime member since 2005 and I guess will remain until I die. I think I average about one order per day, so I bow to my corporate overlords.
slater 4y ago
It's two clicks, but the second button you have to click will be bouncing around the screen like a 900mph DVD screensaver logo
Dylan16807 4y ago
What are the two clicks, and where do they start? It looks like it takes five or six clicks right now for me, and I'd only count one of those unreasonable. From the account page, I have to click Prime, click Manage to get a menu, click End Membership, then twice I have to click Cancel to confirm. If they combined it to one confirmation page I would say it's fine. But that's still four clicks, or five if you start on a random page.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
As I found out, it is impossible to unsubscribe from Prime if you are banned from Amazon.

Now unbundle delivery from movies/series/stuff and I'll be a member again.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
I'm honestly surprised they kept going with this for so long. I expected them to do this for two or three years tops, but it seems to work out I guess? I signed up for Amazon student after I finished college (still had access to a mail account and didn't know about the program before, or maybe it didn't exist yet) so I got prime for 25€ for a couple years. I watched one show on prime and never used it for music. Only really wanted the free and faster shipping. As soon as student ended I unsubscribed as it wasn't worth 45€ to me.
- OJFord 4y ago
  I think it's because if unbundled it would collectively cost a lot more, and nobody actually uses everything (or even more than one, maybe two) much anyway, so it's sort of a costless value-add to bundle them. 'Huh yeah maybe I'll use that occasionally.' I'm sure they'll have run focus groups or whatever with proposed unbundled pricing to see which services people would pay for and how it stacks up.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  There's huge value to them in being the only people who know how many people subscribe for the video and how many people subscribe for the shipping. In every vertical they can negotiate using the full Prime subscriber numbers, not the "number of people who have ever played a single Prime Video show".
orra 4y ago
It feels incredibly anticompetitive they were able to bundle Prime Video with Prime Delivery. Amazon have significant market power in online commerce, and for them to use that muscle into online video is ridiculous.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  It’s almost exactly like when Rockefeller managed to use strategic rail infrastructure to attack and intimidate oil competitors until the entire industry became monopolized and had to be dismantled. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    That's the conventional narrative. But if you read "Titan" by Chernow, it's substantially different. Rockefeller never had a monopoly. He was accused and convicted not of having a monopoly, but anti-competitive behavior. Also, during the long trial, his market share kept slipping, and he was unable to stop the slide. His competitors had never been vanquished, and had figured out how to compete with Standard Oil. https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303 https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/140... What's ironic about the book is Chernow reaches the standard conclusions that you wrote, but his actual text says the opposite. I suspect that Chernow's preconceived notions about Standard Oil were so strong he was not convinced by his own research and narrative of what actually happened.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
      That’s super interesting. I’m not familiar with the book - but the point about the monopoly doesn’t surprise me. Things are never that simple. From a legal standpoint no one actually reaches a full monopoly unless it is a government instituted/regulated monopoly, no? Like, I mean monopoly as a pursued ideal and total victory state for a business, but not as an achievable goal. My point mostly related to Amazon - they’re really not a monopoly, but they’re definitely strategically pursuing a direction which left unrestrained would give them that monopoly. In this specific example it is Amazon using their AWS cloud infrastructure to bundle video streaming into Prime to then create a mix that strangles competitors. In the case of Standard Oil what I remember were strategic investments into directly unprofitable rail infrastructure and then SO using that to exert pressure on smaller oil competitors to force them to sell at a loss. I’m no expert but I think this is what makes anti-trust so difficult to prove reliably.

In Germany it just became law three days ago that if company allows to sign up to any service online, they also have to offer an easy-to-find way that allows to cancel the service online. No more writing a letter, sending a fax or calling a phone to cancel a service or subscription that you signed up to online.

rusticpenn 4y ago
Damn, i should start canceling my tv contract…
tchalla 4y ago
Thanks. Can you post a link to the news?
- dewey 4y ago
  https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-verbrauchervertraege-1829172 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-verbrauch...
  - loevborg 4y ago
    Also https://www.heise.de/news/Kuendigungsbutton-Vertraege-koennen-nun-per-Mausklick-beendet-werden-7159914.html https://www.heise.de/news/Kuendigungsbutton-Vertraege-koenne...
kybernetyk 4y ago
>No more writing a letter, sending a fax or calling a phone to cancel a service or subscription that you signed up to online. That's why I preferred Apple subscriptions to normal magazine subscriptions. Apple is a one click cancel. An old school subscription is writing a letter.
- throwaway12245 4y ago
  Writing a letter would be pretty easy.

timeon 4y ago

Wish it was possible with The Times.

bobthepanda 4y ago
The New York Times also has this issue, funnily enough.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I just let it lapse when my credit card number had to be changed.
  - glandium 4y ago
    Speaking about that... I was very surprised that when my card expired and I got a new one, which has the same number, a different expiry date, and a new security code on the back, all I had to give Amazon was the new expiry date, not the security code...
  - tzs 4y ago
    That doesn't always work. The major credit card companies have updater services which are support by most major payment processors which as long as the underlying account has not changed will provide merchants who have the card on-file notifications of card number changes and expiration date changes. Some issuing banks don't participate but most of the major issuers do. At the small place I work this is delightfully old fashioned. There's an HTTPS API we can use to submit cards we want to check. The submission format consists of one line per card, with each line being formatted as a bunch of space-padded fields. It would be right at home on a punched card being feed to some FORTRAN or COBOL code on an IBM 360. There's another API to get responses. We poll that once a day. Responses are in a similar punched card like format, containing one line for each card. The time for a given card's response to show up varies from one day to several. There is no "there will be no response" response. I think the big companies get a more modern interface. I've had a couple of occasions where I needed to have my current card cancelled and a new one issued, and almost as soon as I got off the phone with the bank I've gotten a notice on my phone that the old card in Apple Wallet has been updated.

the_mitsuhiko 4y ago

Fun fact, in Austria this was law for many years now. You can unsubscribe to almost any service on onlinekuendigen.at. To unsubscribe from prime you just fill this out: https://www.online-kuendigen.at/amazon-prime-mitgliedschaft https://www.online-kuendigen.at/amazon-prime-mitgliedschaft

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
I love their cookie banner at the bottom: "We don't use any spy-cookies so we don't have an obnoxious pop-up covering half the screen. Do you like that? [Yes] or [Yes]" That said, this seems to be a private initiative that simply helps you send letters/e-mails, not some official setup.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  The website is operated by a private person. The law however is pretty clear that a company needs to accept a signed notice of termination in any form and a court ruled that accepting that email works and nobody actually needs to read that email, the SMTP receipt works. So what that website does is it collects email addresses for companies and support systems, provides a template and lets you sign with the Austrian digital signature (or just a scribble on the screen). Then it sends it for you. If they don't respond they follow up automatically and tell you how to automatically file a complaint with the regulator. I have been cancelling a lot of services this way and never had an issue.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    Germany has similar services. In my opinion, they're just a band-aid
    - the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
      The service doesn’t matter as much as the law and the enforcement. This does not require me to hope a company plays ball.

hkh28 4y ago

It's interesting that this is highlighted in a British paper, as this is due to EU regulations that the UK will soon not be bound by. And the British government has already announced that they are ready to "seize the benefits of Brexit" by cutting down on such business hostile regulations as privacy [0] and human rights [1]. I would guess that this change will be rolled back in the UK as soon as it becomes legal. [0]https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-laws-to-boost-british-business-protect-consumers-and-seize-the-benefits-of-brexit https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-laws-to-boost-br... [1]https://theconversation.com/why-uk-approach-to-replacing-the-human-rights-act-is-just-as-worrying-as-the-replacement-itself-185633 https://theconversation.com/why-uk-approach-to-replacing-the...

logifail 4y ago
> The Human Rights Act 1998 came into force just over 20 years ago in October 2000, vastly improving protections for human rights in common law, statute, EU and international law Q: For whom?
- brtkdotse 4y ago
  For humans, it’s right there in the name /s
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  Human rights apply to all humans, but of course putting them in law mainly benefit the people who otherwise wouldn't have them respected. Anyone disadvantaged in society, in general.
- lin83 4y ago
  People the British government don't like and who they have subjected to torture and extra-judicial killings, the biggest example being people in Northern Ireland opposing Union with Great Britain.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    thats not the biggest example. the list is quite long and it wont even make the first page.

WalterBright 4y ago

I went to McDonald's the other day to buy a McBurger using their kiosk. I didn't count, but it seemed like it took 20 clicks to just by a burger, with screen after screen after screen. I'm sure McDonald's play-tested this a lot, but I'm baffled as to how they managed to converge on this monstrosity. It's also unclear which button to pick to pay. There's no "check out", "pay", "shopping cart", button.

gruez 4y ago
20 seems to be on the high side for me. I used the machines before, and based on what I remember it should be: 1. start 2. burgers section 3. scroll down to hamburger (if it already isn't there already) 4. choose the burger you want 5. no, I want just the burger 6. add to order 7. view order 8. pay 9. credit card maybe add a few more if there's more upsell screens near the end, but nowhere near 20.
- xgkickt 4y ago
  I suspect there's a minimum time to order so that people are waiting to order rather than waiting for their food, so the kitchen doesn't get overrun.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    That doesn't make sense IMO. The only benefit it would have is smoothing out spikes, but I think you'd rather have people wait for food they've already paid for than turn around because the queue for even ordering is too long.
    - blendergeek 4y ago
      In a fast food establishment such as McDonald's customers are very sensitive to wait times. This may lead you to the conclusion that we then want to quickly rush all customers through ordering and then take as long as necessary to make the food. Unfortunately, customers hate waiting after ordering more than they hate waiting before ordering. If a customer walks in and sees either no line or a very short line to order, the customer will think, "oh it will be no more then five minutes, I'll be in and out". If there is actually a 45 minute wait after ordering, then yes you just scored on sale. However, the customer will now feel tricked, having been let down on the promise of quick; the customer is now late back from lunch and has a bad feeling as they leave. This does not convert to more future sales. Smoothing out the spikes is exactly what you want to be doing. The drive-thru has this built in. Customers come through in a queue and can easily see how long they will have to wait by counting cars. It makes a lot of sense to implement something similar with the self-serve kiosks. I work at a fast food establishment with self-serve kiosks. When we are understaffed (as we often are nowadays) and we are busy, we will turn off some of the kiosks rather than let orders build up. We would much rather lose a few customers today than lose these customers forever as they have to wait 45 minutes for their food because we rushed them through ordering without proper queue management.

dane-pgp 4y ago

> "By design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership." I'd almost respect them more if they said "Okay, you got us, we deliberately added as many complicated steps as possible to minimise the number of people who successfully cancelled". There needs to be a Freedom of Information Act which applies to large companies, requiring them to record all the decisions they make, the goals they set, and the metrics they use to achieve them. Of course most of the data will be commercially sensitive, but if a company refuses on those grounds, the requester should be able to appeal to an ombudsman who will check whether there is a public interest in disclosure, or whether the data needs to be sent to the relevant regulator for further investigation. Requesters would have to pay some fee for such an appeal (perhaps 100 x minimum hourly wage) which would be paid back double if the appeal was upheld. This could create the right sort of incentives for whistleblowers, and the appeal fee could be crowdfunded to make it more affordable.

throwaways85989 4y ago
It needs to be even more standardized. So far in fact, that it could be part of a API, that could be handled by software, so that a robot could cancel the contract for the user. User should be able to create and cancel contracts via automated negotiation.
- thechao 4y ago
  I always thought that all govt processes — high to low — should have an API for filing paperwork, with a publically available "wirk queue" that anyone could query. The govt would be mandated to use its own APIs, and motion in the queue would require publically available information. It always ends up looking like a snazzier version of Brazil, in my head.
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    I assume you're referring to how AWS got started?
saagarjha 4y ago

wizofaus 4y ago

I've unsubscribed from Prime twice now, and both times the only reason it took so long is that I couldn't believe they didn't have a simple "suspend subscription" option and kept hunting around for it assuming I was just going blind... In both cases I fully expected to re-subscribe once life circumstances changed and/or a new season of a certain show was released. Surely it would be useful for Amazon to know the unsubscription was temporary...

tzs 4y ago
It could be worse. You've still got your Amazon account, right? Compare to Rackspace. To stop getting billed there you have to cancel your account. If I ever need some short term cloud resources my first stops would be places that I've already got cloud resources and places where I no longer currently have anything but still have an account. In other words, places where I already know something about how to use their offerings, and merely have to log in and start configuring. By making me delete my account Rackspace has guaranteed I'll only be looking at them when a project's hosting is going to be expensive that I need to check out all the major providers to find which one has the best deal. I'm not sure if Rackspace intended this behavior or if it was an accidental consequence of another change. It used to be that if you got rid of all your hosts and storage and other paid services your billing would go to $0/month. At some point they added a $5/month support fee, and that billed even if you weren't using any services. Cancelling the account then became the only way to stop getting billed. When I cancelled I got some sort of survey asking why I cancelled and I explained that it was to stop that $5/month fee, so it is possible that if that was just an unintended consequence of the new fee they've fixed it.

dewey 4y ago

There was a time where I unsubscribed from Prime and every single purchase flow then included the following screen where you had to confirm that you really don't want to have Amazon Prime and just buy it as a regular customer. Regulation in these areas is really very much needed. https://annoying.technology/posts/81a1c96e0cebfd64/ https://annoying.technology/posts/81a1c96e0cebfd64/

pseudo0 4y ago
They also passive-agressively set the default to a paid shipping option for non-Prime, so every order you have to manually pick the free shipping option. It's very obnoxious, especially combined with the multiple "sign up for Prime" pitch attempts.

iancmceachern 4y ago

They need this for the New York Times

tester756 4y ago

I feel like I read titles like >Europeans will be able to avoid X where X is some internet/tech/privacy related mess way too often. where are US lawmakers/bureaucracy? why things like seems to be forced mostly by EU lawmakers/bureaucracy?

dsign 4y ago
It is easier in Europe to have people-friendly politicians because companies can’t get away so often with buying them. It is both the laws and the culture. Case in point, Stefan Löfven, who was Sweden’s prime minister until a few months ago, traveled today in the same coach class airplane I used. I don’t know if he could have afforded/used something better, but politicians in private airplanes gift the press a field day. So democracy in some parts of Europe is a little bit more the business of the people than the business of the businesses.
pvaldes 4y ago
You have two parties, and they are the same in each state. Each country in Europe has three to five main parties plus a lot of minor parties. They are mostly independent and the ideological range is much wider. When is their own lifestyle what is in risk, politicians do care.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
The EU needs to prove they're doing something so people don't think about how much they're diluting the euro and stealing from the masses. If the resulting regulations makes it even harder for small businesses to keep up with all the red tape, entrenching big American businesses in their position - that's even better. The US government sucks as well in different ways, but nobody is seriously threatening to leave (especially because of all that money spent every year on the army).
renewiltord 4y ago
Mostly because you're uninformed https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1538011050636783616?s=20&t=vtC5UPANhBHzTsTuAHLlyw https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1538011050636783616?s=20&t=...

wronglyprepaid 4y ago

I'm in Europe, I can unsubscribe with 3-4 clicks, depending on how you count: 1. Click user icon in top right hand corner (I would not count this one) 2. Click "Account & Settings" 3. Click "End membership" 4. Click "End on {Month} {Day}, 2022" Two clicks will also be nice, but not sure there was a problem that needed fixing. Maybe it is worse in some parts of Europe than others, or maybe I get a different menu because I'm an immigrant to Europe and not a European. I have also done it many times before and the process was more or less the same, prime just simply does not have enough content to subscribe for more than one month at a time, so I always cancel immediately after subscribing.

noAnswer 4y ago
There are (where) a bunch of scummy companies (dating sites, magazine subscriptions, ISPs) that have (had) an easy onboarding process, but you needed an notarised letter written with your own blood, send to them only on at full moon to end the subscription. If we only now could get the cheaper mobile plans new customers get, that would be nice. I really hate to ask once a year "Can I get the new plan?" "No, ok I will cancel my plan." Only to wait for their call back where they give me the cheaper/upgraded plan.
jquery 4y ago
I’m in America and it’s six clicks but pretty straightforward nonetheless: 1. Click “account” 2. Click “Manage Prime Membership” 3. Click “Manage Membership” 4. In the drop down click “manage membership” (ok, this is a bit silly, but no misdirection so far) 5. Click “end membership” 6. Click “cancel my benefits” I could see an argument to be made that step 5 should be the last step. But it took me less than 20 seconds to figure out how to cancel my Prime membership even though I’ve never done it before. All that said, I also appreciate the argument by EU regulators that a subscription cancel flow should only be 2-3 clicks at the most.

baby 4y ago

There really need to be some consumer protection action in the US. This, dark patterns, and hidden fees are really insane.

astrange 4y ago
California has mandatory easy cancellation. You can change your address to there and usually get it - or pay with PayPal or iTunes.

amelius 4y ago

Amazon patented the one-click purchase, but now the EU strikes back with the two-click unsubscribe. They patented the wrong thing!

bamboozled 4y ago

But they won't because it's a freaking good service. Human rights atrocities aside, it's very convenient.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

I've been a Prime member since 2005 and I guess will remain until I die. I think I average about one order per day, so I bow to my corporate overlords.

slater 4y ago

It's two clicks, but the second button you have to click will be bouncing around the screen like a 900mph DVD screensaver logo

Dylan16807 4y ago

What are the two clicks, and where do they start? It looks like it takes five or six clicks right now for me, and I'd only count one of those unreasonable. From the account page, I have to click Prime, click Manage to get a menu, click End Membership, then twice I have to click Cancel to confirm. If they combined it to one confirmation page I would say it's fine. But that's still four clicks, or five if you start on a random page.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

As I found out, it is impossible to unsubscribe from Prime if you are banned from Amazon.