8 ms·

I was unwittingly signed up for Amazon Music Unlimited

50 points by hotpotamus 4y ago

Got a doozy of a dark pattern from Amazon today. I'm not sure that my order is relevant, but I ordered a cheap clip contact microphone for a tuner. I placed the order and received the confirmation email as expected, but I also received a "Welcome to Amazon Music Unlimited" email as well. I assume I left some box checked or something that I failed to opt out of, but I never saw it. This was a 90 day trial after which it would charge me $9/month. I immediately went to cancel and then got several "are you sure" dialogs with up-sells and confusingly designed buttons to try and get me to keep the service (or even sign up for a higher charged one). I have to say that although Amazon has fallen quite far in my estimation in the last few years, this is something else - it feels like they'll be hocking magazine subscriptions at me next. Keep an eye on your subscriptions and credit cards - and I'll be canceling my Prime membership of over a decade. I was on the fence and have been meaning to, but this seals it.

kgermino 4y ago
I cancelled prime a while ago, but I still occasionally buy from Amazon. I think I’ve accidentally started a free trial of prime 3 times now. It’s always avoidable if you’re paying attention, but sometimes there’s multiple prompts with a big easy “I want Prime” button you have to get through to checkout. It’s so frustrating.
- cheese_van 4y ago
  I unwittingly "rented" a book that I thought I was buying. Luckily I realized after the fact, and was immediately able to cancel. But the interface was exactly the same as buying a book and I, smug that I know what I'm doing on the net, admit to being enraged I fell for it. The rent, by the way, was more than half the purchase price.
- paranoidrobot 4y ago
  A family member ran into this last week. They needed a product that was distributed exclusively through Amazon. So they logged in, added the product to their cart, and then checked out. At checkout it presented them the "Get free shipping with Prime" prompt, which he says he couldn't find any way past it without signing up. He only realised he'd signed up for a subscription service when it started sending him emails about other things. He cancelled immediately, and swears he won't buy anything through Amazon again.
  - kgermino 4y ago
    The opt out is so sneaky, it’s often a small grey “I don’t want to be happy” text link somewhere on the page
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Amazon is full of dark patterns. Every time I use Amazon I'm amazed that people think of them as a customer-friendly company, or think that it's worth paying for ongoing membership to their sunk cost fallacy. - Checking out, it defaults to paying extra for shipping, with a big option that says "free shipping with prime". The option you want, the standard basic free shipping, is the least conspicuous one. - The Prime 30 day (free) / 1 week ($2) trials are quite pushy at each checkout, and the option to avoid them doesn't even look like a UI button compared to the highlighted "accept" bit. - I've seen "get it $soon if you order within $short_time, where the deadline expires just to get reset a few more hours in the future (and $soon stays the same). So they're not telling you the actual shipping cutoff, but some fake thing to induce stress. - The link to cancel Prime is disguised within a FAQ, including an extra sentence that tries to misdirect you into settings, where the option to cancel Prime does not actually exist. - Actually cancelling Prime is its own minefield of multiple screens where the option you want is deemphasized, repeated like three times. About the only honest policy of theirs I've found is that when you get one of those 30 day free trials, you can cancel it ASAP, enjoy fewer dark patterns for a month, and not have to remember to cancel later. I usually do this and get my fill of stuff from Amazon though, at least until I find something that Amazon actually has the best deal on a year later, and they offer me another free trial as I checkout.
johnwheeler 4y ago
Amazon has become untrustworthy. Can’t trust the reviews and the products might be counterfeit. They shouldn’t have let all the cheap Chinese junk on there. Now, it’s best to just go to a real retailer website.
- kbrkbr 4y ago
  Right. On top of that I just ordered a technical book - new and for quite a price. Only to then find someone else‘s notes starting on page 13. Seems dark patterns are not enough anymore, and they opt now for outright fraud.
  - wstuartcl 4y ago
    This is an outcome of what they have done in the warehouses to "optimize". Instead of requiring all of each vendor's items to exist in each warehouse they have commingled them (with what seems extremely little checks and balances). All items they accept for warehouse are tossed into the same bin location and any orders from any vendors for that item are pulled out of that random bin (instead of segmenting the vendors stock). In this way when your order Acme Widget A from vendor X you could be randomly getting stock from vendor C's items (which are knock offs), Vendor "acme"'s items which are the actual company items or vendor Z's items which they have setup to toss back into their stock from returns with little if any checking). This optimization provides warehouse "leveling" allowing Amazon to ship local products faster without needing to ensure each vendor splits tock or shipping via warehouse/warehouse but obviously builds in a huge carrot to game the system for vendors and makes it hard to have checks that identify the actual problem vendors.
scubbo 4y ago
I've seen a lot more "free trial of Unlimited" offers around recently. Notable that this comes reasonably soon after https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1587449674277191680 https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1587449674277191680 (check replies - far from a "meaningful enhancement", it removed the ability to play in non-shuffle mode). Full disclosure: ex-employee of Amazon Music, left voluntarily.
- mianos 4y ago
  I occasionally used prime audio just for a change but this changed made it so much worse I deleted the app. It is worth noting it is now approaching a million one star reviews. It seems Android Wear had some competition with about 3M one star reviews until they reset it.
thinkmcfly 4y ago
I tried Amazon and Google Assistant devices, and I was unable to find a way to integrate my 20+ year old digital music library into either of them for free. What the fuck is the point of these assistants if they can only play popular music? Is this shit for the most boring people in the world?
- mrcarruthers 4y ago
  Does Plex work through them? If so you could run a Plex server
- Paraesthetic 4y ago
  You can link plex, well at least I was able to a year oir so ago, havn't actually sued the integration
- patch_cable 4y ago
  Sadly, this used to be possible with Amazon's service, but they removed the ability to upload your own catalog.
- ksaj 4y ago
  They don't usually have any of the music I listen to, so I don't even bother looking at the offers. I don't use the services, and can't imagine enjoying it if I tried. For that matter, I tend to follow the managing companies of music that I like online, so I know when an album I want is coming out, and then get it that way. I got burned by Apple deleting even my own personal recordings a decade or so ago, so I simply do not trust such "services" anymore.
- terribleperson 4y ago
  I believe Google Music was able to do this several years ago, but killed the feature. I could easily be wrong, because I only know of Google Music at all second hand.
  - dangravell 4y ago
    I wrote a summary of these types of services here: https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/01/06/cloud-music-lockers/ https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/0... - hope it's of interest.
Terretta 4y ago
> feels like they'll be hocking magazine subscriptions at me next https://www.amazon.com/print-magazine-subscriptions/b?ie=UTF8&node=599858 https://www.amazon.com/print-magazine-subscriptions/b?ie=UTF...
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  This may sound sarcastic, but thanks for the link. Really. I actually had been looking to resub to some mags I used to get.
mancerayder 4y ago
How is that legal?
vba616 4y ago
Amazon is always pushing Prime on me, and every once in a while, they're like "no, we really want to give you free shipping, no strings attached, cancel anytime before a month is up" and I'm like "okay, if you insist" and I put it on my calendar to cancel in 30 days. I have been expecting something new and underhanded but haven't seen it yet. I'm not paranoid enough not to take advantage. But Amazon is always my last choice now. They're not the only one who clearly has algorithms to try to encourage long time customers who rarely order.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  > I put it on my calendar to cancel in 30 days Cancel immediately after you sign up; you still get the 30 days for free.
kristianp 4y ago
I was offered the 90 day trial of unlimited after a recent purchase. I had to accept the offer before getting the welcome email though. The UI on the amazon music Android app is so bad, I'm cancelling it and going over to spotify though. When you open the app you just get a blank screen with a progress bar displaying 0:00 to 0:00. The search is not friendly, for example I searched for "the long way home", I got many results for one Norah Jones song of that name, but no result for Supertramp's "take the long way home". Also when I play a search result, I don't want it to go through multiple results of the same song and play them all.
barbariangrunge 4y ago
I have unwittingly been signed up for Amazon prime like three times. One mis-click on buttons and screens that randomly rearrange every time when checking out (or elsewhere??) and you have a subscription
Tangurena2 4y ago
Last week, for me, the "add to list" button had disappeared off every book other than kindle editions. I wonder if they were trying to nag me about the size of my wishlist or if they were trying to make customers miserable. At least they fixed the bug where you'd google a book and the direct link from google went to a 404.
Ancalagon 4y ago
Every time I order something from Amazon I delete my payment info immediately afterwards. This has been going on for YEARS with prime subscriptions.
musicale 4y ago
It isn't limited to people who intentionally subscribe to it.

50 points by hotpotamus 4y ago

kgermino 4y ago

I cancelled prime a while ago, but I still occasionally buy from Amazon. I think I’ve accidentally started a free trial of prime 3 times now. It’s always avoidable if you’re paying attention, but sometimes there’s multiple prompts with a big easy “I want Prime” button you have to get through to checkout. It’s so frustrating.

cheese_van 4y ago
I unwittingly "rented" a book that I thought I was buying. Luckily I realized after the fact, and was immediately able to cancel. But the interface was exactly the same as buying a book and I, smug that I know what I'm doing on the net, admit to being enraged I fell for it. The rent, by the way, was more than half the purchase price.
paranoidrobot 4y ago
A family member ran into this last week. They needed a product that was distributed exclusively through Amazon. So they logged in, added the product to their cart, and then checked out. At checkout it presented them the "Get free shipping with Prime" prompt, which he says he couldn't find any way past it without signing up. He only realised he'd signed up for a subscription service when it started sending him emails about other things. He cancelled immediately, and swears he won't buy anything through Amazon again.
- kgermino 4y ago
  The opt out is so sneaky, it’s often a small grey “I don’t want to be happy” text link somewhere on the page
- mindslight 4y ago
  Amazon is full of dark patterns. Every time I use Amazon I'm amazed that people think of them as a customer-friendly company, or think that it's worth paying for ongoing membership to their sunk cost fallacy. - Checking out, it defaults to paying extra for shipping, with a big option that says "free shipping with prime". The option you want, the standard basic free shipping, is the least conspicuous one. - The Prime 30 day (free) / 1 week ($2) trials are quite pushy at each checkout, and the option to avoid them doesn't even look like a UI button compared to the highlighted "accept" bit. - I've seen "get it $soon if you order within $short_time, where the deadline expires just to get reset a few more hours in the future (and $soon stays the same). So they're not telling you the actual shipping cutoff, but some fake thing to induce stress. - The link to cancel Prime is disguised within a FAQ, including an extra sentence that tries to misdirect you into settings, where the option to cancel Prime does not actually exist. - Actually cancelling Prime is its own minefield of multiple screens where the option you want is deemphasized, repeated like three times. About the only honest policy of theirs I've found is that when you get one of those 30 day free trials, you can cancel it ASAP, enjoy fewer dark patterns for a month, and not have to remember to cancel later. I usually do this and get my fill of stuff from Amazon though, at least until I find something that Amazon actually has the best deal on a year later, and they offer me another free trial as I checkout.

johnwheeler 4y ago

Amazon has become untrustworthy. Can’t trust the reviews and the products might be counterfeit. They shouldn’t have let all the cheap Chinese junk on there. Now, it’s best to just go to a real retailer website.

kbrkbr 4y ago
Right. On top of that I just ordered a technical book - new and for quite a price. Only to then find someone else‘s notes starting on page 13. Seems dark patterns are not enough anymore, and they opt now for outright fraud.
- wstuartcl 4y ago
  This is an outcome of what they have done in the warehouses to "optimize". Instead of requiring all of each vendor's items to exist in each warehouse they have commingled them (with what seems extremely little checks and balances). All items they accept for warehouse are tossed into the same bin location and any orders from any vendors for that item are pulled out of that random bin (instead of segmenting the vendors stock). In this way when your order Acme Widget A from vendor X you could be randomly getting stock from vendor C's items (which are knock offs), Vendor "acme"'s items which are the actual company items or vendor Z's items which they have setup to toss back into their stock from returns with little if any checking). This optimization provides warehouse "leveling" allowing Amazon to ship local products faster without needing to ensure each vendor splits tock or shipping via warehouse/warehouse but obviously builds in a huge carrot to game the system for vendors and makes it hard to have checks that identify the actual problem vendors.

scubbo 4y ago

I've seen a lot more "free trial of Unlimited" offers around recently. Notable that this comes reasonably soon after https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1587449674277191680 https://twitter.com/ajassy/status/1587449674277191680 (check replies - far from a "meaningful enhancement", it removed the ability to play in non-shuffle mode). Full disclosure: ex-employee of Amazon Music, left voluntarily.

mianos 4y ago
I occasionally used prime audio just for a change but this changed made it so much worse I deleted the app. It is worth noting it is now approaching a million one star reviews. It seems Android Wear had some competition with about 3M one star reviews until they reset it.

thinkmcfly 4y ago

I tried Amazon and Google Assistant devices, and I was unable to find a way to integrate my 20+ year old digital music library into either of them for free. What the fuck is the point of these assistants if they can only play popular music? Is this shit for the most boring people in the world?

mrcarruthers 4y ago
Does Plex work through them? If so you could run a Plex server
Paraesthetic 4y ago
You can link plex, well at least I was able to a year oir so ago, havn't actually sued the integration
patch_cable 4y ago
Sadly, this used to be possible with Amazon's service, but they removed the ability to upload your own catalog.
ksaj 4y ago
They don't usually have any of the music I listen to, so I don't even bother looking at the offers. I don't use the services, and can't imagine enjoying it if I tried. For that matter, I tend to follow the managing companies of music that I like online, so I know when an album I want is coming out, and then get it that way. I got burned by Apple deleting even my own personal recordings a decade or so ago, so I simply do not trust such "services" anymore.
terribleperson 4y ago
I believe Google Music was able to do this several years ago, but killed the feature. I could easily be wrong, because I only know of Google Music at all second hand.
- dangravell 4y ago
  I wrote a summary of these types of services here: https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/01/06/cloud-music-lockers/ https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/0... - hope it's of interest.

Terretta 4y ago

> feels like they'll be hocking magazine subscriptions at me next https://www.amazon.com/print-magazine-subscriptions/b?ie=UTF8&node=599858 https://www.amazon.com/print-magazine-subscriptions/b?ie=UTF...

Tangurena2 4y ago
This may sound sarcastic, but thanks for the link. Really. I actually had been looking to resub to some mags I used to get.

mancerayder 4y ago

How is that legal?

vba616 4y ago

Amazon is always pushing Prime on me, and every once in a while, they're like "no, we really want to give you free shipping, no strings attached, cancel anytime before a month is up" and I'm like "okay, if you insist" and I put it on my calendar to cancel in 30 days. I have been expecting something new and underhanded but haven't seen it yet. I'm not paranoid enough not to take advantage. But Amazon is always my last choice now. They're not the only one who clearly has algorithms to try to encourage long time customers who rarely order.

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
> I put it on my calendar to cancel in 30 days Cancel immediately after you sign up; you still get the 30 days for free.

kristianp 4y ago

I was offered the 90 day trial of unlimited after a recent purchase. I had to accept the offer before getting the welcome email though. The UI on the amazon music Android app is so bad, I'm cancelling it and going over to spotify though. When you open the app you just get a blank screen with a progress bar displaying 0:00 to 0:00. The search is not friendly, for example I searched for "the long way home", I got many results for one Norah Jones song of that name, but no result for Supertramp's "take the long way home". Also when I play a search result, I don't want it to go through multiple results of the same song and play them all.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

I have unwittingly been signed up for Amazon prime like three times. One mis-click on buttons and screens that randomly rearrange every time when checking out (or elsewhere??) and you have a subscription

Tangurena2 4y ago

Last week, for me, the "add to list" button had disappeared off every book other than kindle editions. I wonder if they were trying to nag me about the size of my wishlist or if they were trying to make customers miserable. At least they fixed the bug where you'd google a book and the direct link from google went to a 404.

Ancalagon 4y ago

Every time I order something from Amazon I delete my payment info immediately afterwards. This has been going on for YEARS with prime subscriptions.

musicale 4y ago

It isn't limited to people who intentionally subscribe to it.