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FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process
- xchip 3y agoIndeed, I got tricked too into Amazon prime despite that I read everything very carefully.
- inetsee 3y agoI recently signed up for Prime after resisting for years. The only reason I signed up was for the rapid shipping. I was doing a lot of traveling and I needed to be able to get some stuff quickly. After my current trip I will almost certainly do whatever is required to cancel.
- PaulHoule 3y agoI wouldn't say the process of unsubscribing from Prime is 'deceptive' but it sure has many steps. They tried just about everything to persuade me to stay except offer to bring back two day shipping. (I know many of you in urban areas are getting one day shipping but those of us in less favored geographies, such as the same ZIP code as AMZN warehouses, have seen two day shipping turn into five, which makes Amazon uncompetitive with going to the store or with other e-tailers which usually offer faster shipping.)
- superkuh 3y agoI have never intentionally paid for prime. I have tried a couple dozen "free trials" since signing up for Amazon in 2000. The process of canceling these trials definitely has the buttons labeled and styled deceptively. You really do have to pay close attention. And the date at which they start charging your payment method is not when you'd think either, it's a day earlier than the 30 days they promise. I've ended up paying them for "free" prime a few times and only received part of it back via-refund.
- HarryHirsch 3y agoI've always shied away from Amazon's Prime service because the signup process already looks shady, no points offered for guessing that cancallation is even shadier. Walmart offers Walmart Plus - I've never used it but it looks infinitely less sketchy. Between that and the fact that Walmart has its supply chain under control ("commingling", anyone) the choice is easy.
- pwg 3y agoI have also never paid for, nor trialed, prime. I also have always had free-shipping (despite not having "prime") from Amazon. How? Patience. I add things I plan to order to my cart, and once the collection goes above the "free ship" threshold (currently $25) only then do I place an order. Of course, on the order page they always default to "paid shipping" and force one to explicitly check the "free shipping" radio button to actually get free shipping. Some years back it felt like Amazon deliberately delayed for an extra week any "free shipping" packages -- they would sit, waiting, for about a week, then packed, shipped, and arrived in about 4 days. I always attributed it to Amazon punishing those who chose to gain free shipping without signing up for prime. But over the last few years that "delay" has shrunk such that it no longer seems like "free shipping" packages get intentionally delayed to "encourage" prime sign-up next time.
- imtringued 3y agoIt sounds like they mark your packages low priority and honestly that is the only logical way to treat a customer that isn't paying.
- pwg 3y agoI don't disagree. I picked "free shipping" -- if they want to queue mine after everyone who explicitly paid for shipping and those who pays for prime, that is fine. My point is that the "de-prioritization delay" seems to have evaporated and I get items shipped in about the same time as the prime estimates (when they are "shipped by amazon" -- third party shippers are all over the board with shipping delays).
- ezfe 3y agoWhat's deceptive about it is you click the first link to cancel your benefits, then each subsequent page is basically a quiz: "which button will boot you out of the cancel flow and which button will proceed to the next page" I agree it's not actually that hard to cancel, but the flow is so needlessly complex from a consumer perspective. It should go straight to a page with three buttons and associated explanations: 1) Cancel at the end of the term 2) Cancel immediately and receive pro-rated refund (Since they offer this, I'm including it here - wouldn't expect it in general) 3) Keep subscription
- devnullbrain 3y agoI ran into this trying to cancel a free-trial a month ago. Or rather I thought I'd cancelled it and got charged. Cancelling the 2nd time, they refunded me for the unused month. But maybe that was to do with the linked case rather than the goodness of their hearts.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoI just cancelled. The first click to cancel your membership takes you to a page that says “you still have N days of your membership!” which is where you’d be able to close the page knowing your service was canceled if the service was honest. But nah you have to scroll to the bottom and click “Continue canceling” where you’re taken the page you describe. I don’t know how anyone can say this isn’t deceptive. If I click cancel membership, I shouldn’t be taken to a no-op interstitial page that makes me scroll to find a “continue canceling” button. That only exists to look like a “Canceled successfully” page.
- burkaman 3y agoIf you just cancelled, you saw improvements they made as a result of FTC pressure. Before April 2023 the process was much more difficult.
- laweijfmvo 3y agoAs someone who regularly gets the 1-week trial of Prime (and cancels), the cancellation process has gotten a lot less deceptive recently. E.g. they used to invert the colors of the buttons to make the "Cancel Membership" look like the negative option, etc. These days it's still unnecessarily long, but requires less double-takes to figure out.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoI'm in NYC and two day shipping here is a crapshoot nowadays. Sure it says 2-day shipping on the store page, but counting my past orders, 6/10 were delayed delivery, usually taking 5 days. The last 2 times I tried buying bulk paper towels on Amazon (I had them set as a recurring purchase every 6 months) they have been lost in transit. Also really frustrating, if I go to "Order Details" for an order that was delayed, the "Delivery Estimate" line shows the day it was actually delivered. Not the day it was originally estimated. I had to check my email to find the original delivery estimate.
- electric_mayhem 3y agoThat’s weird. I cancelled prime a couple years ago and only sign up for it when they offer a free trial. Without prime I still order from them more than I feel good about, but only ever opt for the free, slow, shipping. I’m at something like 30% deliver relay in 2 days, 40% deliver in less than 5 days, and 30% take the full five days. combining your experience with my own, really sounds like they’re losing it.
- brewdad 3y agoMy situation is similar to yours (except I avoid even the free trials) with similar shipping times. I do have a primary warehouse for my metro area about 5 miles away in my town. I think items that are in that warehouse or on their way to getting replenished arrive as quickly as ever while everything else takes longer. I'm fine with that but I'm also looking to get even further away from using Amazon after some poor recent experiences.
- 93po 3y agoI had an interesting experience the other day where an item labeled "Prime" would have taken 10 days to arrive by their estimate.
- timmytokyo 3y agoNow that Amazon is mostly low quality drop-shipped garbage from fake brands like KULUZU and PORKTI, fast and cheap shipping are about the only thing they have going for them. If that's gone, what's left?
- burkaman 3y agoThe complaint says they internally called the cancellation process "the Iliad Flow". See page 43 for a full description: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-public-redacted-complaint-to_be_filed.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-pu...
- david_allison 3y agoDirect page link (most in-browser PDF readers support #page=43) https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-public-redacted-complaint-to_be_filed.pdf#page=43 https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-pu...
- burkaman 3y agoThanks, I guess that works in Firefox too
- everybodyknows 3y agoAlso a click-by-click guide! It's a funny world of ours, where the best UI documentation available is found in a government legal action.
- whoknew1122 3y agoDisclosure: Work for AWS. My only experience with Prime is as a customer (and the odd beta for new types of programming). I wouldn't read much into the internal names of things at Amazon. They're picked at random by nerds. I've seen apps internally named after space, Dragon Ball Z, Lord of the Rings, coffee and candy, etc. I'm pretty sure I've used another, completely different thing that's also called Iliad. It's not malicious. It's just one of those Amazon things that make working there sometimes a chore.
- burkaman 3y agoI believe you that some internal names are random, and it's possible that this one is too, but obviously Amazon doesn't have the benefit of the doubt here. What is clearly malicious is that Project Iliad was intentionally designed to reduce cancellations among the population of users that already wanted to cancel (as opposed to reducing cancellations by making the service better). Here's some of the evidence that is redacted in the FTC complaint: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-customer-complaints-sign-ups-internal-documents-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-ftc-probe-custo... > Internal documents also show that Amazon intentionally drew out the process of canceling a Prime membership. Under a project code-named "Iliad," Amazon created multiple layers of questions and new offers before a Prime member could cancel their subscription, in hopes of reducing member churn. The number of cancellations dropped by 14% at one point in 2017 following the launch of Iliad, and fewer members were navigating to the final cancellation page, one of the documents said.
- Osiris 3y agoI just started seeing items with same day shipping where I live. We’ve received a few items now within just a few hours of ordering it. Most of the common items we order are 1-2 day shipping. Less popular items can be several days or more.
- macNchz 3y agoThe increased “jitter” in shipping times was one of the things that prompted me to cancel Prime a few years ago. Even in NYC my perception was that the standard deviation of transit times had increased significantly. The other components to the decision were the ever increasing volume of identical no-brand junk/counterfeit products with fake reviews, and the significant improvements in online inventory/buy inline pick up in store options from brick and mortar retailers. When I signed up for Prime 13(?) years ago very few stores had accurate online inventory, now tons of them do, and the more limited selection actually feels like a benefit.
- ncr100 3y agoI always wonder how much money Amazon makes from their UI "tweakers". The people, originally Bezos, who tweaked the UI to be more or less painful selectively throughout the site. If it makes Amazon Customers 1% LESS LIKELY to unsubscribe, then $$MILLION DOLLAR AMAZONCOM MISSION ACCOMPLISHED$$.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- baloki 3y agoIt’s as much as the sign up tbh where it automatically adds Prime to your basket and makes it hard to realise your signing up to a reoccurring payment.
- lost_tourist 3y ago1-2 shipping is all that's keeping me aboard
- adoxyz 3y agoThe whole Amazon.com experience has been getting worse and worse as the years go by. Everything from the products they sell, quality control, customer service, dark patterns in the UI, etc. I wonder how long until you have to call someone or mail in a 1,000 word letter on why you don't need Prime to cancel it.
- frumper 3y agoSounds like a perfect job for PrimeGPT to write that for you.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe experience has been getting worse for customers, but better for shareholders. Can't please everyone! Life Pro Tip: Be a shareholder, don't be a customer.
- adoxyz 3y agoI am both. It's still a frustrating experience and eventually shareholders will be negatively impacted.
- jwestbury 3y agoI was an employee and a shareholder, but my customer experience is part of why I'm no longer either, and why I won't be again in the future.
- scrum-treats 3y agoThis is exactly it.
- hospitalJail 3y agoIsnt this the truth. I have no problem owning Apple and MSFT shares, but boy do I want to avoid their products!
- ekianjo 3y ago> The whole Amazon.com experience has been getting worse and worse as the years go by. Maybe, but they are still miles better than most other online shops, so they still get to grow. Just for the return policy, they are kind of worth it.
- charlie0 3y agoLol, it's not deceptive at all. I routinely sign up for the free trials and then cancel a couple of days before the trial ends.
- altacc 3y agoThat's for you. Number one rule or UX design is (or should be) never base a design decision or assume user abilities based upon your own preferences or abilities. Users, especially Amazon users, are a very wide range of people.
- JohnFen 3y agoIs this process new? I cancelled my Amazon account a couple of years ago, and was genuinely surprised at how easy it was. They didn't even ask me the traditional "Why are you cancelling?" question. I remember it clearly because it stood out as the only time I interacted with them (outside of buying something) that went without complication.
- paddw 3y agoThere are so many of these processes which are so difficult that they border on the outright criminal, but the FTC goes after Amazon because it is a big political target to hit. Maybe from a utilitarian perspective it makes sense.
- jwestbury 3y agoIf successful, it probably sets precedent a lot more effectively than going after smaller targets. Amazon won't care if the FTC goes after some small company; but the small company will probably care if the FTC wins against Amazon.
- JohnFen 3y agoNot sure why people keep suspecting a political motive. That Amazon is huge seems sufficient explanation.
- paddw 3y agoYou don't think there's any political reason they are going after Amazon rather than, say, the New York Times? Just the impartial watchmen of Democracy studiously promoting the adherence to regulation here?
- hotpotamus 3y agoMaybe it's because one is an online bazaar of Chinese plastic crap that uses dark patterns to get people to sign up, and the other is a news organization that doesn't?
- JohnFen 3y agoThere's no obvious reason to suspect a political motivation. That Amazon is an enormous retailer, and newspapers are not, seems like rather sufficient explanation for why the Federal Trade Commission might pay more attention to one than the other.
- timmytokyo 3y agoI'm glad they're going after the 800 lb gorilla. Then maybe all the 100 lb chimpanzees and orangutans will take notice.
- benatkin 3y agoI need to buy a mattress and I had one in my cart from a week ago and last night I picked a different mattress and went to the checkout page. Then I saw there were two mattresses in it. It had the dark pattern of no cancel button so I had to click back and now I'm considering getting it elsewhere. Oh, and they also tried to get me to sign up for a Prime trial.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoCheckout pages never offer "cancel" buttons or "back" buttons. They are designed to corral you into the checkout process without recourse to returning to shop around some more. This is, of course, easily bypassed with browser controls, but I agree that it is a dark pattern which can trap less savvy people into pressing forward, because it seems there's nowhere else to go.
- bottom999mottob 3y agoI'd be careful about buying mattresses from Amazon as quite a few have been found to have fiberglass.
- benatkin 3y agoI was only looking at one brand, Zinus. I could order from them directly at a slight premium. However now I will look at more reviews. Thanks.
- altacc 3y agoThe UK government has a proposed law that customers must be able to end a subscription in a single clear process and all subscriptions entered into online must be capable of being ended online. Seems that if the US pushed this kind of law it'd have a significant effect on improving online services.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoOne problem I've encountered is the inability to remove a payment method for an active subscription. For example, I pay for several subscriptions with PayPal. I recently wanted to modify my PayPal preference for a particular subscription so that it used my credit card rather than checking account. I normally do this by deleting PayPal and then re-adding it, which goes through the login and account selection flow. I was prohibited from doing this, because since it is an active subscription, I was not allowed to delete the only payment method on it. However, PayPal has some pretty slick tools for managing recurring payments and subscriptions, so I think I could manage it from the dashboard over there. Haven't checked yet.
- njovin 3y agoCalifornia has already done this, so feel free to report any businesses that aren't allowing US-based customers to cancel immediately. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=BPC&division=7.&title=&part=3.&chapter=1.&article=9 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x....
- kccoder 3y agoSiriusXM needs to be reported mercilessly. Their cancellation process requires chatting with someone who tries to offer you better deals to stay, which of course only last for a few months, then the original price kicks back in. It takes 15 minutes to go through the process. The sad thing is that I'd love to activate their service for a month here or month there, but their cancellation process is too painful to do so, so they just lose out on my business, and piss me off at the same time. A real lose-lose scenario!
- burkaman 3y agoFTC complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-public-redacted-complaint-to_be_filed.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-pu... Significant redactions around Amazon executives being aware of a "nonconsensual enrollment problem" and blocking any changes. > the primary purpose of the Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but rather to thwart them. Fittingly, Amazon named that process “Iliad,” which refers to Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War. Amazon designed the Iliad cancellation process (“Iliad Flow”) to be labyrinthine, and Amazon and its leadership—including Lindsay, Grandinetti, and Ghani—slowed or rejected user experience changes that would have made Iliad simpler for consumers because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line. A lot of the evidence in the complaint is completely redacted. FTC says "For now, the FTC’s complaint is significantly redacted, though the FTC has told the Court it does not find the need for ongoing secrecy compelling."
- dcminter 3y agoSome of the redactions are single words trivially inferred from context; what's with that?
- burkaman 3y agoI didn't see any that were that obvious, but it sounds like the redactions are at Amazon's request, so they probably went for anything that could conceivably be construed as private information.
- dcminter 3y agoE.g. lines 7 and 9 it's "checkout" or "upsell". Probably the latter. Can't be the same as the longer redacted term on line 7 - though I suppose it might be an abbreviation for it and they're protecting their internal product/codename for some lawyerly reason?
- csydas 3y agoit could just be as simple as a group of persons as amazon didn't want certain words associated with them on a public government document. Lot easier to deflect accusations of overly aggressive upselling when you can just say "the report released by the government never once mentioned upselling" and just pretend that you don't need to answer the question based on that.
- strict9 3y agoGlad to see this for the precedent, though Prime is far from the worst offender of employing dark patterns to cancel memberships. I'd love to see FTC target cancellations that require you to call a phone number and speak with someone. There's always a very long wait, and once you speak to someone you have to do gymnastics to get them to cancel.
- JohnFen 3y agoI am very fond of the EU approach that says cancelling things should be just as easy as signing up for them.
- bottom999mottob 3y agoDark patterns like this should be regulated. I'm tired of having to click through obfuscated menus to cancel subscriptions, notifications, and tracking.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Dark patterns like this should be regulated. If by "regulated", you mean that dark patterns should be prohibited, then I agree.
- loeg 3y agoFTC press release direct link: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/ftc-takes-action-against-amazon-enrolling-consumers-amazon-prime-without-consent-sabotaging-their https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/...
- samstave 3y agoheh, a few years ago I cancelled my Prime membership but Amazon still charged me the $99 for the membership after I canceled... So when I contacted them, I got a refund for the $99, but I also told them they needed to pay me a $25 inconvenice fee for having to waste my time to call them for this.... They paid it.
- moi2388 3y agoGood. Let’s hope the fine is so high it means the end for Amazon. But I doubt it, so we’ll probably see them continuing to offer shitty UX for years to come.
- abawany 3y agoAccording to other comments here, they called the cancellation process "Iliad" - someone likes their Greek mythology and war porn, I guess. I suppose one should be grateful they didn't call it Oedipus - that would be one way to almost guarantee customer retention.
- nceqs3 3y agoWild the FTC isn't suing the NYTimes, WSJ, or every other paid news outlet for far more egregious cancellation process practices. Almost as if the FTC is a political weapon.
- ufish235 3y agoI think this is more of a "target the big fish first" situation.
- mindslight 3y agoFor one, "never get in a dispute with a business that buys ink by the IBC tote" Modulo that underlying dynamic, do you have a specific argument about how the status quo governmental power structure performing the tiniest bit of regulation on the status quo corporate power structure is "political" ? Or are we just supposed to not think too hard and jump to some kayfabe partisan narrative?
- nobody9999 3y ago>Wild the FTC isn't suing the NYTimes, WSJ, or every other paid news outlet for far more egregious cancellation process practices. Almost as if the FTC is a political weapon. I'd posit that suing news organizations would be perceived as more political than a retailer. Or am I missing something important here?
- suddenclarity 3y ago> Or am I missing something important here? Probably because newspapers are notorious to be the worst of the worst when trying to cancel free deals that automatically turn into expensive memberships. Common methods are to only allow cancellation through telephone and only have open during work hours when most people can't call. If you manage to get hold of a human being, then you'll have to spend an hour arguing before they accept your cancellation. Then, even if you manage to get through it, you're missing the paper trail so the newspaper can just claim you changed your mind. As late as yesterday, the Swedish Consumer Agency published a report on the issue.
- beardyw 3y agoI've been tricked into signing up for Prime a few times. Luckily it was a free month each time, so I canceled as soon as I noticed and took advantage of the free offer. Thing is, over a certain value "free" means the free you get anyway and the Prime way. I stay away as much as I can. Hate them.
- version_five 3y agoI still use amazon occasionally, but I think of it basically as interacting with a criminal that I know is completely dishonest and trying every trick to steal from me. Unfortunately there are sometimes still occasions when I have to hold my nose and do it, but they're getting fewer and farther between.
- Spivak 3y agoThe motto "if a company wants me to do something it's probably not in my best interest" has served me really well.
- 93po 3y agoIt's honestly not any more annoying than the shit groceries store do all the time, in my opinion.
- taeric 3y agoThat said, this isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the practices. :(
- version_five 3y agoWhen Amazon was really getting going (say 2015?) I hardly ever went to physical stores and was so happy to have a better alternative. Now everything sucks. Very similar to uber, it was such a breath of fresh air compared to taxis, now it's worse than them. These "disruptors" that just buy their market position suck.
- 93po 3y agoUber is by far not as bad as taxis.
- version_five 3y agoThe world is a big place. In Montreal and Toronto, and imo many airports, Taxis are better. They come faster and more reliably, I have a real person to deal with, none of uber's bullshit, and the car and driver are no different. I'm sure it's possible to find places where this isn't true. When uber first came out, it was head and shoulders above taxis though.
- kmfrk 3y agoI hope they do AWS billing next; good lord what a pain that is to turn off.
- tylerag 3y agoTo give you an idea what I see every time I checkout, https://imgur.com/a/6PcJLFY https://imgur.com/a/6PcJLFY
- 93po 3y agoWow I looked at this for a solid 10 seconds before seeing the "no thanks" and that was even with your bright red arrow pointing at it. The must have user tested this to hell to find the absolute perfect combination of design elements
- pwg 3y agoThis is the "trick you into signing up" page that is inserted if you are not currently a prime member. I've been clicking the "no-thanks" link for years -- as I've never signed up for, nor ever wanted to sign up for, amazon prime. But, as I know it is going to show up, I'm not surprised by it in the least, and I know where to go to get past it without accidentally signing up for prime. Maybe the FCC complaint might finally make this nice dark pattern example finally go away.
- registeredcorn 3y agoIf I remember correctly, they've also moved around the "No thanks" over the years. I seem to remember the "No thanks" option being below the "Enjoy Prime for FREE for blah ..." area a while back. I could swear the prompt changes sometimes between this more standard screenshot above, and some weird pitch geared specifically towards college students, where the "No thanks" option is considerably harder to see. I was trying to reproduce the prompt that I was thinking of and found an equally obnoxious prompt: https://i.imgur.com/8HNjFHl.png https://i.imgur.com/8HNjFHl.png If you accidentally click on prime, you are shown this https://i.imgur.com/hL60GFc.png https://i.imgur.com/hL60GFc.png Which makes it seem like you can't even remove the "free" Prime trial, unless you look extremely closely. Alternatively, if you do click on free shipping, but not on Prime free shipping, you get a popup showing this https://i.imgur.com/AHX2KNg.png https://i.imgur.com/AHX2KNg.png Which defaults to trying to steal any gift card balance you have in order to pay for Prime. I knew that Amazon was awful, but it's really gotten so far out of hand that it's surprising they haven't had the sort of legal trouble Microsoft had back in '98.
- duringmath 3y agoThis administration selected the current FTC commissioner because of an op-ed attacking Amazon and a glowing profile both published in the New York Times. The FTC lawsuits against Meta and now Amazon are politically motivated and are a misuse of the the system if not outright corruption.
- hotpotamus 3y agoGood. As someone who hasn't been careful enough and been caught by Amazon's deceptive practices myself, I hope they get them as good and hard as the law allows. If they have to put a boot on Bezos's spaceship, that would be an amusing benefit of the whole thing. I don't appreciate being subject to one dark pattern after another just to buy an sd card or a bath towel.
- duringmath 3y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 3y agoNYT subscriptions is easy to cancel. Just subscribe to the NYT in the first place via Google Play instead of using their own site, lmao. But seriously, Sirius XM hold the record for being absolute cancer to cancel.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- laweijfmvo 3y agoFor anyone that works on something like this, either at Amazon or elsewhere, I'm genuinely curious how the meetings/discussions around building a purposefully terrible UI go. I assume everyone knows what's going on (i.e. making it difficult to cancel); does anyone ever speak up? Do people just go along with it?
- temp_account_11 3y agoSpeaking up is a career limiting move in the short term. In the long term you have survivorship bias. The people that speak up tend to not be there for long. Not directly because they're fired, but indirectly because they get frustrated. Even if it's designed correctly initially, the areas has a permanent bull-eyes for someone's promo packet to go and optimize.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Speaking up is a career limiting move in the short term. What do you mean by "career limiting"? Just at the company in question, perhaps, but speaking up like that should be considered a good thing. If it's not, why would you want to continue working there?
- temp_account_11 3y ago> What do you mean by "career limiting"? Career limiting means you'll see less career advancements. > speaking up like that should be considered a good thing. Agreed. But in practice it's unfortunately not always seen that way. > If it's not, why would you want to continue working there? Because I weight several factors when deciding where to work and there are other benefits to working here.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Career limiting means you'll see less career advancements. So you mean career-limiting at that particular company? I understand. Thanks!
- everdrive 3y agoI remember when this was first rolled out. You'd go to buy something on Amazon, and the whole page would be a Prime ad, while some tiny little text would say something like "no thanks take me to checkout." This change was when I knew that Amazon had jumped the shark and was certainly no longer "obsessively customer focused." We had actually bought Prime accidentally via this method. Now in my family we make it a specific point that we won't buy anything on Amazon.
- hospitalJail 3y agoSame. This was scary to me. It means Amazon knows they are kings of online retail and have no problem abusing customers now. Walmart online is sometimes cheaper, but also sometimes more expensive. Makes it really hard to make the switch. I have refused to give money to bad companies, but with the rest of the world being manipulated into giving them money, I realized I never made a dent.
- z3c0 3y agoI cut out Amazon recently and there's something to be said about specialized online retailers. I used to think the idea of having a different retailer for each category was a bygone relic of the past after Amazon, but I'm starting to enjoy the better selection and customer support I get from companies like Chewy, Sweetwater, Costco, etc. A one-stop retailer is a convenience, but they suffer from the classic "jack of all trades" problem with their selection and only end up being a logistics company for delivering mass mediocrity.
- hospitalJail 3y agoI tried to confirm this with 3D printing filaments. Amazon is somehow cheaper than everywhere I looked.
- z3c0 3y agoI find that Amazon's prices are their trap, and it gives the illusion of having more. I buy lots of cheap components for creating music, and I get far better quality for my dollar from Sweetwater than I ever have on Amazon, even if Amazon's prices were lower.
- hourago 3y agoGrowth at any cost is creating a dystopian society. Tax share price increases so companies can focus again in making good products and providing good services. To reward growth above all, and share price instead of profits does that, creates incentives to grow now at the cost of the future of the company and the trust of customers or even society.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 26fingies 3y agoThat’s just how capitalism works. People try to invent all these different terms and nuances that at the end of the day are really just properties of capitalism when the state is captured by capitalists. Monopolistic behavior? Oh that’s _corporatism_ not capitalism! No it is very much capitalism. It’s the same with this growth at all cost thing you’re saying, as if that is a cat that can be put back in the bag. Unless and until the state is a foe of capitalists things will continue to get worse. Look at how government operates today. The regulators may not be bribed directly but wow they sure do end up with good jobs after they leave government.
- at_a_remove 3y agoThe Little Old Lady I help out with her computer got hit by this. Didn't understand that she has signed up for Amazon Prime. I cancelled it but saw the trick. Basically, they re-used the "Amazon yellow EXECUTE!" style for purchases as part of the sign-up flow. The elderly seem to favor a lot of muscle memory over reading the screen, so any UI updates are painful.
- Pooge 3y agoIs it just me or is Reader Mode completely broken on this website?
- burkaman 3y agoThe Firefox reader view button works normally for me, if that's what you mean
- mariuolo 3y agoI bet the reparation will be three months of Prime.
- oh_sigh 3y ago$1.5B in legal fees, and $2.31 for each user affected.
- supriyo-biswas 3y agoOn that note, is there a reason why class action lawsuits pay the affected constituents a paltry amount?
- ianferrel 3y agoI recently discontinued a Prime membership we'd had for years and it was eye-opening how annoying and persistent the attempts to get us to sign up for it again are. Every time I buy something, I have to find the tiny link instead of the big button. One time the tiny link was broken and I literally could not complete my purchase until I tried a few hours later. On the other hand, it was not difficult to cancel.
- massysett 3y agoWith that obnoxious behavior, why bother buying from Amazon if you don't have Prime? Amazon is a flea market trafficking in commingled imports from numerous unvetted third parties. The advantage of Prime is that it brings this flea market to your door. Without Prime I don't see much of a value proposition in the flea market. Actually, even with Prime the value is questionable. If my wife didn't like Prime I would shut it off, and then I doubt I'd buy much from Amazon at all. For US customers, Walmart and Target do a decent job these days, without the commingled flea market (Walmart does have third party sellers, but they also tend to keep staples in their own inventory better than Amazon does, and they don't commingle.)
- gmd63 3y agoA few years before COVID I bought a dresser on Amazon. The box had a Walmart receipt in it. The guy had made his own UPC code, copied images of the dresser, and just bought the Walmart dresser shipping it to me and pocketing 30 bucks. I cancelled Amazon years ago and have enjoyed not wading through the desperate side hustles and scams that Amazon essentially farms for data they can use to enter markets that they can then dominate. How Doordash/Uber/etc exploit their drivers' lack of sense for depreciation costs / maintenance etc is just how Amazon exploits small business hustlers' lack of understanding of the power of omniscient market data.
- ianferrel 3y agoI agree. I buy from them much less often than I used to. But it's sometimes still the best price/option.
- 3y ago
- wand3r 3y agoTangential: Does anyone have a good alternative to privacy.com? I really don't want to use Plaid to integrate but I basically need disposable/controllable cards for online purchases because so many places have poor security and dark patterns.
- 0xffff2 3y agoEven if there was a privacy.com alternative (I'm not aware of one), they would almost certainly use Plaid. As far as I can tell it's the financial-institution-backed industry standard these days.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- x3874 3y ago...you can use your 'local' AZ account for other countries, which i was used to, so i assumed Prime would work like that too - nope, that is bound to only the specific store you subscribed at. And they couldn't (wouldn't) transfer it. Just used the free trial to get something in time before i left another country, and nicely wasted some $$ because i wasn't aware they will refund you for every remaining month.
- 23B1 3y agoGood. UX and 'product management' has moved from beauty and clarity to darkpatterns and psychological exploits. If you have a valuable product, it should stand on its own as valuable. If you have to engage in deceptive practices, you're just accelerating your journey towards enshittification and destroying your brand equity. I guess that's fine for short-term gain/pump-and-dump, but it's unethical. I'd rather die poor and honest, than rich and full of regret.
- teeray 3y agoIt sure would be nice to have legislation mandating parity between sign up and cancellation. One-click signup? One-click cancel.
- omginternets 3y agoThis seems like something that is reasonably easy to define and fairly tight in scope. Embarrassing question: what would be the first step to proposing such legislation?
- teeray 3y ago> what would be the first step to proposing such legislation? Several large donations to the re-election funds of various congress critters.
- dylan604 3y agoThat’s just a light knocking on the door. If they even hear it to open that door, you’ll find sitting comfortably inside the much more well funded lobbyist from Amazon whispering sweet nothings into the ear of the Congress critter you just wasted money on
- abnercoimbre 3y agoThis is depressing. On a more cheerful note, the FTC has already proposed a rule [0] called "Click to Cancel" > Proposal seeks to make it as easy to cancel enrollment as it was to sign up Fingers crossed. This FTC is a welcome change, thanks to having a young tech-savvy chairwoman who was a scholar. (The norm seems to be "old corporate executive.") [0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/...
- dylan604 3y ago>This is depressing. I clearly don't have a cheery outlook on how congress operates, or the ethics of most businesses.
- scrum-treats 3y agoAs someone who managed to successfully cancel Prime, and then tried to purchase an item on amazon.com, it took me over a minute to figure out how to not accidentally sign up for Prime membership when trying to checkout. There was only one place I could click that would allow me to advance to the next screen (simple text), the text was super small placed below a giant image, and my cursor didn't change to indicate that it was clickable, e.g., https://imgur.com/a/VNlU9L9 https://imgur.com/a/VNlU9L9. Additionally, I received my package in the same amount of time as Prime said it would take. Which leaves the question, what is the benefit of Prime membership? It's not free shipping, it's not free grocery delivery, it's not Music or Video, it's not discount prices on Amazon retail website, and it is most certainly not any assurance of authentic goods. Prime is snake oil. After enduring the 10+ page questionnaire on why I was cancelling Prime, the only way to cancel my Prime membership, it is clear no one took the answers to the questions seriously. This lawsuit is long overdue.
- gmd63 3y agoThat is horrible UX. I feel for the designers that are bossed around by the short sighted people who rationalize manipulating customers at Amazon and hope they have the courage and means to move to a better workplace where they can build something with positive-sum value.
- scrum-treats 3y agoAgree. It is negligent and unqualified management at the root of this. Talented employees who know better and try to do better are dealt dirty hands; forced to either commit illegal acts like this or face intense psychological abuse, the PIP train, and ultimately termination. Sometimes they realize what is happening and they quit. Either way, Amazon facilitates and even encourages this behavior, as people receive raises for this stuff. I hope employees can experience federal protection against this. We definitely need it.
- watwut 3y ago>Talented employees who know better and try to do better ... typically leave these companies. I know multiple people who made such choices, leaving company that asked for something unethical. If we were talking about low paid employees with no options, the "they are forced to" would be reasonable argument. But in here these people have choices and are just unwilling to take slightly less paid job.
- supergeek133 3y agoDidn't they threaten to sue the cable/ISP companies for the same thing? Whatever happened with that. IMO that's a more significant problem.
- dboreham 3y agoTry using the UK Amazon site if you want to see dark patterns for Prime subscription that are much worse than the US site has.
- refurb 3y agoInteresting because I've found Amazon to be quite friendly (relatively speaking) when it comes to Prime subscriptions. I can get a free month of Prime, then 1 minute later cancel it (yes, you need to click through a couple screens), but keep it for the rest of the month. No need to set a reminder (even though Amazon offers to send you a reminder). Not sure if it's still true, but you used to be able to cancel paid prime and get a partial month refund.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoAllegedly. There are like 200 dark patterns when you buy without being subscribed and even worse when unsubscribing
- poulpy123 3y agothe Prime sign-up is really a dark pattern. I got caught once by clicking too quickly, fortunately they accepted to cancel when I contacted them immediately
- thewebcount 3y agoYeah, I got hit by this. I use Amazon maybe once or twice a year when I absolutely can't find something anywhere else. They are absolutely my last choice of where to shop, but sometimes, it's the only option. In any event, despite knowing that they'll try to get you to join Prime at every interaction, and despite trying not to do it, I accidentally clicked on the "Yes, sign me up for Prime even though I've been telling you no for literally years" button instead of the "No, just take my money and give me my stuff" button. It instantly signed me up for Prime. It didn't add it to my cart, or take me to checkout, or ask, "Are you sure? It's going to cost you $x per month." That was the really shocking part to me. The button didn't say, "One click purchase" or whatever they sometimes say when you're viewing a product. Absolutely no indication that it would be immediate and irrevocable. I immediately canceled and had to go through 5 "Are you really really sure you want to cancel?" and "Can we just suspend it for now?" pages before I actually got to cancel. Not the worst I've seen, but certainly scummy and deceptive.
- Dwolb 3y agoSlight OT, but wow. What an example of how local optimizations within an organization can destroy long term customer value. Many comments below discuss how Amazon has lost customer trust through these practices. Most likely the PM or business lead was praised at the time for the short term revenue bump gained from these dark patterns.
- badRNG 3y ago> What an example of how local optimizations within an organization can destroy long term customer value. It's not clear that they haven't profited more by having people retain prime through these patterns than they have lost through losing consumer trust.
- StressedDev 3y agoEventually it will catch up with them. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow but in 10 years time, I bet Amazon’s retail business will have declined. People are not stupid and they learn. They will go to the place which works best for them and if Amazon stops working for them, they will go somewhere else. One final comment is Amazon says one of its corporate values is customer obsession. On the retail side of Amazon, I am not seeing a lot of customer obsession. I am seeing a lot of short term thinking which gets Amazon more money today but will hurt their business in the long run. Here are some examples: - Horrible content discover for books, movies and TV. Amazon just returns the results of a database query. It does not try to help you find content you will like. In TV shows, it lists each season as a separate show (web site, about 5-7 years ago). - No way to distinguish between high quality non-fiction books and disinformation. - Its book categories are very badly done. One example is I once went looking for computer science books. There were duplicates in the top 50 (i.e. one book listed more than once) and almost none of the books were computer science books. They were either “How to use technology X” books or “How to ace the programming interview” books. Some were also public policy books. This was about 10 years ago. - Canceling Prime took too long and was far too hard. I will never subscribe again after I saw how they treated me when I unsubscribed. Note Netflix is easy to subscribe to and unsubscribe from.
- tracker1 3y agoIMO, The Amazon Audiobook sub/unsub is even more deceptive... it looks like you might lose your existing purchases if you cancel (you don't). But since I no longer commute, I had a pile of credits to where I was going to lose them, they extended me a couple times, in the end, I went on a spree of anything I was loosely interested in and just cancelled.
- gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 3y agoGood looking out, I was going to cancel the other day and losing access to all my audiobook content WAS the impression I got, which caused me to hesitate. After reading your comment, I've gone and cancelled and yep, still have access to all my stuff. Fuck dark pattern bullshit.
- from 3y agoSeems they're also mad about Amazon delaying discovery and (allegedly) not giving them everything. Why don't companies just use Signal/some enterprise equivalent with auto deleting messages so by the time the investigation starts there is nothing to discover?
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago1: Why encourage that? Do you want a world where this happens so we're just stuck with Amazon's shitty practices indefinitely? 2: I'm pretty sure financial operations have hard rules against this behavior that could be ported here. 3: Isn't Google in a kerfuffle for almost exactly this?
- vdqtp3 3y agoI pay for Prime annually, and yet somehow have a monthly "Prime" charge that no one at Amazon can identify or cancel.
- vmoore 3y agoHmm, this depends on the customer. If the customer is savvy, they know when they're being 'duped' and know about dark patterns and such. Financially savvy people who practice good financial hygiene don't get 'deceived' as much. Most people don't care that much if they're charged monthly for Prime, it's a minor detail in their spending budget.
- steveBK123 3y agoAmazon is quickly moving towards a place where their plumbing/infra is better than their consumer facing product. That is AWS & Amazon fulfillment. Amazon shopping site is garbage at the level of peak eBay BS. Video/Music/Alexa are afterthoughts. Kindle is extremely mediocre hardware & software for how long its been around, but they priced out competition. Fire phone. Etc. It's as if Amazon is really great at building the glue for other people to build their products on top of, but horrible at building products themselves.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoOr Amazon is great at recognizing where the profit margins are and staying away from low profit margin/high liability business areas.
- johndhi 3y agoThis seems like a great use of FTC's time. Bravo. Wish more of the headlines about enforcement actions were the same.
- fenilathome 3y agoI cancelled it and I am really upset that it signed me up again.
- jimnotgym 3y agoI wanted to make a point about Prime videos recommendation engine. In several years of membership it still has not managed to recommend a single thing I'm interested in. How are they so bad at this? On the other hand, none of it is quite as bad as Marketplace Web Services, or even SP-API it's replacement.
- paul7986 3y agoI had my credit card company block all Amazon prime charges a year or two after trying to cancel. The customer service rep said she had to do the same to cancel.
- HuhWhatMeansYou 3y ago[dead]
- anotherevan 3y agoIn Australia, I've found the "get one month of prime free and we'll expedite your delivery" offers, while pushy, clear and easy enough to avoid. Likewise once you find the https://www.amazon.com.au/mc https://www.amazon.com.au/mc page, cancelling your membership from there is about three clicks through the "are you sure?" and "are you really, really sure?" pages not too hard. I've probably had one month free prime memberships about three times now just to get the fast delivery. In fact I had a reminder for three days time to cancel the latest membership, but I just did it now. (I usually let it run for twenty days or so.) I wonder if there are consumer protection laws in Australia that are limiting the amount of dark patterning they can do.
- zebracanevra 3y agoI think they have made it easier recently. Also Australian, my dad (70) came to me a month ago really stressed out about signing up for Prime accidentally. I managed to cancel it for him, which wasn't too hard, 3 or 4 pages where you have to click the right button to continue. I think designs like what Amazon does here are easily navigable by us, but anyone who's not great at computers will struggle. My Dad was adamant that he chose the delivery option without Prime, which is why this situation was really stressful for him...
- berniedurfee 3y agoI’ve been subscribed to prime for a long time. I do remember unsubscribing several times, but somehow always end up back on the list. I finally gave up and convinced myself it’s worth it to watch a few crappy movies on occasion and get my horrible used knock-off products shipped to me for free after paying for the shipping anyway as a markup on the product price.
- ecommerceguy 3y agoMaybe punishment for this, because he is notorious for pushing the production/efficiency envelope, perhaps the feds should confiscate Jeff's boat. Allow taxpayers a ride. How many emails does Jeff@amazon.com get per day you think?
- donohoe 3y agoMy kid was excited to their own purchase on Amazon when they got a debt card. Somehow they ended up paying monthly for Prime. I managed to cancel and get a partial refund but it took multiple tries.
- shultays 3y agoAt least on mobile, it seems to be quite straightforward. Albeit still requiring multiple clicks and confirmations, the buttons are clearly named and visible