[HN Gopher] Europeans will be able to unsubscribe from Prime wit...
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Europeans will be able to unsubscribe from Prime with two clicks
Author : anonymous_sorry
Score : 113 points
Date : 2022-07-04 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| throwaway294566 wrote:
| Now unbundle delivery from movies/series/stuff and I'll be a
| member again.
| orra wrote:
| 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.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| I assumed Prime Video is just a loss leader to get you
| subscribing. Isn't the real benefit to them that they've
| convinced you to pay for next day delivery in advance, so you
| are discouraged from shopping around and end up spending way
| more at Amazon?
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| 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. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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/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 wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A few years ago Walmart was the unstoppable monopoly.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Was Walmart not pursuing anti-competitive strategies
| though? And does it still not do so in certain local
| markets?
|
| The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and
| over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early
| 1980's. So, this means huge chunks of the economy and
| many enormous conglomerates competing in it are
| themselves fortresses because lax anti-trust enforcement.
| In that worldview it doesn't matter whether it's Amazon
| or Walmart... or RadioShack or whatever. We literally
| can't imagine another world because these conditions go
| as far as most of us can remember.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and
| over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early
| 1980's.
|
| And yet an endless stream of unstoppable monopolies have
| collapsed or been humbled of their own accord since 1980.
|
| IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Kodak, GE, GM, Microsoft,
| KMart, Lotus, etc.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| > That the de facto monopolies tend to collapse doesn't
| preclude the damage they incur on society/competitors
| whilst they're at their peak/stagnating.
|
| That's what they earned by providing value. In a pure
| free market monopolies are hard to keep up for long.
|
| Unless you can bribe politicians to create regulations
| and slow competitors, it will be hard to stop younger,
| fresher and better rivals.
|
| The larger a company, the more inefficient it becomes and
| the more prone to be dethroned.
| Jochim wrote:
| That the de facto monopolies tend to collapse doesn't
| preclude the damage they incur on society/competitors
| whilst they're at their peak/stagnating.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The damage you refer to is simply free markets being a
| chaotic system. Creative destruction is part of it.
|
| A steady state of communism is _worse_ for people.
| History amply shows that.
|
| But yeah, I noticed you moving the goal posts :-)
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| 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 25EUR
| 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
| 45EUR to me.
| OJFord wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| iancmceachern wrote:
| They need this for the New York Times
| skrause wrote:
| 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.
| tchalla wrote:
| Thanks. Can you post a link to the news?
| dewey wrote:
| https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-
| verbrauch...
| loevborg wrote:
| Also https://www.heise.de/news/Kuendigungsbutton-Vertraege-
| koenne...
| rusticpenn wrote:
| Damn, i should start canceling my tv contract...
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Writing a letter would be pretty easy.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It involves enough steps (write letter, print letter,
| obtain and pack envelope, obtain and attach postage, go to
| mailbox) that it discourages people. Each of those steps is
| also an opportunity to forget.
|
| Maybe I should get into the habit of hand-writing those.
| Probably less work than the digital variant to be honest
| (if you keep it short) and a lot more annoying for the
| receiving company deciphering that handwriting.
| jabiko wrote:
| It depends. If you are in a office environment with access
| to all the materials needed then yes.
|
| But if not then in the worst case you have to find
| somewhere to print the letter, sign it, then find or buy an
| envelope and postage stamps, and finally drop the letter
| off.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I just realized that both you and me seem to have
| considered "print the letter" an absolute hard
| requirement, ignoring the fact that handwriting exists
| (and honestly, for a short letter like "Hereby I
| terminate my subscription, ID 12345, Name, Signature" it
| might actually be easier/faster).
| thfuran wrote:
| But then I'd have to find a pen.
| corobo wrote:
| A small bonus props to apple, it reminds you if you've got a
| subscription to an app when you delete it from your device
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Am i the only one that feels we shouldn't need this law at all?
|
| I call a company, inform them I want to cancell, and they keep
| taking money off my card, they should be prosecuted for theft.
|
| I don't get to demand that all companies must use my custom
| online form when they need payment from me, so why should they
| get to make such demands?
|
| Why did our legal system enable this behaviour all.
| bombcar wrote:
| > I don't get to demand that all companies must use my custom
| online form when they need payment from me, so why should
| they get to make such demands?
|
| Fun fact, companies literally do this to each other. You have
| to login to some weird SAP-based vendor portal to submit an
| invoice.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| You always have the option to send a letter. You might also
| be able to do the phone call, technically, but good luck
| proving it. With both the call and an e-mail, they can claim
| that it could be spoofed too, so they "need" a signature
| (nevermind that there is nothing to check the signature
| against, the system works because most people aren't griefers
| cancelling other people's subscriptions).
|
| This law means they have to provide an online form. That's
| necessary because without the law, they simply have to do
| nothing to deny you the most convenient option to cancel.
| pvaldes wrote:
| What it really happens is that they will refuse to cancel and
| will put you in a public defaulters list. And then your
| insurance will start billing more than double overnight, for
| example, until you surrender.
|
| Big companies always have leverage over small people. This is
| why the law was necessary.
| odiroot wrote:
| It's especially important in Germany, where many services can
| (at least in pre-corona times) be only cancelled by snail mail
| or fax.
| dewey wrote:
| 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/
| pseudo0 wrote:
| 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.
| tester756 wrote:
| 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?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| 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).
| dsign wrote:
| 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 Lofven, 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Mostly because you're uninformed
| https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1538011050636783616?s=20&t=...
| pvaldes wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| What grinds my gears is the slow transitions between each
| step. Like, it takes a couple of seconds to do anything. But
| you also forgot all the upsells.
|
| Choose burger -> wait for screen -> choose unmodified -> wait
| for screen -> choose just burger, no menu -> wait for screen
| -> no, I don't also want to add a doughnut -> wait for screen
| to go back to main screen -> start checkout -> no, I don't
| want to add X to my order -> wait -> confirm order -> select
| pay now -> try to beep my card but it doesn't work -> look at
| screen and see I have to select "card" (but it's the only
| option wtf make me choose?)
| xgkickt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > I'm sure McDonald's play-tested this a lot,
|
| I'm not. At the point someone stands in front of the device,
| they've already made a decision and they're unlikely to bail
| just due to bad UX, and I can totally see someone who isn't
| aware of UX as a concept simply not optimizing.
|
| They want a digital ordering system, this is a digital ordering
| system, it seems to do the job (fewer cashiers)... the fact
| that people actively avoid going back to McD because they don't
| want to deal with that abomination doesn't show up on that
| person's stats.
|
| In case anyone from McD reads this: Since those machines popped
| up I avoid going specifically because I hate dealing with them.
| Before the machines, I walked in, stood in a relatively short
| queue, "one cheeseburger please", receive a burger, pay (often
| cash) and go. Now, I first spend a ridiculous amount of time
| dealing with the crappy machine, then wait forever for my food.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Same. Went to some fast food, tried to order with a crappy
| machine and left for something else.
|
| I like the idea of using a machine over talking with someone
| and my ideal experience would be a restaurant full of robots;
| but the machine should be well designed
| timeon wrote:
| Wish it was possible with The Times.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The New York Times also has this issue, funnily enough.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I just let it lapse when my credit card number had to be
| changed.
| Havoc wrote:
| Economist too. Online subscribe...phone in during office hours
| to unsub.
| hkh28 wrote:
| 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-
| br...
|
| [1]https://theconversation.com/why-uk-approach-to-replacing-
| the...
| logifail wrote:
| > 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?
| lin83 wrote:
| 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.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| For humans, it's right there in the name /s
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| 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.
| lapser wrote:
| I'm trying to understand what you're trying to get at. Do you
| believe the wrong people get the wrong rights by the UK
| subscribing to the Human Rights Act? Do yoy believe the HRA
| isn't enough? I'd love to know!
| yardstick wrote:
| It's an article from the Remain-leaning Guardian, so not too
| surprising. Now if it was from the Daily Mail...
| krona wrote:
| Being able to easily unsubscribe from something a human right
| now?
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| 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.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| 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.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Companies will generally stop keeping records if this is the
| case.
| setr wrote:
| Just do like a parking garage -- if you've lost your ticket,
| fine for the worst case.
| yardstick wrote:
| I once used a car park to store my car for several days,
| without taking it out, and it was cheaper to lose my ticket
| and pay the fine vs paying the full amount. Because the
| fine was the 24hr price, vs the actual duration of 5-6
| days.
| capableweb wrote:
| Was this before "automated" car parks or they don't have
| that where you live? Where I live, all car parks
| automatically registers every single car that enters, and
| if I lose my ticket, I get a "fine" (extra cost) + the
| duration I was parked, as they'll just lookup when I
| arrived via the license plate.
| er4hn wrote:
| Why do they even have tickets if they can look up when
| you entered?
| xeromal wrote:
| Most of them let you prepay before you leave to keep the
| flow of traffic moving, but I figure you could look up
| the fee by tag too since they already record it. lol.
| capableweb wrote:
| If you have the ticket you can "self-checkout" by going
| to the machine to pay, not involving others. If you
| don't, you need to speak with the person who "manages"
| the parking lot, the person who sits in the little booth.
|
| Some cars also have (something like) a bank/credit card
| attached to their front windows near the top, those
| people can just drive out and the payment is automatic
| right before the barrier that blocks the exit.
| hodsonus wrote:
| so they can charge you a fee for lost tickets :)
| yardstick wrote:
| This was in London last year. I've used a mixture but
| more often than not they are just dumb issue the ticket
| at a barrier and let you in type car parks. Need the same
| ticket to raise the barrier on the way out, after paying.
|
| Not set up with automatic license plate reading cameras
| (ANPR or whatever the UK calls it).
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Doubt it. Companies already have a "don't put your shady shit
| in writing" training and yet we see e-mails, often from high-
| ranking executives who really should know better, that are
| talking openly about the stuff that you'd expect companies to
| not keep records about.
|
| It's also hard to work (collaborate) without keeping records,
| especially in a big international company.
| capableweb wrote:
| Then fine them. Imagine if financial companies (like banks)
| could just conveniently not chose to store records.
| amelius wrote:
| Amazon patented the one-click purchase, but now the EU strikes
| back with the two-click unsubscribe.
|
| They patented the wrong thing!
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| 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
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| wizofaus wrote:
| 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...
| baby wrote:
| There really need to be some consumer protection action in the
| US. This, dark patterns, and hidden fees are really insane.
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