[HN Gopher] FTC sues Amazon over 'deceptive' Prime sign-up and c...
___________________________________________________________________
FTC sues Amazon over 'deceptive' Prime sign-up and cancellation
process
Author : geekrax
Score : 317 points
Date : 2023-06-21 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| tylerag wrote:
| To give you an idea what I see every time I checkout,
|
| https://imgur.com/a/6PcJLFY
| 93po wrote:
| Wow 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| If 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
|
| If you accidentally click on prime, you are shown this
|
| 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
|
| 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.
| asah wrote:
| lol, SaaS pricing pages have entered the chat (even harder to
| find the free option)
| vngzs wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! This is super egregious and should
| be in the article.
| paddw wrote:
| There 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not sure why people keep suspecting a political motive. That
| Amazon is huge seems sufficient explanation.
| paddw wrote:
| You 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?
| timmytokyo wrote:
| I'm glad they're going after the 800 lb gorilla. Then maybe
| all the 100 lb chimpanzees and orangutans will take notice.
| nanidin wrote:
| There are ~10 million NYT subscribers. There are ~160
| million Amazon Prime subscribers.
|
| Bad practices by NYT impact 3% of Americans. Bad practices
| by Amazon impact 48% of Americans.
|
| You can be cynical and say that going after Amazon is
| political because more voters are impacted, but at the end
| of the day it seems reasonable to go after the biggest
| target where the biggest impact can be made to benefit
| Americans.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Maybe 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 wrote:
| There'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.
| jwestbury wrote:
| If 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.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| As 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.
|
| 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.
| chang1 wrote:
| Funny, I just encountered the same experience.
|
| I cancelled Prime after 12 continuous years of subscribing. I
| placed my first Amazon order a few days ago sans-Prime and was
| amazed at the blatant dark patterns put in place to get me to
| sign up again. When I finally got to the checkout page, I had
| to manually change the shipping for each item from $5.99
| standard shipping to free shipping (because I hit the $25
| threshold).
|
| A few hours later, I get a solicitation for Amazon Music (not
| sure if I would have gotten this if I was a Prime subscriber).
|
| Then the next day I got an email saying "Your package is
| arriving earlier than we previously expected"... the same as
| Prime 2-day shipping. Maybe it's logistically easier to just
| ship 2-day instead of holding on to inventory?
|
| I thought cancelling Prime would have been difficult
| (especially with Prime only discounts at Whole Foods), but
| finding alternatives to Amazon and Whole Foods has been easy. I
| guess it's no wonder Amazon tries to push it so hard because
| it's relatively easy to live without.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| > "When I finally got to the checkout page, I had to manually
| change the shipping for each item from $5.99 standard
| shipping to free shipping (because I hit the $25 threshold)."
|
| Exactly this: https://imgur.com/a/Xi4ZO3i.
|
| Notice how I am being told that I'm "saving $5.99 if I enroll
| in Prime", and the default selection is the $5.99 delivery
| option, however I qualify for free shipping. Further, this
| free shipping option changes location between purchases,
| making it even more confusing for customers to not be
| unnecessarily overcharged.
| kyrra wrote:
| My family dropped Amazon prime a few months ago, the checkout
| process on Amazon without prime has been getting worse the last
| few months. They try so hard to trick you into buying prime, I
| have to be very careful to make sure I don't accidentally do
| it. They also keep changing the flow every few weeks, so I have
| to pay close attention every time.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| FWIW, I use it for Prime Video, Prime First Reads ((where you
| can choose from 1-2 free books per month)) and Prime Reading.
|
| A long time ago, I did use it for faster delivery. There was
| definitely a difference. But the items I tend to order now are
| usually heavily stocked and are delivered quickly anyway.
|
| I wonder if people who live in rural areas are still
| benefitting from faster Prime delivery.
|
| (Also, no offense, but I canceled my annual Prime subscription
| when they upped the price and then restarted a monthly plan
| later when I decided I did want to keep the other benefits. It
| wasn't as difficult as you're making it seem to cancel. And it
| didn't seem any different than when I cancel other services
| where they try to get you to stay.)
|
| (Also, I'm not sure if you were aware, but technically you can
| split the cost with multiple people (i.e. friends or relatives)
| if you set up an Amazon Household account)
|
| (Also, interestingly, it looks like you can ((in certain
| countries I think)) just subscribe to Prime Video instead of
| the whole service. I guess Kindle Unlimited can be considered a
| separate ((and slightly better)) service for Prime Reading.
| Hmmmmmmm, maybe I will cancel the whole service.)
| ydant wrote:
| > (Also, I'm not sure if you were aware, but technically you
| can split the cost with multiple people (i.e. friends or
| relatives) if you set up an Amazon Household account)
|
| It's just two adults now (and a limited "teen" program which
| doesn't acknowledge the realities of kids living at home past
| 17). I have four adults on my account, but two of them are
| grandfathered in and still receive my "prime benefits", but
| aren't shown anywhere in my Amazon account that I can find.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=.
| ..
| Beldin wrote:
| > _it 's not Music or Video_
|
| Weird. Around here, Prime does give access to video.
|
| I know folks around here who have prime just for that. I
| doublechecked just to be sure; it still is like that (according
| to a quick google search).
| scrum-treats wrote:
| Video streaming is broken. 4K is a lie, UI and UX is clumsy
| and uninviting at best. There's predatory sign-ups for
| supplemental packages that customers have no idea about until
| they've been charged (sometimes for more than a year).
| Customer Service then tries to only refund for 1-6 months,
| unless the customer hires a lawyer. TV and Movie Titles that
| were available for free one week suddenly disappear (without
| warning) or require payment for continued availability (e.g.,
| TV series), even though you pay for Prime and it was free for
| Prime last week.
|
| For Amazon Music, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36372298.
|
| I could go on...
|
| When you start looking at all these patterns, across all
| these services (e.g., Prime, Alexa, Music, Video), it's clear
| that one type of team must be dictating all of this (e.g.,
| Music and Video). It's all predatory, in the same style;
| homogenous. Talk about placing a bet on the wrong horse.
| [deleted]
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Prime video works fine (am in US)
| redavni wrote:
| > Customer Service then tries to only refund for 1-6
| months, unless the customer hires a lawyer.
|
| Capital One had (when I was employed there) a process where
| if someone calls and disputes a Prime charge, they just
| call a specific number at Amazon and it gets removed
| instantly. No questions asked and bypasses the normal
| dispute process.
|
| Call your credit card company, not Amazon.
| taude wrote:
| I enjoy my prime video. Not really sure what the
| complications are for you. Even the non-techies in the
| house can easily click into it from the app on our TV.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Maybe it's not the same in all regions (I'm in France),
| plus sample size of one and whatnot, but I actually enjoy
| Prime Video. I don't watch many movies / series, so its
| being cheap matters a lot to me. It has enough shows to
| keep me busy.
|
| There's a visible toggle to only show content that's "free
| for me", so I don't end up accidentally clicking on
| something that's not included. Plus, everything that's not
| free for prime members has a big icon attached to it, and
| it'll actually ask clearly if I want to pay to view it.
|
| The UI is OK, I can easily find my way around it. I haven't
| used Netflix much, but it was much more of a pain to
| navigate, even for shows that I was already watching and
| wanted to get back to.
|
| For shows disappearing, I've always seen a text saying
| they'd be leaving prime in X days.
|
| I haven't tried Amazon Music, but I did buy a Fire TV
| stick, and I love that, too. I have a dumb PC monitor with
| terrible sound and the stick is the only player I've had
| that managed to only output the sound in stereo, so I can
| hook it up digitally to my stereo amplifier (through an
| HDMI toslink extractor I've got off Amazon for cheap). It's
| also able to tweak the remote signals so that it controls
| my amp volume instead of its integrated volume control.
|
| I've seen shows that pretend to be in 4K (my monitor is
| 4k). They look pretty good, but I don't know how to be
| certain they're actually 4k.
| philistine wrote:
| Of all the FAANG companies, Amazon is by far the one with
| the most differences between countries.
| Internationalization makes discussions around Amazon's
| practices near impossible.
| mey wrote:
| Twitch without Ads was a nice benefit until that got removed
| years ago. We have gotten rid of our Prime membership as well.
| The death of it was really the 3rd party sellers and fighting
| to find the correct item.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wow, that image is terrible. I usually consider myself pretty
| good against dark patterns but it took me forever to find what
| to click to _not_ sign up. Once I realized both the gray areas
| _aren 't_ what you click, I couldn't see any other options.
|
| That seems like what I expect a crappy deceptive startup to
| implement in order to try to boost metrics for the next round
| of investment. It's _not_ the kind of shady UX I associate with
| the largest tech companies. I seriously would not have expected
| that from Amazon, so I 'm very happy the FTC is stepping in
| here.
|
| Not to mention that this is very much against Amazon's supposed
| values, including "customer obsession" [1] -- to "work
| vigorously to earn and keep customer trust" [2]. This is very
| much the opposite of that, when customers discover they've been
| deceived into signing up.
|
| [1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us
|
| [2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles
| willio58 wrote:
| Jaw dropped looking at that. Absolutely disgusting business
| practice. Glad the FTC is stepping in.
| gmd63 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| Agree. 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 wrote:
| >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.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I don't feel for the designers.
|
| Whenever I see horrible UX from big tech it creeps into my
| mind that the people making it are some of the highest paid
| in the world and these companies are some of the richest in
| the world. It's either intentional or we are all suckers.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree. There's no reason to feel bad for such employees.
| They've chosen to work where they work, and I assume that
| they're happy with that choice.
| autoexec wrote:
| I've heard that Amazon is a horrible place to work. Execs
| crying at their desks, and delivery drivers and warehouse
| workers being forced to piss in bottles or wear diapers
| in order to keep their jobs. I don't imagine that coders
| have it that much better. Layoffs at amazon are in the
| news all the time. There have been reports of 150% annual
| turnover with the average employee leaving shortly after
| 6 months. Employees have said they use stack ranking and
| cull many of those who do stay. I expect a lot of amazon
| employees are very far from happy with where they are.
| Some probably have skills that can get them better jobs,
| but I'll bet it's harder for the guys doing front end web
| design.
| jjgreen wrote:
| We should all be able to "git blame" those dark patterns
| rerx wrote:
| I typically sign up for Prime for a month or two when I book
| vacation stays on booking.com. They have a very nice promotion
| where prime members receive 10% in credit. Then I watch a
| couple of films or shows on Prime Video, because they actually
| have some good stuff there usually. But free shipping below
| 39EUR is really not worth the subscription to me (Germany).
| LunaSea wrote:
| This deal is apparently only available to German and Austrian
| users. Nice tip though!
| patentatt wrote:
| Same here, cancelled prime and still receive packages in 1-2
| days generally. I never really used any other of the services
| under prime like video or music, so I don't miss it one bit.
| Also shifted most of my online purchasing to target anyways, I
| find the products and experience to be far superior, and I have
| a local store to go to also. I spent my prime budget on a shipt
| subscription and get target items delivered in a couple hours.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| For computer stuff, I switched to Staples, to be inspected at
| local store before acceptance. No more scratched monitors
| from Amazon Prime sold as "new".
| benatkin wrote:
| I 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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Sorry to say, but there's a "delete" option for every item on
| the checkout page. Just click the quantity dropdown and change
| it to "delete". Simple as.
| brewdad wrote:
| Not on the "checkout" screen.
|
| It is there for the "cart" screen but once you get to
| checkout, you are stuck either proceeding or abandoning the
| page.
| pwg wrote:
| If by "checkout" screen you mean the "Review items and
| shipping" where the yellow "Place your order" button exists
| to actually "order" the items, then "delete" is hiding
| behind the "Qty" dropdown that is present on each item (at
| least for me). You have to click the "Qty 1" dropdown, and
| only then does the "delete" option appear.
|
| So it is well hidden away, but at least for my Amazon
| account, one can delete from the "checkout" screen.
| benatkin wrote:
| I don't mind, for whatever reason it wasn't usable for me.
| And maybe it wasn't there.
|
| Edit: I checked again. It isn't there. Note that I said
| checkout, not my cart. It has big CTA buttons to go straight
| to checkout without first going to the cart.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Checkout 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.
| benatkin wrote:
| "Back" has the old anxiety of Confirm Form Resubmission, so a
| cancel or close button would be better.
| brewdad wrote:
| When all else fails, for any site like this, I close the
| browser tab. If I choose to reopen the site, I'll be back
| on the home page and my cart may or may not be empty.
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| I'd be careful about buying mattresses from Amazon as quite a
| few have been found to have fiberglass.
| benatkin wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| One 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.
| thechao wrote:
| That "single, clear process" should be the website & app of the
| card issuer the subscription is through. The user should also
| be able to see clear limits & term durations via the card,
| before commute to the service, provider be-damned.
| njovin wrote:
| California 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.x...
| .
| kccoder wrote:
| SiriusXM 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!
| pwg wrote:
| I canceled my SiriusXM sub a couple months after the
| merger. I was an XM subscriber that was "merged in" and
| when the merger finished, one of the big reasons why I was
| an XM subscriber (no talking DJ's on the channels I
| listened to) vanished and suddenly all the old channels I
| listened to had talking DJ's everywhere.
|
| I had to wait a couple months to cancel because of a weird
| clause requiring some amount of "sub time" before one could
| get a pro-rata refund in the agreement.
|
| Cancellation had to be by phone, and the SiriusXM person
| went so far as to offer a full year of free service to keep
| me on board. She was quite shocked when I told her, no, not
| even a free year will keep me as a subscriber. I also asked
| her to be sure to tell her managers that the reason why
| they lost a sub was adding talking DJ's to channels that
| previously had none.
|
| I switched to a commercial free, DJ free mp3 player for my
| commute, and eventually the "mp3 player" was replaced by my
| cell phone.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Good. 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.
| from wrote:
| Seems 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 wrote:
| 1: 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?
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| For 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 wrote:
| Speaking 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > Career limiting means you'll see less career
| advancements.
|
| So you mean career-limiting at that particular company? I
| understand. Thanks!
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| You may also get a bit of a reputation that may follow
| you around.
|
| In areas with very close knit industries it can hurt your
| opportunities.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, it might! But there are lots of employers who value
| employees who are focused on customer experience.
|
| It's probably limited my opportunities some, but I can't
| really tell. There are plenty of opportunities out there,
| and if a company doesn't want me because I'm willing to
| be honest and argue for what I think is right, then
| that's a company I don't want to work for anyway. So it
| all works out for the best for everybody.
| temp_account_11 wrote:
| I totally understand and respect your ideals. I wish more
| people were like you. But at the same time you fail the
| see the nuance for why others might make a different
| decision. I think it's reasonable for someone to take a
| moral stance here, and I can also respect someone that
| choses to stay at the job that's the best at providing
| for their family. That's the insight I was providing.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > But at the same time you fail the see the nuance for
| why others might make a different decision.
|
| Umm, I totally see why others would decide differently.
| Everyone makes their own choices and trade-offs.
|
| I was just trying to point out that if the objection is
| that doing those sorts of things is a career-killer,
| that's objectively not true. It might mean that certain
| specific companies won't like you, but you won't be
| rejected by the industry overall.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| the 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
| anotherevan wrote:
| In 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 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.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Didn't they threaten to sue the cable/ISP companies for the same
| thing? Whatever happened with that.
|
| IMO that's a more significant problem.
| duringmath wrote:
| This 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.
| [deleted]
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Good. 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 wrote:
| [flagged]
| delfinom wrote:
| NYT 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.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Good. 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 wrote:
| According 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.
| everdrive wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Same. 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.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > Walmart online is sometimes cheaper, but also sometimes
| more expensive. Makes it really hard to make the switch.
|
| I respect that you have to make decisions based on your own
| financial situation. For me, getting a few things for less
| money with the possibility that you might suddenly get hit
| with a big charge for something you didn't actually sign up
| for voluntarily is not worth it. To me it's like putting off
| fixing a car problem. You're saving money in the short term,
| but it could cause other much more expensive (or fatal)
| problems later. It's just too much risk for me. (But I have
| also been in a position where I had to put off a car fix
| because I simply didn't have the money. It absolutely
| sucked.)
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >I respect that you have to make decisions based on your
| own financial situation.
|
| Idk, I worked for a lot of companies, and I'm not sure any
| would pick the same product when its more expensive
| elsewhere under the fear of an unexpected charge that has
| never occurred before.
|
| I suppose I should be preparing for a volcano to emerge in
| the north east US too. :P
| z3c0 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I tried to confirm this with 3D printing filaments. Amazon
| is somehow cheaper than everywhere I looked.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I 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.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| 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.
| mindslight wrote:
| For 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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.
| ufish235 wrote:
| I think this is more of a "target the big fish first"
| situation.
| dboreham wrote:
| Try using the UK Amazon site if you want to see dark patterns for
| Prime subscription that are much worse than the US site has.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yeah, 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.
| johndhi wrote:
| This seems like a great use of FTC's time. Bravo. Wish more of
| the headlines about enforcement actions were the same.
| beardyw wrote:
| I'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.
| wand3r wrote:
| Tangential: 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 wrote:
| Even 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]
| burkaman wrote:
| FTC complaint:
| 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."
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > Amazon named that process "Iliad," which refers to Homer's
| epic about the long, arduous Trojan War.
|
| Wonder who allegorized as the customer for them, say Priam,
| Hector or Cassandra?
|
| The first two are of course slaughtered, while the last is
| merely enslaved, IIRC. So I'd bet on Cassandra.
| dcminter wrote:
| Some of the redactions are single words trivially inferred from
| context; what's with that?
| burkaman wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| E.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 wrote:
| it 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 wrote:
| Glad 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 wrote:
| I am very fond of the EU approach that says cancelling things
| should be just as easy as signing up for them.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I 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.
| refurb wrote:
| Interesting 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.
| adoxyz wrote:
| The 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.
| dghughes wrote:
| Here in Canad Canadian Tire was notorious for Rewards Card
| pressure sign you up right there. Even roaming sales people in
| suits pestering you right as you walked in the door and
| cashiers as you were paying.
|
| To cancel? You need to send in a letter via post. that may be
| changed but I'm guessing probably not.
|
| Oh and the rewards used to be 5% of cash purchases now it's
| 0.5% dismal. Just a glorified spam farm for your info.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Just a glorified spam farm for your info.
|
| To be fair, that's _all_ rewards /loyalty programs. But
| clearly, some are worse than others.
| frumper wrote:
| Sounds like a perfect job for PrimeGPT to write that for you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Can you use chatgpt to write that letter?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I disagree. I stopped using Amazon a couple of years ago and
| haven't missed it even a little bit. They're not
| substantially better than most others.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Would you mind listing a few alternatives you use? I
| generally try to avoid Amazon when I can, but have had
| problems finding a general good site.
|
| In case anyone is wondering what I use, here's a short
| list:
|
| Computer/electronics, I visit Newegg. (I haven't been
| thrilled with them moving into other areas like Auto parts,
| etc. but they seem alright for the time being.)
|
| Hardware or similar, I go with Tractor Supply Co, Home
| Depot, or Lowes.
|
| Music, I go with 7Digital.
|
| Car stuff, I have used NAPA in the past, but I hate that
| they don't store order history for over 1 year. Also, their
| search function is not great, and their selection is
| somewhat limited.
|
| General stuff, I've tried to use Walmart for stuff like
| pillows or sheets or whatever, but most of the stuff they
| offer is also offered by Amazon, and Amazon is usually
| stocked better and generally a few dollars cheaper. I've
| been weary of trying out sites like Aliexpress.
|
| It's frustrating because it seems like Amazon just
| generally has a larger selection than most other offerings
| out there. For more niche subjects, I feel like I have some
| reasonable options, but when it comes to more broad
| subjects, it feels like it's Amazon or nothing.
| adoxyz wrote:
| Honestly so many Amazon items are literally Aliexpress
| drop shipped items. For most results when you get a
| random brand name like XYZKA, DKSJD, etc. if you search
| for that product on Ali, you'll find it at 1/5th the cost
| and it's literally the same exact item.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It would be a long list. I buy from local stores rather
| than online whenever I can. If I can't, then I buy
| directly from the manufacturer of whatever it is I'm
| interested in buying.
|
| Except with electronic parts. For those, I typically go
| with Digikey. For electronic devices and computers, I go
| to a local recycler. They have what I need about 80% of
| the time.
|
| I've never had a situation where Amazon was the only
| option, and rarely a situation where it was the best
| option.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| DOP San Marzano tomatoes. Sometimes Amazon is the only
| place I can find them.
| dboreham wrote:
| Costco now has them.
| kevincox wrote:
| Have you tried searching for anything? They include any
| vaguely related product and support no negative search terms.
| Want a glass container, they are going to include dozens of
| products that don't contain any glass. Want a screw top
| bottle? They include product listings that don't contain the
| work screw or any synonyms. It is basically impossible to
| find specific objects. If you want a pack of clothes pins you
| are probably fine, but if you want a particular item with
| specific features it is useless.
|
| I'm also pretty sure there is no way not to get no results.
| They don't want to say "sorry we don't have that". Instead
| they give you infinite inaccurate results that you need to go
| through to confirm that.
| pwg wrote:
| Sadly, this has _always_ been how Amazon 's search has
| behaved. It has never been any good at all, unless you
| already knew a specific model number, in which case that
| might cause the first entry to be the actual thing you are
| looking for. But the results page is _always_ filled out,
| even if searching returned zero hits -- they just stuff
| something in front of you, because doing that to enough
| people will result in some percentage of them buying
| something from those bogus results.
| kevincox wrote:
| > because doing that to enough people will result in some
| percentage of them buying something
|
| Yeah, it might have improved things at first. But now I
| avoid Amazon because I don't want to have to wade though
| pages of results to find what I am looking for. So they
| probably shipped this with a temporary blip in sales but
| didn't consider the long-term effect.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I am both. It's still a frustrating experience and eventually
| shareholders will be negatively impacted.
| jwestbury wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This is exactly it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Isnt this the truth. I have no problem owning Apple and MSFT
| shares, but boy do I want to avoid their products!
| [deleted]
| Dwolb wrote:
| Slight 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Eventually 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.
| version_five wrote:
| I 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.
| 93po wrote:
| It's honestly not any more annoying than the shit groceries
| store do all the time, in my opinion.
| taeric wrote:
| That said, this isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the
| practices. :(
| version_five wrote:
| When 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| The motto "if a company wants me to do something it's probably
| not in my best interest" has served me really well.
| teeray wrote:
| It sure would be nice to have legislation mandating parity
| between sign up and cancellation. One-click signup? One-click
| cancel.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| That's basically how EU law works.
| omginternets wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| > what would be the first step to proposing such legislation?
|
| Several large donations to the re-election funds of various
| congress critters.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That'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 wrote:
| This 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/...
| dylan604 wrote:
| >This is depressing.
|
| I clearly don't have a cheery outlook on how congress
| operates, or the ethics of most businesses.
| fenilathome wrote:
| I cancelled it and I am really upset that it signed me up again.
| vmoore wrote:
| Hmm, 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.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Lol, 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 wrote:
| That'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.
| kmfrk wrote:
| I hope they do AWS billing next; good lord what a pain that is to
| turn off.
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| Dark patterns like this should be regulated. I'm tired of having
| to click through obfuscated menus to cancel subscriptions,
| notifications, and tracking.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Dark patterns like this should be regulated.
|
| If by "regulated", you mean that dark patterns should be
| prohibited, then I agree.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The 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.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Amazon 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 wrote:
| Or Amazon is great at recognizing where the profit margins are
| and staying away from low profit margin/high liability business
| areas.
| paul7986 wrote:
| I 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I 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.)
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I'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.
| 93po wrote:
| I had an interesting experience the other day where an item
| labeled "Prime" would have taken 10 days to arrive by their
| estimate.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm in PHX, and sometimes it's the same day, sometimes
| the next, sometimes a week later, despite saying 1-2 days on
| the order page. It's really kind of a crapshoot. I mean,
| there are grocery options here and most of the secondary
| services work too. I also happen to watch a few things on
| Prime Video (Jack Ryan, Reacher, The Boys, and Terminal List
| have all been very good). So it's been mostly worth it for
| me.
|
| The UX, and product reliability are a completely different
| thing. I won't by any Amazon Basics products ever again, and
| many technical products (USB Cables, Chargers, etc) are a
| total crapshoot unless you buy from known mfg and even then
| who knows for sure.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Now 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?
| taude wrote:
| Everyone talks about this drop-shipped garbage and fakes.
| But I have yet to see this. And I feel like I order a lot
| from Amazon. Every week our house is getting at least a
| couple packages.
|
| What kind of products people ordering that they're getting
| fakes? I've ordered a variety of books, art supplies,
| shoes, some tech like batteries and cable (typically from
| Anker store), coffee beans, some audio streamers, Legos,
| notebooks, stuff for pets, gardening supplies, etc...
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Taking some of your examples:
|
| Look up "pet sweaters". Resulting brands listed in order:
| Dxhycc, Fitwarm, ANIAC, Jecikelon, Queenmore.
|
| "Audio streamer": WiiM, Andover, iFi, Arylic, Douk,
| ACEMAX.
|
| "USB cable": Jelly tang, AINOPE, Ruaeoda, etguuds.
|
| I could go on, but you get the idea.
| taude wrote:
| Interesting. I think I typically must have specific
| things I'm looking for. Like for example, I probably
| wouldn't look up "pet sweaters", but WOULD look up
| something like "canada pooch dog sweater". Which, takes
| me past all the seo-ad-targeted junk.
|
| And now, the more I think about it, I'm typically using
| amazon's search for zeroing on something specific. I
| wouldn't even do "car charger for phone", but would do
| something like "Anker USB-C Charger for Pixel 6a".
|
| And likely, most items I'm going for I'd be referred to
| from a site, like America's Test Kitchen or something.
|
| In short, I guess I don't "search for discoverability" on
| Amazon at all, and that's how I stay out of their
| optimized mess.
|
| EDIT: I also don't really purchase things that aren't
| independently reviewed elsewhere, like using ATK for some
| kitchen items, etc...
| scrum-treats wrote:
| I would say, new "lows" are in store for Amazon. Amazon is
| now requiring customers to file police reports in order to
| have any chance at refunds now. Customer Service spews tons
| of lies, customers half-heartedly believe in good faith,
| and then get screwed. Customers then take to social media
| forums such as Reddit to request help and to vent. Instead
| they are met with Amazon employees who gaslight them
| further. Again, and again, and again. This new low appears
| to have ramped up in February/March 2023.
|
| Amazon's response? Let's not fix the underlying issues in
| the company. Instead, let's attack all other social media
| sites for "fake reviews":
|
| "Social media sites failing to curb 'cottage industry' of
| fake reviews, Amazon says"[1] (Sun 18 Jun 2023 12.27 EDT).
|
| You read that correctly. Amazon. Is accusing everyone else.
| Of failing to curb "cottage industry" of fake reviews.
| Hilariously sad. RIP Amazon.
|
| [1]https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/18/amazon-
| social-...
| taude wrote:
| Not to defend amazon, but at least in the US, they have a
| awesome return policy. It's even easy to just scan and
| drop-off at UPS/WF, etc...
| JohnFen wrote:
| I hear this, but it's hard for me to believe. I was a
| customer (in the US) for over 10 years, spending several
| thousands of dollars without an issue, but then -- on two
| different instances -- I needed their awesome return
| policy.
|
| In both cases, they completely stiffed me. That was the
| final straw that made me stop using Amazon.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| This is the new norm.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Amazon is now requiring customers to file police
| reports in order to have any chance at refunds now.
|
| This was the case 4 years ago. I don't think it's new.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| Oh, looks like Amazon's mods haven't set the
| r/amazonprime subreddit back to public (https://www.reddi
| t.com/r/SubredditMonitor/comments/14cpe0j/r...).
|
| Nevertheless, let me find a few examples.
|
| 16-Feb-2023: "Amazon making me file a police report after
| they delivered my neighbors package to my home."[1]
|
| 17-Feb-2023: "Delivery Issues"[2]
|
| 14-Feb-2023: "My item was marked as "delivered" but isn't
| actually here, contacted Amazon and they're asking for a
| police report"[3]
|
| 25-Jan-2023: "Amazon wants me to file a Police
| Report."[4]
|
| 24-Jan-2023: "Amazon is refusing to refund me for a
| missing item even after a police report. Has anyone else
| dealt with this and found a work around?"[5]
|
| [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/1147wmo/
| amazon...
|
| Title says it all. This is straight up BS.
|
| *Mon* - Delivery Day: Package Delivered, not my package
| it's my neighbors package so we walk it across the
| street. I chat with Amazon and let them know they
| delivered my neighbors package but listed it as mine. I
| am told search around my house and check my mailbox...
| you must wait till the following day after 6pm before you
| can contact us again.
|
| *Tues* - Contact them and this is where things should
| have been easy and I should have just asked for a refund.
| They ask do you want a refund or new item and I say I
| just want the item I ordered please. I am told in the
| next couple days wait for an email with the replacement
| order..
|
| *Today/Thur* - I chat with them and say I still haven't
| received an email and I am immediately greeted with
| [this](https://i.imgur.com/3m0W4hV.jpg). WTH I have never
| had an issue before what the hell is going on. I tried to
| give them my neighbors tracking ID on his package to say
| that's the package they delivered as "mine".
|
| Now I have filed a police report, got my credit card
| company involved and am waiting for answers. I cannot
| believe this, they are making it seem as if I CAUSED THIS
| TO HAPPEN.
|
| Needless to say I'm not happy. Just venting I've never
| been in this position before and this really ruins my
| experience going forward.
|
| [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/114korw/
| delive...
|
| [3]https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/112ovsg/
| my_ite...
|
| I came home from work on the 11th having seen my parcel
| as being marked as being "behind the wheelie bin". No
| photo attached though. As I went round the back to get
| it, I noticed that there wasn't any obvious parcel, I
| looked around there and back round the front of my house
| only to find there was no package. I spoke to my
| neighbours and my housemates to see if they'd seen anyone
| delivering from Amazon during the day, to which both
| parties said they hadn't even seen a van.
|
| I attempted to report this to amazon that day, and was
| told to wait until Tuesday 14th. I waited and came back
| to report it then, only to be told that there's nothing
| to be done and that I must file a police report if I wish
| to get my money back.
|
| So I call the non-emergency line (101) and explain to
| them what's happened. I'm told in no uncertain terms that
| a non-received parcel is NOT a police matter and for the
| amount of the items (1 item) missing (~PS50), it's too
| small for them to file a report anyway. I explained to
| Amazon that I don't even know if it's stolen so how can I
| report it as such and am told that until the item is
| physically in my possession, it remains the property of
| Amazon and if they believe it's been stolen then you need
| to file the report. The police told me it's more of a
| civil matter and my best chance would be letting my bank
| sort this as a dispute.
|
| Until I receive the parcel, it can't be stolen from me,
| and seeing as I don't have it, how can it have been
| stolen from me. Amazon have a sales contract to deliver
| the items I ordered to me. How is this not their issue to
| solve?
|
| Any suggestions?
|
| [4]https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/10kttvx/
| amazon...
|
| So i had ordered a couple of things off of amazon but
| when i received it i had only gotten one of my packages.
| I contacted customer support to ask for a refund or
| something and they told me i need to file a police report
| first because i guess i had already asked for a refund
| for a package that never showed up a while back. Never
| had this happen before, so do i just go and file a report
| and they'll refund me? Has anybody been through this
| before?
|
| [5]https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/10kcjan/
| amazon...
|
| I bought an IPhone 11 and case from Amazon (sold and
| shipped by them). Once the package arrived it only had
| the case/screen protector and no Phone. Support told me
| to wait a few days then they would help with a
| refund...but instead they told me the weight on the
| package was correct so they can't do anything until I
| filed a police report.
|
| So I go ahead file a police report, send Amazon the
| report and number of my local police and they're still
| refusing to refund me. Claiming there isn't enough proof
| of investigation. I just don't know what to do and I'd
| rather not charge back because ik amazon has a habit of
| closing down accounts after that.
| benfrancom wrote:
| I canceled my account recently for the same reason. The two
| day or same day shipping would never happen even though on
| the product it was advertised as such.
| dghughes wrote:
| > Sure it says 2-day shipping on the store page, but counting
| my past orders, 6/10 were delayed delivery, usually taking 5
| days.
|
| When I signed up the guarantee (if not then?) was three days.
| At first it was good for small town Canada. But then the
| bottom fell out. But now something may say ship time a week
| or two but the thing arrives four days later. They're all
| over the place. One may think incompetence but it's
| benefiting me.
|
| The other thing I hate it Prime Video more than once I've
| been two episodes from the end of a show and suddenly the
| show access is pulled. But oh look you can rent or buy it now
| for more $$$ on top of your subscription.
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| That'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 wrote:
| My 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.
| macNchz wrote:
| The 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.
| superkuh wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| What'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
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| As 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| That's a direct result of this lawsuit.
|
| > Under substantial pressure from the Commission, Amazon
| changed its Iliad cancellation process in or about April
| 2023, shortly before the filing of this Complaint.
|
| - page 43,
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-
| pu...
| devnullbrain wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| If you just cancelled, you saw improvements they made as a
| result of FTC pressure. Before April 2023 the process was
| much more difficult.
| baloki wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| 1-2 shipping is all that's keeping me aboard
| burkaman wrote:
| The 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-pu...
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Also 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.
| david_allison wrote:
| Direct page link (most in-browser PDF readers support
| #page=43)
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/amazon-rosca-
| pu...
| burkaman wrote:
| Thanks, I guess that works in Firefox too
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Disclosure: 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.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| Yeah the internal codenames in engineering aren't
| malicious, i.e Apollo makes sense. But a project name? Na,
| that's picked intentionally.
| burkaman wrote:
| I 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-
| 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| [deleted]
| ncr100 wrote:
| I 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$$.
| HuhWhatMeansYou wrote:
| [dead]
| x3874 wrote:
| ...you can use your 'local' AZ account for other countries, which
| i was used to, so i assumed Prime would work like that too -
| nope, that is bound to only the specific store you subscribed at.
| And they couldn't (wouldn't) transfer it.
|
| Just used the free trial to get something in time before i left
| another country, and nicely wasted some $$ because i wasn't aware
| they will refund you for every remaining month.
| tracker1 wrote:
| IMO, 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 wrote:
| Good 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.
| loeg wrote:
| FTC press release direct link: https://www.ftc.gov/news-
| events/news/press-releases/2023/06/...
| JohnFen wrote:
| Is 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.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Whole account or just prime?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Now that you mention it, just Prime. I couldn't figure out
| how to cancel the entire account. Instead, I removed the
| payment method and have just been ignoring the account's
| existence.
| Pooge wrote:
| Is it just me or is Reader Mode completely broken on this
| website?
| burkaman wrote:
| The Firefox reader view button works normally for me, if that's
| what you mean
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I'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.
| samstave wrote:
| heh, 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.
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