FTC sues Amazon for tricking customers into signing up for Prime | Hacker News Reader

FTC sues Amazon for tricking customers into signing up for Prime

theverge.com

16 pointsrntn6 comments

I cancelled Amazon Prime a couple of months ago and have made a couple of purchases since. I'm not sure how they can people are tricked into signing up for it. I would say brow beaten is a better word since you have to click like three prompts basically stating you're some kind of freak who doesn't want the convenience of Prime and its many benefits.

It took me something like two years of attempts to actually cancel Amazon Prime from their dark patterns. They also include brow beating you on possible money "lost" if you cancel because many of their pages have a dark pattern of suggesting they offer no refunds or prorating, especially if you are cancelling the same day of an automatic payment.

(It turns out that do actually refund it, otherwise in my second attempt I would have considered taking it to a lawyer and/or the BBB. It's still disgusting that they make you click through a bunch of "are you sure, you probably won't get a refund?" text before that.)

Yeah, I hate Amazon but I do think personal responsibility is really lacking. FTC should focus on making cancellations easier and mandatory. I am evaluating privacy.com because of some bad experiences with this factor. Privacy.com uses Plaid which I dont really want to allow so any suggestions of temporary cards are welcome.

Anyway, I also recently signed up for prime because I got a gift card and it didnt seem "tricky". I do hate dark patterns though which Amazon has a lot of. Frankly, things like this lawsuit are just a boon for lawyers. How much would i get back on a few months of $14 charges?

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36418713

What I'd really like would be for them to decouple the shopping/delivery of goods side of things from the streaming stuff, both music and tv/movies.

I have no use for their streaming stuff but have no option to not pay for it if I want the deliveries.

For fun comparison, my experience was the opposite. Somewhere in the height of everything going on in 2020 I realized I'd not had a package delivered that was Prime qualified in more than a year. In 2020 and trying 'never' to leave the house!

I was still using a few things like Twitch benefits and the random video streaming (though I was upset at their cancelling shows I enjoyed and paying a lot of money for shows I disliked). With new seasons of a couple shows I haven't seen I'd almost pay a month for just video streaming here or there, but the dark patterns when I cancelled have made me feel like I don't expect to ever sign up for Prime again.

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