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Comment by kwanbix | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is shitty in a million ways, but asking for confirmation (once more IIRC) if you want to cancel Prime is far from a dark pathern IMHO.

You just need to read the question and press the right button.

The problem is that we have forgoten how to read and we just press buttons nilly willy.

I have moved to 3 countries and each time I cancelled prime, and I have never had any problems.

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With respect, did you not read the part about being unable to cancel until 48 hours or less until the subscription renewal day? That's a clear dark pattern, with only one obvious motive: making the process more difficult.

Is this still the case ? Or is this a US only thing ? I cancelled prime without this clause but I'm not in the US.

Thats not what the UI shows. You can click on the second button that says cancel now and it will cancel. The remind me later is the primary button but you can still cancel right away. Don’t have to wait until 48 hours before renewal.

I recall having an option to do it like that.

But it was one of the options. You can cancel right away.

When I went through it a few years ago, the buttons and explanations were very clearly written in such a way as to make it appear that immediate cancellation would strip access to benefits immediately, without any mention of the possibility of prorated refund.

This is obviously very unnappealing if you pay annually and have months left, making the “Remind me 3 days before the next billing cycle” button seem like the only reasonable option… which is the whole point, since surely a large percentage of people who want to cancel will miss the reminder and get charged for another year.

A customer friendly design would offer two buttons: lose access immediately and get a refund for unused time, or disable auto renewal and lose access at the end of the billing period. There is no reason to have the “Remind Me” option unless your goal is to cause a portion of your intending-to-cancel users to renew by accident.

Again, we cancelled 3 times me, and 2 times my wife (we opened accounts in France and Spain while in Germany), without any problems whatsoever.

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