PowderhornAmazon named its “labyrinthine” Prime cancellation process after Homer’s Iliad
‘Leigh 🏳️⚧️I feel certain they’ll settle this suit for a tiny fraction of the extra money they “earned” using this anti-consumer strategy.
I mean this for real: I had an easier time cancelling a gym membership than I did a Prime membership. 🤦♀️
MidnitteHopefully the FTC's leader doesn't settle for that.
Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox
Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space.
thepiggzIt’s weird that we as a society don’t hold major corporations to a higher standard than this. So many unprincipled practices designed to inflate numbers.
The only way to make the world a better place is to gut the government agencies that hold businesses back from their true potential!
TheRtRevKaiser.... /s?
I figured the context provided that. 🙂
The internet has completely ruined my sarcasm detector. For every completely unhinged satirical opinion there's somebody out there who will express it with complete sincerity, and it can be impossible to tell. That's Poe's Law for you...
I've had the luxury of only seeing what hasn't been removed by mods here, and I've reset my baseline for Beehaw comments accordingly. I can hit people over the head with satire if need be, but it's neither as effective nor fun as being subtle.
It's hard to do that when the people that can make those decisions are paid by the corporations.
I do subscribe only one month at a time if I actually need something from prime, so I have to cancel very often. It always cracks me up how they're wording it like you're losing all your human rights if you unsubscribe lol.
MeowdyPardnerI also used to cancel often, I would accept 30 day trials and then immediately schedule cancellation for the end (it's really nice that they actually let you do that instead of making you wait until just before the end). They just kept offering 30 day trials so I kept doing that. Nowadays I use ebay as much as possible first, and accept 30 day trials if offered when I have to resort to Amazon. To help make up for it I always make sure to use the included twitch prime sub on a streamer I like, also surprising that prime trials include a twitch prime sub.
suslordBack in the day you could get the one month free trial on repeat just using burner emails, they didn't attach it to any payment info. I'm actually amazed at how long they overlooked that for, but I had free prime for like a year cause of it.
holo_nexusJust cancelled prime a few days ago and yea it was a pain. I love all the small shady crap like using a grey text box for the “cancel membership” button and the blue one for “resume membership” followed by another page full of reasons why you shouldn’t cancel and double checking to make sure you know your losing the benefits. I swear it might’ve been a total of 4-5 pages.
Side note, more companies need to be held accountable for this as well. There are a lot of streaming services that do the same thing.
cydShouldn't it have been the Odyssey? By the time you unsubscribe, ten years have passed, nobody recognizes you, and your wife is fending off suitors.
Homer warned against letting your wife set up an OnlyFans.
cygnusYeah, Iliad makes no sense in this context. It's long but straightforward.
I’ve got quite a few bones to pick with Amazon but canceling Prime isn’t one of them. Compared to calling a customer representative who barely speaks my language after being on hold for an eternity, Amazon is straightforward and easy.
marcoI kinda agree, yes, they used dark patterns to make fewer people cancel, but many companies do worse, like make you pick up the phone. And they don't trick people into signing up - people sign up for the free trial willingly and knowingly.
Than being said, I agree that companies need to be reigned in. Consumer protection in the US is severely behind.
I cancelled months ago, but they never cut me off from the streaming or prime shipping. I've checked multiple times to make sure I'm not being charged, and so far so good.
Did you pay by yearly subscription? Might just be you already paid for the next several months until it expires, and just won't renew the next billing cycle.
Otherwise that sounds like a bug that benefits you haha
Did you pay by yearly subscription? Might just be you already paid for the next several months until it expires, and just won't renew the next billing cycle.
Otherwise that sounds like a bug that benefits you haha
I did, but I cancelled before the next year so who knows what's going on. For a while I wondered if maybe there's few enough people canceling that it was cheaper just to let them keep the service rather than hire someone to code the thing to remove them.
n-gonsI've quit several times just by writing with a complaint to customer support, never even attempted the normal route...
Is it the same in Europe ? I feel like with the different regulations, they might also get sued there.
I'm not on Europe, I'm in South america, but if I wanted to cancel prime, the only thing I need to do is to go to subscription on the settings and click a button, that's it. So this could be a US only nightmare.
I'm gonna shill a little: just use Revolut.
I keep it empty, then when I want to actually pay for the subscription I top it up and retry the payment manually.
hazel 🤷🏻♀️🏳️🌈I liked Louis Rossman's take on the FTC's actions. https://youtu.be/9_uMnVjxsHY