{"id":25705,"date":"2023-06-21T20:42:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T00:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/amazon-allegedly-duped-people-into-subscribing-to-prime-and-made-it-nearly-impossible-to-cancel-heres-how-the-feds-say-they-did-it\/"},"modified":"2023-06-21T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T00:42:07","slug":"amazon-allegedly-duped-people-into-subscribing-to-prime-and-made-it-nearly-impossible-to-cancel-heres-how-the-feds-say-they-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=25705","title":{"rendered":"Amazon allegedly duped people into subscribing to Prime and made it nearly impossible to cancel. Here\u2019s how the feds say they did it."},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"js-article__body\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-sbid=\"WP-MKTW-0002196808\" role=\"document\">\n<p>Amazon.com became one of the biggest companies on the planet on the back of its Amazon Prime program, signing up over 200 million subscribers around the world and charging $139 a year in the U.S. <\/p>\n<p>But the Federal Trade Commission says the program was built around \u201cmanipulative tactics,\u201d that duped millions of those customers into subscribing to a program that the company also made nearly impossible to cancel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"paywall\">\n<p>The charges contained in a civil complaint filed on Wednesday in federal court in Seattle, allege that the tactics were not a bug but a calculated feature of Amazon\u2019s sales system. The complaint alleges that Amazon executives were told of ways to make the sign-up process less underhanded, but chose to keep them the way they were to not \u201cnegatively impact Amazon\u2019s bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,\u201d said FTC Chair Lina Khan. \u201cThese manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, Amazon<br \/>\n        AMZN,<br \/>\n        <bg-quote field=\"percentchange\" format=\"0,000.00%\" channel=\"\/zigman2\/quotes\/210331248\/composite\" class=\"negative\">-0.76%<\/bg-quote><br \/>\n       said the FTC lawsuit is misguided and inaccurate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe FTC\u2019s claims are false on the facts and the law. The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership.\u201d the company said. \u201cAs with all our products and services, we continually listen to customer feedback and look for ways to improve the customer experience, and we look forward to the facts becoming clear as this case plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The complaint is heavily redacted by a judge, but what is visible gives an illuminating view into Amazon\u2019s thinking and details several\u00a0 ways in which the company allegedly took advantage of its customers:<\/p>\n<h2>Subscribers are king<\/h2>\n<p>For Amazon, boosting Amazon Prime subscriber numbers was the name of the game, simply because Prime subscribers spend more on the site than non-subscribers.<\/p>\n<p>A subscription gives customers free shipping on most products bought on the site, plus access to a broad slate of streaming content. A subscription costs $14.99 a month in the U.S. and brings in $25 billion in revenue to the company annually.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Throughout the checkout process, Amazon attempted to \u201cupsell\u201d customers on subscribing to Prime, sometimes in ways that the FTC says were sneaky and misleading.<\/p>\n<h2>Confusing pop-ups and tabs<\/h2>\n<p>Any customer looking to buy something on Amazon who was not already a Prime subscriber, would find themselves bombarded with multiple pop-ups and split-screen tabs that would advertise the benefits of the program, the complaint stated. <\/p>\n<p>The approach varied on mobile and desktop, but the FTC alleged that the intent was to get the buyer to sign up, either by convincing them of the benefits of the program or confusing them into pressing the wrong button.<\/p>\n<p>What was buried deep in the fine print, was that the subscription would automatically renew unless the customer canceled.<\/p>\n<h2>The Iliad<\/h2>\n<p>Canceling Amazon Prime proved to be a Sisyphean task, for anyone attempting it, the FTC alleged. The process was so complicated and labyrinthine, that Amazon used the term the \u201cIliad\u201d to describe it, referring to Homer\u2019s epic poem detailing the 10-year-long Trojan war, the FTC said.  According to the FTC,  the Iliad flow forced people \u201cto navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process.\u201d By contrast, the FTC noted,  customers could enroll in Prime with one or two clicks. <\/p>\n<p>Additionally, while Amazon customers could sign up for Prime using any device from their Kindle to their television, they could only cancel using their desktop computers, mobile phones or by calling customer service.  <\/p>\n<h2>Dark patterns<\/h2>\n<p>The FTC says Amazon heavily used so-called dark patterns to manipulate customers into unknowingly signing up for subscriptions. Dark patterns refer to certain aspects of how a web page is designed that are purposely intended to confuse users and get them to do things or sign up for things they didn\u2019t intend to. <\/p>\n<p>Many of the details of how this allegedly worked exactly was contained in the redacted sections of the FTC\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n<h2>They knew<\/h2>\n<p>The FTC\u2019s complaint says that many key Amazon executives were well aware of how deceptive some of these practices were. At times, Amazon\u2019s programmers suggested ways to lessen how confusing some of the features were in order to reduce the number of unknowing sign-ups, but were told to do nothing so as not to affect the company\u2019s bottom line, the complaint stated. <\/p>\n<p>The FTC also alleged that Amazon only recently made changes to ease the process of cancellation after the agency had begun its investigation and the company became aware that the civil action was coming.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/amazon-allegedly-duped-people-into-subscribing-to-prime-and-made-it-nearly-impossible-to-cancel-heres-how-they-did-it-83b25a7a?mod=personal-finance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon.com became one of the biggest companies on the planet on the back of its Amazon Prime program, signing up over 200 million subscribers around the world and charging $139 a year in the U.S. But the Federal Trade Commission says the program was built around \u201cmanipulative tactics,\u201d that duped millions of those customers into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-25705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Amazon allegedly duped people into subscribing to Prime and made it nearly impossible to cancel. Here\u2019s how the feds say they did it. | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amazon.com became one of the biggest companies on the planet on the back of its Amazon Prime program, signing up over 200 million subscribers around the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=25705\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Amazon allegedly duped people into subscribing to Prime and made it nearly impossible to cancel. 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