[The US] is seeking a court order to force Amazon to change its practices, as well as financial penalties in an unspecified amount.
If the penalties are not the slap on the wrist they usually are then this could be interesting. It probably will end in a settlement of for an ammount equivalent to cost of doing bussiness for Amazon.
Can anyone with an amazon account/subscription confirm the proccess is really that tedious? I’m kind of curious now.
Can anyone with an amazon account/subscription confirm the proccess is really that tedious? I’m kind of curious now.
Yeah, I’ve cancelled multiple times here and there for various reasons and every time it requires me looking up how via a search engine, discovering it’s changed AGAIN, and digging around for anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour in an attempt to figure out which menu option(s) it’s hidden behind THIS time.
Currently, while signed in, if I go to accounts & lists, account, Prime (which has “manage your membership” as a listed option), I can:
“See all my prime benefits” which takes me to a page which lists all of the stuff I get with a link to each option. Clicking any link (say, prime video) takes you to that subsection of amazon as though you were about to use it. No management options. Backing out of that, further down I can:
Look at a list of five prime video options that I might want to add to my watchlist.
Look at my prime membership benefits, this time on the same page and presented with a quirky little submenu of blocks. No option to manage anything, even when clicking on “More” (that gives me amazon photos!)
See Popular Help Topics
Share my Prime Benefits (Manage your Household), which only lets you invite someone who must live with you to use your prime benefits. Presumably if I had invited anyone I could also remove them here.
Explore Prime Reading
Back to top
Okay, let’s try Popular Help Topics…
Recommended Topics
Where's my stuff
Shipping and Delivery
Returns, Refunds and Product Support
Managing Your Account
Security & Privacy
Payment, Pricing and Promotions
Devices & Digital Solutions
Amazon Business Accounts
Large Items and Heavy-Bulky Services
Other topics & Help sites
Okay, let’s try “Managing Your Account” — …seems like that’d be the right spot…
Cancel Items or Orders
Unknown Charges
View Your Gift Card Balance
Request the Closure of Your Account and the Deletion of Your Personal Information
Use Login with Amazon
Change Your Order Information
Nope, nothing about cancelling Prime there, either.
Let’s click on “More in Managing Your Account”
Hrm:
Popular Topics
Where's My Stuff?
Unknown Charges
\ >> Amazon Prime <<
Let’s try that.
The following are some of the benefits of Amazon Prime.
…nope.
Oh wait, over on the left there under “Quick Solutions”, it says:
Manage Prime
Cancel or view benefits
Let’s try that!
Nope, that took me back up to the page that says “check out what’s included in your prime membership”, the same page I got to when I clicked “Prime” under “Account”.
Wait, here’s something about PAUSING my membership over on the left side.
That takes me to a help article.
“You can pause and resume your membership in the Membership Management section on Prime Central.”
Great work writing all this out, thank you. This sounds comparable to the process you have to go through with the scammiest of subscriptions, the kind that you get into by clicking agree on something else that includes it in 2pt font. Worthy of the dark patter title at a minimum. I hope something comes of this lawsuit. Ideally including an actually sizable fine but at the very least a change in this nightmare of a process.
Yes it is incredibly tedious and confusing. Now that my prime membership is canceled, Amazon keeps trying to trick me into rejoining multiple times throughout the checkout process.
If the penalties are not the slap on the wrist they usually are then this could be interesting. It probably will end in a settlement of for an ammount equivalent to cost of doing bussiness for Amazon.
Can anyone with an amazon account/subscription confirm the proccess is really that tedious? I’m kind of curious now.
Yeah, I’ve cancelled multiple times here and there for various reasons and every time it requires me looking up how via a search engine, discovering it’s changed AGAIN, and digging around for anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour in an attempt to figure out which menu option(s) it’s hidden behind THIS time.
Currently, while signed in, if I go to accounts & lists, account, Prime (which has “manage your membership” as a listed option), I can:
“See all my prime benefits” which takes me to a page which lists all of the stuff I get with a link to each option. Clicking any link (say, prime video) takes you to that subsection of amazon as though you were about to use it. No management options. Backing out of that, further down I can:
Look at a list of five prime video options that I might want to add to my watchlist.
Look at my prime membership benefits, this time on the same page and presented with a quirky little submenu of blocks. No option to manage anything, even when clicking on “More” (that gives me amazon photos!)
See Popular Help Topics
Share my Prime Benefits (Manage your Household), which only lets you invite someone who must live with you to use your prime benefits. Presumably if I had invited anyone I could also remove them here.
Explore Prime Reading
Back to top
Okay, let’s try Popular Help Topics…
Okay, let’s try “Managing Your Account” — …seems like that’d be the right spot…
Cancel Items or Orders
Unknown Charges
View Your Gift Card Balance
Request the Closure of Your Account and the Deletion of Your Personal Information
Use Login with Amazon
Change Your Order Information
Nope, nothing about cancelling Prime there, either.
Let’s click on “More in Managing Your Account”
Hrm:
Popular Topics
\ >> Amazon Prime <<
Let’s try that.
The following are some of the benefits of Amazon Prime.
…nope.
Oh wait, over on the left there under “Quick Solutions”, it says:
Manage Prime Cancel or view benefits
Let’s try that!
Nope, that took me back up to the page that says “check out what’s included in your prime membership”, the same page I got to when I clicked “Prime” under “Account”.
Wait, here’s something about PAUSING my membership over on the left side.
That takes me to a help article.
“You can pause and resume your membership in the Membership Management section on Prime Central.”
Cool, let’s try that. (It’s at: https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime in case nobody wants to jump through hoops)
From there, I can click “Manage my Membership”.
Oops, that took me back to that same first page again.
Okay, back to help, let’s try to search for “cancel prime”. Nothing.
Okay, let’s go to cancel orders.
Ooh, down there on the cancel orders page is Related Topics: Cancel your Prime Membership.
That, finally, has a link: https://www.amazon.com/mm/pipeline/cancellation
THAT lets me actually cancel it, after nagging me to keep it first.
Great work writing all this out, thank you. This sounds comparable to the process you have to go through with the scammiest of subscriptions, the kind that you get into by clicking agree on something else that includes it in 2pt font. Worthy of the dark patter title at a minimum. I hope something comes of this lawsuit. Ideally including an actually sizable fine but at the very least a change in this nightmare of a process.
Yes it is incredibly tedious and confusing. Now that my prime membership is canceled, Amazon keeps trying to trick me into rejoining multiple times throughout the checkout process.
I can really only confirm that it’s auto setup to renew, I haven’t tried canceling.