It’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!
… /s?
I figured the context provided that. 🙂
Ha, 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.
It does seem our non-corporate leaders rarely behave like principled people as well. Though many of us regular folk often fall into that pattern as well. Perhaps they do represent us quite well. I imagine a more principled society in general.
Shouldn’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.
Yeah, Iliad makes no sense in this context. It’s long but straightforward.
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. 🤦♀️
Hopefully the FTC’s leader doesn’t settle for that.
So when companies pay $10MM but it’s lol me the average consumer paying a $15 fine. Yep.
Just 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.
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.
I 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.
Back 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.
Actually, if you’re using those for shipping–which is the only thing about Prime I’m interested in given how much I distrust and dislike Amazon–I accidentally discovered an even easier way to exploit them.
If you add something to your cart, then go to check out, you can accept the free Prime period, select Prime shipping, then remove the free Prime trial from your shopping cart before you pay and it will just…keep the Prime shipping on the order.
The first time I did this I was convinced I had fucked something up because I went to cancel my free trial after the item I bought had been delivered and instead of having the option to cancel I was given the option to start another free trial. The second time it happened is when I caught on that I was on to something, and I then tested it again and it just…worked. I’m sure they’ll fix it eventually, andit’s probably totally useless if you like other parts of Prime, but if you want free 1- or 2-day shipping on an order, well then this worked for me as of my last order about two weeks ago.
Great way to ensure someone builds a habit of using your site and monetizing them after a slow drip.
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
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.
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
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 just cancelled mine and noticed that on the app it’s really easy to find, but when you click on it it gives you an error without an explanation. Then when you open Amazon in a browser (where you can cancel without the error) it’s much harder to find. Definitely deliberate.
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.
I 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.
That being said, I agree that companies need to be reined in. Consumer protection in the US is severely behind.
I’ve quit several times just by writing with a complaint to customer support, never even attempted the normal route…
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.
I liked Louis Rossman’s take on the FTC’s actions. https://youtu.be/9_uMnVjxsHY