In the six-year time frame established in the settlement, anyone who \u201cunsuccessfully attempted\u201d to cancel their Prime subscription online is eligible to get paid up to $51 from Amazon. People who signed up for Prime during that same period can also get up to $51 if they signed up through a \u201cchallenged enrollment flow\u201d\u2014a page with a confusing interface that may lead to people inadvertently making a purchase. Previous court filings established that in some cases, some users may have selected \u201ctwo-day shipping\u201d on an item and not realized that, in doing so, they were also signing up for Amazon Prime.<\/p>\n
An FTC spokesperson tells WIRED that automatic payments will go out to some customers within 90 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rest of eligible consumers will receive a notification from Amazon, and will have the opportunity to submit a simple claim form,\u201d the FTC says. \u201cAmazon is required to post information about this to Amazon.com and the app. The settlement also requires Amazon to have an independent third party who will monitor their compliance with these claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court filing says that Amazon is also \u201cpermanently\u201d barred from structuring Prime sign-ups with a confusing \u201cnegative option feature\u201d where a customer is assumed to be making a purchase unless they actively refuse it.<\/p>\n
For example, the filing says, a button that reads \u201cNo thanks, I don\u2019t want free shipping\u201d does not clearly indicate that a customer will be signed up for Prime unless they click it. Amazon also has to make it obvious when a person is choosing to sign up for Prime, and include language like \u201cJoin Prime\u201d in its user interface. Similarly, Amazon has to clearly communicate when a Prime subscription is subject to auto-renewals by using words like \u201crenew.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initial complaint, which was filed by the FTC in June 2023, alleged that while Amazon had improved its process for canceling Prime memberships, the company had spent years knowingly complicating the cancellation process.<\/p>\n
An attachment on a May 7 court filing includes an email chain with Amazon employees from December 2020, which was described as \u201cprivileged and confidential\u201d in the subject line. In the email, a manager of Prime content and marketing paraphrased key points that came up in a recent \u201cUS prime performance meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSubscription is driving a bit of a shady world,\u201d reads one paraphrased quote, attributed to an unnamed person at the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should lean away from experimenting with sign-up clarity, and focus more on driving overall members and increasing confirmation that you are prime,\u201d reads a different paraphrased quote from another person at the meeting, included in the same attachment.<\/p>\n
A different attachment shows that Amazon was aware that customers were frustrated. A company slide presentation dated September 17, 2017, focused specifically on customer service complaints about \u201cunintentional\u201d Prime sign-ups. (A different attachment, which includes an email chain dated September 25, 2017, appears to refer to the presentation. Two dozen people were asked to \u201cdelete the PowerPoint document\u201d and send \u201cconfirmation\u201d once they had.)<\/p>\n
One customer complaint in the presentation claims that they were \u201ctricked\u201d into signing up for a free trial for Amazon Prime when they selected two-day shipping on a purchase, not knowing that this would also sign them up for a trial for Prime.<\/p>\n
\u201cI DO NOT LIKE YOUR SERVICE,\u201d reads another complaint. \u201cTHIS IS CRAP THAT I ORDERED A PRODUCT IN AMAZON ADS [sic] ME TO A PROGRAM WITH AUTO BILLING THAT I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR. I WILL NOT USE AMAZON AND TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS TYPE OF CRAP YOU ARE PULLING.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIT IS SNEAKY AND BLOODY DISHONEST FORCING SOMETHING THE [sic] I NEVER WANTED,\u201d reads another complaint.<\/p>\n
The same Amazon slide presentation noted that confusing Prime sign-ups were leading to an increased burden on Amazon\u2019s customer service workers, as well as a \u201closs of customer trust.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the six-year time frame established in the settlement, anyone who \u201cunsuccessfully attempted\u201d to cancel their Prime subscription…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[960,28,107797,56364,168,7600,74592],"class_list":["post-182605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-business","tag-dark-patterns","tag-ftc","tag-google","tag-retail","tag-subscriptions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}