The buttons were jumping around. Sometimes the left one was for cancelling, sometimes the right one, sometimes it was a few centimeters lower.
I love my Kindle, but without that my Amazon account itself would be in real danger.
I no longer shop from Amazon. The more we accept these kind of indignities, the more they will be forced on us. Let them starve, that's the most powerful message one can send.
Edit / More data points:
- One more trick up their sleeve: they will default to two-day paid shipping even when you have free shipping available, just so that you'll feel the pain (i.e. the 'worth') of Prime every time you have to pay attention in the last page, and check the right 'free shipping' radio box for every shipment in your order.
- For me, the last thing that broke the camel's back was that they were specifically sending shipments to arrive on the last day of the shipment window. As a real example, I ordered a display on Jan 7 to arrive between Jan 14 and Jan 18. They shipped it Jan 17. This is what made me notice this, and it made me look at my past orders. Turns out, they have been doing this consistently, for a while.
The purpose of a shipping window is to allow for some slack in the case shipment gets delayed, it is for shipment. If they shipped it a few days before the window, that would be fine. If they shipped it right at the beginning of the window, that would still (arguably) be fine. If you ship in a way that is aiming for as late as possible delivery, that's pretty obvious what you're trying to do.
If you're not a Prime customer, your orders might arrive as late as they can make it. They are likely doing this on purpose.
For example, I've gotten multiple 1 month free trials, and also the '1 week for 1.99' which you can immediately cancel after placing your order for a $1 refund (if you immediately cancel, not at end of the week).
I don't shop at Amazon often, but I've gotten many (read: > 10) Prime shipments over the last year, probably paying a grand total of $3 or so.
If I don't have any good Prime offers upon checkout, I'll go to Ebay, find the product, soft by lowest price, and it's usually the same price, or within a dollar or so, and ships a LOT faster than Amazon.com's standard shipping (usually ends up coming from Amazon anyways proxied by the Ebay seller with Prime).
I've gone through the Amazon cancellation pages many times. They always keep tweaking it and expanding the process.
Now it's more like prime shipping means at least 3 business days. My last order was on Wednesday but I was told it would be here Monday unless I wanted to pay extra.
I'm getting rid of old computers, phones, and routers on eBay. Dealing with that is therapeutic but it makes it really tempting to cancel Amazon Prime just to raise barriers to accumulating stuff.
Here's screenshots over time:
2017: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/819409073590308864
2016: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/765560428663443456 <- the worst
2013: https://twitter.com/troyd/status/394173352199196674
All of these activate a recurring subscription fee. You can see the fee go from barely mentioned (2013) to as little disclosure as possible (2016, 2017). The 2016 version is so intentionally deceptive that it inspired a discussion among friends whether, if we were asked to implement something like this by an employer or client, we'd quit instead of doing it. The easy consensus was yes, both because it's beneath our ethics and because it destroys long-term value for the employer.
I'd love to hear how this came to be within Amazon, let alone how it got approved, kept, and made worse. Somewhere inside Amazon, there's a two-pizza team of developers implementing this value destruction.
I got the first two months free (Amazon.de), and at the end of the trial, when I wanted to cancel, they added a month for free, and I accepted the free month. My card was charged regardless and I had to email them to cancel it finally with no option to cancel at the end of this extended trial.
Not because I was thinking "wow, I've saved so much money".
But because I was thinking "wow, I'm buying too much stuff".
But the "In the last year" section of your account's order list is pretty much the same.
Those pesky engineers tried to charge me on my first post-prime purchase by giving me a $5.99 shipping charge. I was shocked! I knew the item said free shipping available. I checked other options (which were hidden behind a button), and lo and behold there was a free shipping option.
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