Amazon is trying to trick me into signing up for Prime services | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is trying to trick me into signing up for Prime services

theguardian.com

Amazon really is the worst. I feel like some of their practices are probably outright forbidden in the EU. They often offer me a one month free trial of Prime, which I accept. I then cancel the free trial immediately, so that I don't forget about it. To cancel, I have to go through multiple screens, and they suggest that I should cancel towards the end of my free month instead of now, even though it doesn't seem to make a difference (I still keep prime till the end of the month, even if I cancel right away).

Oh yeah, really the worst, trying to retain a customer after offering them free service for a month! The outrage!

I miss the times when retaining customers meant providing really good value and customer service. I think there was at least a time in which Amazon would’ve agreed. Maybe not…

I remember once, what like 15 years ago or something, I got an email from some business that I was subscribed to that I’ve been unsubscribed and refunded some money as they see I’m not using the service I signed up for or maybe forgot about it and that I should reach out to them if I’m still interested.

Can’t even imagine that happening in this day and age. In fact big companies probably covet this demographic (subscribe and forget) and go to great lengths to secure them in their webs.

I really got moved just by reading this. Honesty is so rare these days. I can easily imagine if it happened today, the person responsible for that would be both fired and sued by the company for acting against its best interests.

Slack used to (still does?) credit unused licences to your account, people that have have a license provisioned but haven’t used the product during the billing period.

At certain size the customer is shareholder.

Amazon was an amazing bookstore in the early 00s.

It's not just 'offered'. It's stuffed in your face at every opportunity like a Jehovah's witness you can't get rid of. They're also trying to trick you in signing up.

Nothing wrong with trying to retain a customer.

Being deceptive, misleading, unclear, and using dark patterns is the thing that Amazon is being criticized for. So much so the FTC is suing them over it https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/...

But they're already a customer, just a customer without a subscription.

> their practices are probably outright forbidden in the EU.

The laws are very much for small and medium business only. The whales get individual treatment based on how well they can grease the wheels so to speak.

I think it does make a difference if you cancel later. They're hoping you'll forget to cancel.

they are not taking chances. They know that on average most people will forget.

And it’s hilariously difficult to cancel. Didn’t they name their adversarial cancellation flow “The Odyssey”?

I have seen worse. some years ago Microsoft let you subscribe in a few mins to xbox live but cancelling required calling a call center with long wait times.

They actually will refund the last month if you haven't used it which is surprisingly non-shitty considering the slew of sneaky tricks to get you into it in the first place. And they do at least have the option of "remind before renewal".

Surprised they allow you to keep the remainder of the trial. Other companies cut you off the moment you disable the subscription, which shows that they basically bank on you forgetting about it.

I recently started getting ads on NextDoor about this $19 cleaning of my home. When looking through the app you basically discover that they enroll you in a $49 / month subscription.

So not only to they take a cut of the cleaning person you contract, they are rent-seekers behind the scenes.

Part of my internet hygiene is to close my Amazon account every year, and sign up again under different details (those that make sense). Around five years ago back there was a spate of articles about Amazon's 'surprisingly' bad security. Maybe they have improved lately, but I'd just as soon not have years of data stored under one live Amazon account.

As for 'Prime', I assume it is a bad deal, solely based on how desperately Amazon pushes it. If a company like Amazon is this ridiculously aggressive for me to do something, there's no way I'm getting the long end of the stick.

I do the same. Maybe not every year, but I am on my 5th Amazon account. But the last time I created one, I was immediately banned and asked to provide a lot of documents to confirm my identity. That's a bad sign.

I think Prime is a psychological system designed to make you buy more and pay for the privilege, and that most people would be significantly better off without it both financially and psychologically.

Having Amazon Prime is like being on a diet and eating at an all you can eat buffet.

If you can stick to your guns it is convenient having your food ready for you quick and easy (getting fast free shipping), but after a while you have to stop and ask yourself if you're not wasting that money on the food you're not eating and paying more for the buffet than you would for food that fits your diet (paying for $95/yr for "free" shipping if you don't use it.)

No kidding. Dark patterns: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/...

I had no problem with paying whatever for prime (even with various price rises), until they added adverts.

I cancelled, deleted the amazon app on my phone, and shifted my amazon spending elsewhere, so can't fall for dark patterns

"The more you tighten your grip, the more will slip through your fingers"

In Europe, they have a different website for different countries: amazon.fr, amazon.de, etc... For a long time, they did not have one for my country, so I had to order from the other ones. After some time, I reviewed my subscriptions: I had 3 different active prime subscriptions for 3 different countries. I only ever signed up voluntary for one. I'm now down to 0.

How did prime help you in another country? I tried that because I get better prices in my neighbouring EU country but it won't ship to me with prime shipping.

Maybe it doesn't work anymore. Used to buy from .fr and .de all the time before they introduced .com.be

I still check both .de and .nl when Amazon is the only place to find something. The prices vary too much not to.

I can confirm it doesn't help with shipping, but you still get the rest of the prime offer (video, ebooks etc) from the country where you signed up for, e.g. I get Italian prime video content abroad.

That pisses me off because you can't get prime video UK content in Ireland, even though the shipping works. You get some subset of it.

Yep, even for me who has never signed up its constant on every check out, no way to refuse permanently and they keep moving things around until one day I slip up.

I have accidentally signed up for Prime three times. Two of the times I realized it right away and immediately cancelled — but the third time, I just happened to notice several days later that I unexpectedly had access to Amazon Prime features. I never figured out how I signed up.

I barely ever buy anything on Amazon anymore because it's become so obnoxious wading through the checkout process now — not to mention how hard it has become to search for products and how carefully I have to check for counterfeits. I only use it as a last resort now (for things I can't find anywhere else).

I recently inherited a bunch of stock, and I immediately sold all the Amazon shares. I can't conceive what kind of longterm future this company could have on its present trajectory. Dark patterns and scammy sellers have the whiff of financial desperation.

If she continues to use Amazon it’s probably in her best interest to be a prime member. No point in cancelling if you continued to constantly use Amazon.

I use Amazon at a rate slightly under break even for prime. I don't have it because I want the extra friction to get fast shipping. If I had it, I'd use it more. Now it's just one of many places to shop online (one with low quality control).

95 quid is a lot, given that one delivery costs you at most 5 quid, and usually you can avoid that by having your order be over 35 quid or over 10 quid of books to qualify for free standard delivery. So there's quite a wide range of Amazon use where Prime is more expensive than pay-for-delivery-as-you-go, and I think a lot of people will fall into that category rather than the other two options of "such a frequent user that Prime is worthwhile" and "doesn't use the site at all".

Curiously I find their delivery to be exactly as fast as it used to be for me when I did have Prime

Or you can just buy $35+ at a time, wait an extra day and not pay anything for prime.

A crazy idea, I know.

I find I get better delivery not being a Prime member. When I was using Prime, I would do their shipping, and the items would always be late. Now without it, I just choose the free shipping method, and things tend to show up a day early. Maybe just coincidence, but I've been much happier without it.

I highly agree. Everyone should stop using Amazon immediately. That was your takeaway right? If you hate the way a company takes away your ability to say no (removing your ability to say no dehumanizes you) you should sever your ties with them so they cannot profit from their bad behavior.

I hate to recommend it but Walmart offers free fast shipping.

Walmart is Amazon in a big box store. No one should patronize either store unless it is not financially or logistically possible to avoid them.

I don’t use or miss Amazon. The quality of the goods is poor and wading through hundreds of scammy sellers is tiring. Most high street stores have decent online experiences, fast delivery and some guarantee of quality. I think Amazon offering value is now a myth.

In France, Prime is 69.9€/year

I'm not sure of what I get exactly from it, but I never have to pay for shipping, no matter what I order and where it's delivered (at home, in a Locker, in a post office...)

But I also use my account to order for ~20 friends & relatives that don't want to have their own account and/or want to avoid shipping costs.

The recent introduction of ad on Prime Video forced me to stop using it and torrent what I wanted to watch there.

If they increased the subscription price, I would probably be forced to reconsider my relationship with the company ; but it would honestly require to be quite high given the ~150 orders I made with them each year.

The solution is to use something like privacy.com or Revolut & simply freeze the card allocated for Amazon when you aren’t expecting payment. Unfreeze it only for a few seconds when you’re actually paying for something

Strange, I've always appreciated those £0.99 offers, and I suspect the vast majority of consumers do. It's pretty transparent and very easy to cancel, particularly in the UK.

You only get so many of those £0.99 offers before it goes up to £8 without making it clear.

I just did a checkout to test and it says "Click here to get your Prime eligible items with Premium Delivery for £4.99 no extra charge". Yet clicking that button costs anywhere between £0.99 and £8 without any obvious warning.

I believe they are so aggressive that they have broken their shopping cart code. For instance, as Prime subscriber I usually get at checkout preselected options that would be aimed at getting people subscribed. Like two separate boxes stating "Free delivery". Weird.

I suppose the only non preselected option to accept a charge is to type text in a box or draw in a dot matrix. A confirmation that requires following instructions. In an alternate universe, inserting your personal hardware token to accept recurring charges

Guardian is also trying to trick me into "supporting" it with a full page pop up. Tongue in cheek as it's not the same, it is equally annoying but significantly less risky to my bank account balance.

I feel like the general issue here is that even when dark patterns like this are outlawed, who is going to go out of their way to file a lawsuit and take it to court?

I've honestly never understood how amazon could become the go to site for ordering packages in the US.

It's website is a mess, filled with dark patterns and confusions for the users. The design itself made me literally contemplate whether this is a scam the first time I tried to use it. Complete turn off.

It's no wonder other delivery sites have beat them in different countries (e.g. Digitec in Switzerland, TakeALot in South Africa, etc.).

Takealot beat Amazon in SA because Amazon was not in SA till a few months ago.

> I've honestly never understood how amazon could become the go to site for ordering packages in the US.

Because for a loooong time in the Western world there were no competitors at all in the "online shopping" experience. There were mail delivery giants (e.g. German Quelle), some of them decades-long established - but they all completely and utterly missed online, and so did many brick-and-mortar retailers. They all thought people would trust a physical store more, e.g. against fraud, but online was/is so much cheaper that it doesn't matter in practice if you end up with fake products every once in a while.

By the time they woke up, Amazon had already entrenched itself firmly as a one-stop-shop that offered fast (!) shipping and easy returns.

Cause Amazon was great. The website was simple to use when everything else was a mess. The support was perfect, you could get a refund in five minutes no questions asked, the delivery was reliable.

Today's Amazon is not the same beast.

They were good once: simple website, authentic brandname products, good prices.

Then they started allowing third party sellers. Then they abandoned the phase to just grow and break-even. Then they trotted out Prime and dark patterns.

And now Amazon and its website are lucrative for Amazon but crap for customers.

Free returns are why I still use it over websites like eBay/aliexpress.

Surely this is illegal. Didn’t the FTC fine them for it? How about daily fines till they stop? I’ll open the bidding at $10M /day

I love that this is news. The last couple years I have tried to minimize my Amazon spending while maximizing my f*cking with Amazon.

Use all of the prime trials by saving up purchases until one is offered and then immediately cancelling Prime.

Inverse Prime Day. I save up all of my returns for Prime Day, I call Amazon (1-888-280-4331) and get them to accept the return without requiring the items. These are legitimate returns, Im not that much a rat... but Im not mailing this garbage back.

It's nothing new. Equally bad, but not new..

In the USA if you collect SSI and or SNAP you can get prime for a discount AND I've noticed their process is less annoying/deceptive

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