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Comment by Gasp0de | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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