Amazon intentionally made it hard to cancel Prime subscription in secret project

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/amazon-prime-subscription-cancel-secret-project-b2038207.html

by green-eclipse • 4 years ago

345 206 4 years ago

independent.co.uk

Spivak• 4 years ago

Honestly good for Amazon getting caught saying the quiet part out loud. Maybe it will lead to some legislation banning the practice but probably not since “anything that’s good for business” is seen as some intrinsic good even if it’s at the expense of Americans.

chiefalchemist• 4 years ago

Amazon - directly and indirectly - generates a massive amount of (tax) revenue for government. It's hard to imagine W.DC, let alone state / local gov, suddenly growing teeth and a backbone.

We're better off coming up with our own solution(s). Or at least trying.

aimor• 4 years ago

I think what's just as bad is how Amazon tries to trick users into signing up for Prime. Multiple dark patterns, it's scummy and I'm sick of getting called up by family members to help them unsubscribe.

unsupp0rted• 4 years ago

The other day I tried Prime Music and quickly discovered that my Prime subscription means I have to be advertised at every 30 seconds to upgrade to "unlimited", whatever that means.

I went away back to Spotify, where I pay for a thing and get that thing (even if they keep insisting I listen to their podcasts too).

kingcharles• 4 years ago

Right! I got a free Prime subscription, so I thought I'd check out the famed Amazon Music. Er. It was not what I expected. It is not an all-you-can-eat like Spotify or YouTube Music or Apple Music or everyone else. It's basically just a trial for their Unlimited thing that you have to pay full price to get.

fooqux• 4 years ago

I actually just cancelled two days ago and was shocked at how painless and easy it was. But now I have my answer why- they got caught and the pendulum swung far to the other side.

Presumably. The article doesn't mention anything about Amazon changing their policies as a result of being called out. But my experience was certainly not what was described in the article- basically a single button click.

Big fat edit: OK, I was wrong. This article and the other comments here made me go double check and sure enough, the cancellation didn't go through. Perhaps I fell prey to a dark pattern, but I seem to remember seeing different pages. Maybe an A/B test. Either way, good timing on posting this article!

rapind• 4 years ago

I literally canceled right now and had to confirm several times navigating identical non-cancel buttons, scrolling past several promotions that made it look like the process was over (like the ads at the end of an article) to find one of the confirmations.

I mean it’s ok if you read everything expecting it to be a horrible process. There’s a lot of “if” you cancel instead of you “have” cancelled that provide hints you aren’t done yet.

Fuck Amazon.

Loic• 4 years ago

I canceled in January. It takes several clicks through buttons and sometimes small links. It alternates the styles with negative or positive wording sentences, alternate offers. They try to convince you to get an email reminder 3 days before the renewal date instead of canceling. After you canceled, the only call to action on the confirmation page is to cancel the cancelation. You immediately get an email to easily cancel the cancelation as confirmation that you canceled.

I was prepared for a dark pattern fight, I was not disappointed!

dageshi• 4 years ago

Yeah, I cancelled a month ago, I was impressed, I think if my parents had tried to cancel they'd have found it nearly impossible.

y-c-o-m-b• 4 years ago

I also cancelled a month ago. It doesn't stop there though. I've ordered stuff from Amazon since then and every order still prompts me to use Prime or select it for the fastest shipping. Interestingly I'm still getting my packages on average of 2 days without Prime. The only downside is having to spend the $25 minimum for the free shipping, but I tend to buy things that exceed that price anyway.

ChildOfChaos• 4 years ago

Yeah the text is confusing too when you have the free trial, it makes it sound like your benefits stop immediately, making you want to wait till the last minute to cancel, when you can cancel straight away and keep for thirty days.

As a non prime member they make it hard to buy things too, with extra screens trying to offer you another trial for a week for 99p and always defaulting to offering that and paid delivery.

For me, Prime is way too expensive, i don't want there crappy video streaming service.

carlmr2• 4 years ago

I wish they had prime delivery without the video for the old price. I really don't care about that.

hervature2• 4 years ago

I think I agree that Prime by itself is not worth it. But if you get the credit card, the extra cash back on $4,500 worth of purchases on Amazon makes it pay for itself. This is being extremely generous by pretending you can get 2% with another card. Personally, even comparing with local stores and buying the cheaper option, it pays for itself. Then there is cyber Monday where I basically get all the Christmas gifts which add up real quick. Plus, I really like not having to minimum spend to get free delivery.

mynameisvlad2• 4 years ago

It doesn’t make it “sound like”, at least in Canada.

I sometimes get the trial to ship something to my parents. It literally tells you that your trial will immediately end…. Only for it to not.

It’s like they considered it at one point then decided not to but forgot to remove the wording.

duskwuff2• 4 years ago

"Are you sure you want to cancel?" [YES] [NO]

"Wouldn't you rather enjoy the many benefits Prime offers you?" [YES] [NO]

"Are you sure you won't miss those benefits?" [YES] [NO]

nazgulsenpai• 4 years ago

"Special offer: 3 Months for 75% Off!" [CONTINUE] [cancel anyway]

jrootabega2• 4 years ago

"If we asked your twin, who always lies, what you would say if we asked if you really wanted to cancel your subscription, what would he say?"

"Do you often sing or whistle just for fun?"

KineticLensman• 4 years ago

I'm reminded of the dialogue box presented by the Analytical Engine in the awesome graphic novel, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" by Sydney Padua:

*Annulation Lever Activated - do you wish to continue? Engage STOP lever to continue. Engage CONTINUE lever to stop."

ineedasername3• 4 years ago

They do the same sort of thing on Audible, where I'm an on-again/off-again subscriber. In one of my temporary departures I went through those options too fast and only realized I hadn't actually cancelled when I received the following month's CC charge.

mpalczewski• 4 years ago

The worst part is that the answers to the second two questions are sort of irrelevant, yeah, I'd rather enjoy those many benefits, but yes I'm still sure I want to cancel. Yes I'll miss the benefits, but I'm still sure I want to cancel.

b112• 4 years ago

This is the sort of thing which results in chargebacks, after an end user is positive they canceled.

Even for Amazon, too many of these can cause issues.

HeckFeck2• 4 years ago

It is a linguistic maze. The readership here is literate and even we endure mental strain navigating this viper's nest. I've went to buy a paperback and found myself signed up with Prime with just one wayward click, and I was being very cautious.

Now imagine how it is for those less familiar with letters. How many folks only notice they've a Prime subscription when the montly bank statement arrives?

It's a shame. I used to think so highly of Amazon.

maicro• 4 years ago

Yeah, my Grandma (chemo-brain-fog-addled at the time, now just terminal-cancer-brain-fog-addled...) accidentally signed up for Prime while buying a Secret Santa gift, had to help fix that (she didn't even know that she had an Amazon account, much less that she had a monthly Prime subscription).

jjoonathan4• 4 years ago

We need to fix this.

We should take this completely out of companies' hands. The incentives are too perverse and too prevalent for anything good to come out of playing dark pattern whack-a-mole through legislation or, worse, "promoting dark pattern awareness" or some other brand of blame-dodging hogwash. Companies are stealing money and getting away with it. We have the technology to stop them. We should stop them.

I suspect the easiest way to do it would be to give credit card company cancellation buttons legal bite: unless someone signs physical papers and does credit checks (e.g. for housing and utilities), nonpayment must be respected as a request to cancel and not creatively misinterpreted as an invitation to extend credit, charge fees, and accumulate interest.

lancesells• 4 years ago

I've started the process of closing my account last week. I need to download my order history for tax reasons but then I'm clicking on that confirmation email.

I'm not a Prime member and it feels like I'm being tricked into becoming one whenever I've placed an order. I'll probably suffer with higher prices or slower delivery for some things but I can only tolerate these sorts of things for so long.

zulfazli• 4 years ago

On the other hand, cancelling once you are billed makes the entire charge reversed. So there is that...The even worse outcome I've experienced (from other businesses) is cancellation would only take effect on your next billing cycle. That does not seem to be the case. Source: personal experience

lupire• 4 years ago

I used to think so highly of Amazon.

Amazon never changed. You did.

ecf• 4 years ago

A bonus is that they use language which leads you to believe your services will immediately end, even if you’ve purchased a year-long subscription and have months left.

It wasn’t until the second or third panel where I found a statement (in the smallest text size possible) that told me services would stay active until previously-billed time ran out.

gzer0• 4 years ago

In light of all of these dark patterns, I have gone a different route.

I use burner virtual cards, through privacy.com. This way, I can terminate my card instead of having to deal with the nonsense that cancellation has become.

This might have some repercussions, such as account terminations, however, I only use this method on websites that I have disposable accounts with. It is well worth my time to keep using virtual cards for as long as these dark patterns exist.

beeboop2• 4 years ago

The problem is that the fine print on Amazon Prime says they'll use any card you have on file to continue it if the one you initially selected doesn't work.

spike021• 4 years ago

I know someone who recently left one of Amazon's services {Video, Games, Music, etc.} and they basically had a free membership for dogfooding. When they left Amazon, the free membership was automatically set to renew on the monthly date for the full price of $20 or whatever it was.

i.e. they'd been charged 0.00/mo on X date every month while working for that org and then they checked after quitting and noticed it was set to auto-renew on the next date for the full price.

They didn't get any kind of notification about it beforehand. Canceling that was apparently the same kind of affair as this.

I guess part of it comes down to their ex-org's bug surrounding how a dogfooding prod subscription is granted/revoked but in the end they were treated just like a real customer.

qbasic_forever• 4 years ago

I canceled around December and it was shockingly easy. Just a few clicks and it was done. It even gave me a prorated refund for nearly the full amount of the cost of renewal (I forgot to turn off autorenew and it had been a couple weeks after the renewal). It was actually the easiest cancellation experience I've ever had.

I kind of wonder if they have an algorithm to check your purchase history and if you've given Amazon enough profit over the years (which I certainly have with over 23 years of purchases and at least 15 years of prime) then it just makes the cancellation a piece of cake.

green-eclipse• 4 years ago

Maybe different countries have different laws or regulations on this sort of thing? I don't know.

ksala_• 4 years ago

I think people just have a different definition of hard. I cancelled my Prime membership several times in the past (not using it too much, changing countries etc) and it’s definitely not a single button - the process is clearly done to have some attrition and make you reconsider cancelling it. But you just have to click your way past 2-3 screens worth of reminders of how amazing your subscription is and after that you’re done. Personally I would not call it hard (hard for me would be one of those services where I have to ring support to cancel!) but it could be easier.

I was definitely amazed by the refund part, that was nice and something I didn’t expect. Iirc the refund is also based on your actual usage of prime features, not just how much longer your subscription is going to last, which is extremely consumer-friendly.

jjeaff• 4 years ago

I just cancelled Audible (an Amazon property) and the process was similarly confusing. In fact, it seemed to not even allow me to cancel unless I used my credits first. So I had to go purchase a book with my final credits and then come back to the cancellation page. Then after clicking through some non-obvious buttons to cancel, it gave me one last button that I almost clicked because they made it seem like it was a confirmation button. But it was actually a button meant to undo my cancellation. Very dark pattern.

Abishek_Muthian• 4 years ago

This is where RBI's (central bank of India) e-mandate regulations are very useful, Now Amazon has to route the subscription (recurring-payments) to the issuer (bank) with explicit permission from the subscriber which are authenticated using MFA, Deductions for subscription are informed 24 hours prior by bank SMS with a cancellation link for the e-mandate. For amount > INR 5000 MFA is required for every subscription transaction.

So if I want to cancel the payment to Amazon Prime subscription, All I have to do is click the link from the bank's SMS. The only drawback for now is that not all international services adhere to this e-mandate regulations and so automatic subscription payments is impossible for such services (One time payment would still work).

VSerge• 4 years ago

I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad". I am even more surprised that anyone could consider a design decision anything else than intentional. Dark patterns are by definition intentional. Is this a question that courts or legislators are struggling with? Surely this is beyond any reasonable doubt.

xg152• 4 years ago

You can easily statistics-wash your reasoning into something that seems at first glance beneficial. If I remember Pinterest's blog post about their nag-screen correctly, the argument would go something like this:

- We continuously improve the UX of our services using an empirical, data-driven approach.

- One of the KPIs we optimize for is retention of Prime customers.

- Our A/B tests showed that the changes introduced by Iliad significantly improved the retention rate.

- Therefore we decided to roll-out the changes globally, so our whole userbase can benefit from the improvements.

It's still intentionally introducing a dark pattern, but you don't have to use any ugly words anymore when taking about it...

hetspookjee• 4 years ago

Ah yes with enough gymnastics one could end up in a paperclip maximiser situation.

tgv• 4 years ago

I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad".

Because it sends the customer on a trip that takes forever because of luring sirens, amongst other traps?

brimble• 4 years ago

Rather, it's a 10-year-long war.

deanCommie5• 4 years ago

Internal project code names are sometimes sarcastic, and are never meant for public consumption. It's obviously embarrassing the way it's presented, but it's not like someone was sitting around twirling their mustache plotting something evil.

Here's a more charitable interpretation to consider:

"We have worked hard to make Prime a good deal for customers. But we also know that a lot of customers don't know about the benefits. They just know that if they sign up for Prime they can get free shipping. So they do so and then they cancel. Are we sure that customers know about all the benefits that they get from Prime before they cancel? Maybe if they did, they would not be so hasty. Do they know about Music and Photos and Video? Maybe if they did, they'd keep it around. Let's show them the options during the cancellation flow to make sure they REALLY know what they're giving up. And let's flip around the yes/no buttons to make sure they actually read it - similar to what security confirmation messages do when you're about to do something irreversible."

gameswithgo• 4 years ago

Microsoft did a similar thing with XBOX live in the past. Someone had improved the UI for cancelling, and when that went live an increase in cancellations was immediately noticed by management, who then ordered that the feature be reverted.

vorpalhex• 4 years ago

In order to cancel your Prime subscription, you must solve the NP completeness theorem...

HL33tibCe72• 4 years ago

“To cancel your membership please send an email to $larger_factor@amazon.com, where $larger_factor is the largest prime factor of 25195908475657893494027183240048398571429282126204032027777137836043662020707595556264018525880784406918290641249515082189298559149176184502808489120072844992687392807287776735971418347270261896375014971824691165077613379859095700097330459748808428401797429100642458691817195118746121515172654632282216869987549182422433637259085141865462043576798423387184774447920739934236584823824281198163815010674810451660377306056201619676256133844143603833904414952634432190114657544454178424020924616515723350778707749817125772467962926386356373289912154831438167899885040445364023527381951378636564391212010397122822120720357“

cooervo• 4 years ago

I tried it on adobe and it was a pain as well, f adobe hopefully figma steals a lot of their market

nerdawson• 4 years ago

Adobe take it to another level. Their free trial shows a monthly price if you don’t cancel but then it locks you into a 12 month contract.

I nearly got stung by the same trap on ShutterStock a few weeks back.

virgilp• 4 years ago

Not sure if they do this, but: I signed up for prime for free, forgot to cancel, and got billed. I cancelled when I saw the charge, and then instead keeping my subscription for 1 year (or month, I don't remember), Amazon actually refunded me. Yeah they had a bunch of dark patterns, but that refund was a pleasant surprise. Hope they still do that.

remus• 4 years ago

Yeah they had a bunch of dark patterns, but that refund was a pleasant surprise. Hope they still do that.

The pessimist in me suspects they only do this to minimise the number of people who go on to complain to regulators and minimise the amount of legislative scrutiny they have to face.

heavenlyblue• 4 years ago

Pessimist in you optimistically assumes there’s legislative scrutiny for them to face.

I would argue it’s actually an optimistic thing: there’s either legislative scrutiny OR Amazon isn’t managed exclusively by assholes, either way it’s an optimistic outcome.

LVDOVICVS• 4 years ago

I had the same issue with other software that, after making a valid attempt to cancel, I ended up shutting off the money from the credit card. That worked.

slg• 4 years ago

Wierdly the aspect of this story that most annoys me is that they named the project Illiad. The Illiad was about the Trojan War. The project should have been named Odyssey after Odysseus's long and trying journey trying to get home after the war. That is the parallel to this project, the story about a seemingly easy goal that turns out to be much more diffucult and take longer than expected, not the story about the actual war.

salawat• 4 years ago

I'm so glad there are other people who notice these things like I do.

Yet, you also have my condolences. It is not fun...

hegelguy• 4 years ago

Not to mention the Siren songs one endures to reach the homeland of Canceled

asimpletune2• 4 years ago

This actually just reminded me to cancel. It wasn't super pleasant, but I was surprised to discover that I got the remainder of the year refunded to me without having to ask. So dark patterns aside, I thought that was pretty nice.

asimpletune2• 4 years ago

Follow up email explains why

Since you have not used your Amazon Prime benefits, we are refunding you $129.26 which includes the full membership fee and any applicable fees and taxes.

Seems fair to me

pipeline_peak• 4 years ago

They auto select “Subscribe & Save”, sometimes it feels like a pain just to find one time purchase.

I decided to go with it for a shampoo, the delivery is so irregular it’s not even worth it.

Do you know what it’s like not having shampoo because your clown ass decided to wait on Bezos?

tapatio• 4 years ago

I'm tired of Amazon. I cancelled Prime and switched to Walmart+. Pretty good so far!

caymanjim2• 4 years ago

The FTC has been pushing back against "click to subscribe, call to cancel". Back in October, they released a statement against such practices, warning that they "may be illegal" or something along those lines (I can't find a good source and forget the details). From what I understand, it was a somewhat soft statement meant to serve as a warning against this dark pattern, indicating that companies may be legally liable, but not outright banning the practice. It read more like a warning shot to get companies to shape up or face stricter regulation.

I wish they would take a harder stand. If you've got one-click signup and don't have one-click cancel (fine, maybe you can add in a confirmation click, or even an immediate email with a confirmation link it it), you should be fined enough to make it hurt. $10k per impacted user or whatever.

Here's a random not-great article about it: https://www.birminghamtimes.com/2021/11/ftc-cracks-down-on-c....

The Economist still follows this dark pattern and it's pissing me off. I signed up for their print + digital, realized their digital content sucks, and now that I'm not commuting on mass transit anymore, I don't read the magazine enough to justify a subscription. A year later it auto-renewed because they require a phone call to cancel and I get sick of waiting on hold.

evandale• 4 years ago

I really hope this happens in Canada as well. There's a trend of these subscription services (coffee, food boxes, cat litter, etc.) that make it impossible to cancel without calling, chatting or emailing. Worse than that, they don't let you cancel, but they will suspend the service for x months. Even worse than that, they don't even allow you to remove your credit card without contacting them which really should be against some consumer protection laws. How can they keep my credit card info and not allow me to easily delete it?

reaperducer• 4 years ago

Worse than that, they don't let you cancel, but they will suspend the service for x months

Strangely, Netflix has gone in the opposite direction. At least in the U.S.

Pre-pandemic, I used to occasionally put my Netflix DVD account on hold for a month or two when I would be traveling. It was no big deal.

This past summer, I needed to put it on hold again, and that's no longer an option. Instead, you can only cancel the account now. Netflix holds on to your queue for six months in case you change your mind and sign up again, which worked a lot better than I thought it would.

I guess Netflix has proactive lawyers and human beings for managers, instead of whatever kind Amazon has.

nomagicbullet• 4 years ago

Would changing the subscription to a card that's about the expire work to stop the charges? Or changing it to a "virtual card" number and then canceling the card?

I'm not advocating for scamming any service provider but in this case I'd have to assume that an invalid payment would automatically cancel the subscription.

caymanjim2• 4 years ago

This ought to work, and I wouldn't consider it a scam in the case of a subscription service. Payment fails, cancel subscription, everyone's [moderately] happy. If you're using it to get out of services-already-rendered, that's scammy, I suppose, but if it's a service you didn't want and weren't using and would have cancelled if they didn't make it impossible, then screw them.

I pay monthly for a Digital Ocean VPS. I get charged at the end of the month, based on my usage, for services already provided. Trying to weasel out of that would be unethical. But the Economist charges me in advance, for an annual subscription, that I would have cancelled if they didn't make it impossible. I have no problem with changing that payment method to a dead card so that the next renewal attempt fails. I don't think that's unethical at all, and because they're doing evil things, I wouldn't feel bad even if they did suffer in some way.

valenterry2• 4 years ago

Maybe, but legally the company could probably force you to pay if they want to follow up on it.

_moof• 4 years ago

"Click to subscribe, call to cancel" is illegal in California. If you can get a company to believe that you're a Californian, either by giving them a different address and/or by using a VPN based in CA, their site will magically change from a snakepit of dark pattern BS to one that provides one-click cancellation. (And if it doesn't, they're breaking the law.)

deanCommie5• 4 years ago

Your comment makes it seem like the article is placing Amazon in the "click to subscribe, call to cancel" category.

It doesn't, and they aren't. "1 click to subscribe, 3 clicks to cancel" is hardly a burden, and it shouldn't be implied that it's in any way comparable to what the NYT/The Economist/etc do.

hnburnsy• 4 years ago

The Kindle has a huge dark pattern where to turn off the wifi to save the battery life, you have to turn ON Airplane mode. There is no labeled wifi switch. I am sure it is so they can keep the screen saver home page advertisement up to date.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

coderintherye• 4 years ago

While this is a part of the terrible UI/UX of the Kindle, I highly doubt it is for keeping the ad up to date as it this is also the way it exists on ad-free Kindles. Kindle have just always had fairly poor interface decisions.

patmorgan23• 4 years ago

Or they could just be too lazy to change it on the ad free kindles

rkk3• 4 years ago

I cancelled the other month on impulse, to see if I'd miss it.

The initial wording implied that by cancelling I'd be giving up the remaining duration I had already paid for. After closing that window and starting the process again, I got different wording that made it clear I would keep access until the renewal date. Scumbags.

fsh• 4 years ago

I really wonder which effects this kind of user-hostile behavior has on the long term success of a company. This is probably impossible to measure since there is no second Amazon to compare with. I guess some execs were asked or incentivized to optimize one particular metric (number of Prime cancellations), and this is exactly what they did.

supergeek133• 4 years ago

Having a link or ability to cancel online (even with strange language or hard to navigate) is still better than cancelling your Comcast or newspaper/ESPN subscription.

Sadly.

mdonahoe• 4 years ago

What's the latest in virtual credit card numbers? I've seen these services advertised, but I haven't tried one yet.

I'd love to be able to "cancel" a subscription service by just deleting my card and stopping automated payments.

It would be nice if I was then not legally obligated to pay any outstanding bills, but I doubt I would win that fight, so I question how good these cards are in practice.

Has anyone tried one?

amelius• 4 years ago

Isn't it easy to cancel with a normal credit card?

Shank• 4 years ago

Privacy works, but you should be aware that without attempting to cancel on the service, some providers get really angry. I tried and failed to cancel NYT, and they force-posted [0] a subscription renewal despite getting declines on the card. In other words, it didn't matter that the card was paused or that they didn't get authorization, they still tried to post the transaction. I don't necessarily expect this from every service, but it certainly wasn't as painless as I thought it was going to be with a virtual card number.

[0] https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012288214-F...

guntars• 4 years ago

Ah, great to know that the merchants have another tool to take whatever money they feel entitled to from my account based on nothing more than "but we really really want to!" My first introduction to credit cards, when I was a kid, was via some.. uh.. shared CC numbers online. I couldn't believe how insecure the whole system was. Were people just that naive back in the day?

cyberlurker• 4 years ago

Privacy.com is fantastic

nyuszika7h• 4 years ago

Most services will just give up trying to charge you and cancel your subscription after a few failed attempts, but I had a bad experience with BritBox a few years ago. I signed up for a trial with a Revolut card that barely had any balance and forgot to cancel, and then to my surprise when the trial ended a "delayed transaction" appeared in Revolut, and they overdrafted me. There was absolutely no mention of this when signing up for the trial, I only saw a $0 authorization charge.

jerrycruncher• 4 years ago

I've used Capital One's virtual card service many times to close a card associated with a service that would've otherwise required me to chat or call someone to cancel. It's worked extremely well.

giza182• 4 years ago

Fnb, a South African bank, has these as part of their offering for free. I use them for all new paid services. They're easy to create, block and delete and just fantastic for this sort n of thing

https://www.fnb.co.za/promotions/PBVirtualCard/index.html

archhn• 4 years ago

When I canceled, a prompt came up that said something which made me feel like I was an idiot for canceling. Something like "Are you sure you want to miss out on all the great benefits of prime?" [YES/NO].

When I pressed yes, I felt like I had to buy into their premise that prime offered me great value...which made me feel like a fool.

Honestly, I am more entertained by the psychological manipulation of the corporations than anything at this point. Last week I bought a water bottle at a chain supermarket with a sticker on it that read, "We want to be your friend! Follow us on Facebook." I just laughed at the thought that a water bottle is trying to befriend me on behalf of a corporation.

"Welcome to Costco, I love you." inbound.

Julesman• 4 years ago

This is absolutely generic common practice, to one degree or another. Facebook is great at this crap. Clearly this example crosses some kind of line to people. But maybe more than anything because we got to see how the sausage is made. It's as open a secret as the fact that automated call handling is about intentional friction to limit needed call staff.

gverrilla• 4 years ago

Adobe is masterful at this. I actually laughed at the dark patterns. These people are DISGUSTING... They may see an increase in some metrics, but I'm convinced this kind of behavior is damaging to the brand: after going through the process with Adobe, I made a very big memory note: NEVER BUY NOTHING FROM THIS COMPANY.

limograf• 4 years ago

Hard same. Adobe cheated me out of around six hundred pounds by making it freaking impossible to cancel.

I finally escaped in 2021, after being devoted to Adobe for 16 years. I will never buy anything from them again. It's over now. I do miss Photoshop and After Effects but nothing is worth that nightmarish hassle. Da Vinci, Affinity, Fusion, Smoke... there are other options.

oo0shiny• 4 years ago

Can't recommend https://www.photopea.com/ enough. Free Photoshop alternative in the browser. Works for all the small edits I tend to do.

HL33tibCe72• 4 years ago

Amazon love to talk about being “customer-obsessed”, but this little slip of the mask is pretty stark evidence of the opposite: that they have contempt for their customers and simply see them as cash cows to milk.

Maybe most people won’t care, but this has put me off subscribing to any Amazon service in future.

floren• 4 years ago

They're definitely customer-obsessed... have you ever seen the movie "Misery"?

pie42000• 4 years ago

Uhhh, what part of "customer-obsessed" implies anything positive to you? Drug dealers are also "customer-obsessed". Notice how Amazon is customer-obsessed and not "obsessed with providing a great, ethical, and non-addictive experience for our customers". They are upfront that they will do anything and everything to acquire more customers and extract as much from each customer as possible. This has been clear to anyone for at least half of a decade

cronix• 4 years ago

I also love that they now have "subscribe" as the default option for purchasing things and you have to manually select "one time" to only purchase once.

steviedotboston• 4 years ago

I tried to cancel a month or so ago and couldn't figure it out so opened a support chat.

pinkhorse• 4 years ago

Lol Customer Obession

paxys• 4 years ago

"Secret project" as opposed to every other feature in development at the company that is 100% public? I get that it is a shitty move, but let's not make it sound overdramatic for no reason.

qgin• 4 years ago

Very sensationalized.

AlphaGeekZulu2• 4 years ago

In Germany a new law will take effect on July 1st 2022, that obligates online shops to provide an "easily accessible, clearly visible" cancellation button on their websites, that allows to cancel any contract that has been established online or via App.

The entire procedure is described very explicitly in the law and breaks down to a 2-step process:

1. mandatory cancellation button, which, if pressed, leads to a

2. confirmation page, where a defined set of parameters is requested and a confirmation button then cancels the contract.

In my eyes the defined set of parameters on the confirmation page can easily been abused to make the process more difficult for the user.

The parameters required are:

1. Type of cancellation

2. Unique identification of the user

3. Unique identification of the contract

4. The desired end date of the contract

5. Means of electronic communication for cancellation confirmation (email)

Topic 2 can be made very difficult and is in my eyes superficial - if the user logged into his account, he is identified IMO.

Topic 3 is ambivalent, how do you identify an contract? By title and date, by ID? In my eyes there should be a popup with existing contracts to choose from (which can easily be done if the user is logged in).

Topic 4 is prone to errors, because many contracts have notice periods. So the user has to do research on his contract and if he gets the lifetime/notice periods wrong his cancellation will fail.

Information (unfortunately only in german):

https://www.voelker-gruppe.com/stuttgart/kuendigungsschaltfl...

Osiris• 4 years ago

And this is why regulating companies is hard. It's difficult to word things in a way that's generic enough to cover many businesses while at the same time not leaving big loopholes.

amyjess• 4 years ago

See, I'd approach it a different way. Don't even give them the option of building their own UI.

Require all companies who provide any kind of subscription service to implement specific API hooks that interact with a government portal. Specify the API endpoints, their expected payloads, and the resultant behaviors in excruciating detail (use formal methods if needed) and require that they send the API tokens to a specific secure endpoint controlled by the government.

And the standard way of cancelling your service will be to log into the government portal, browse the list of subscription services you're subscribed to until you find what you're looking to cancel, click the checkbox next to it, and click 'Unsubscribe'. And the government portal will send an authenticated request to the company's legally-mandated cancel API and the cancel request, by law, must immediately result in automated total purging of the user's account with the company within 10 seconds of receiving the request.

raverbashing• 4 years ago

Topic 3 is ambivalent, how do you identify an contract?

It is not ambivalent. Most places have an account number. (It is needed because you might have more than one contract with the same company)

shoo2• 4 years ago

i can imagine intentionally useless UI for this. require the account number to be entered in a particularly stupid format. 12345 -> one TWO 3 four FIVE. add heavy input validation. make the validation give no hint about what is wrong with the input. defer validation as late as possible in the process "processing cancellation request --- something went wrong, we could not match the entered account, name, blood type against our records. please try again". route all requests for cancellation to a particular backend server bathed in cosmic rays.

hopefully there is a regulator to monitor and enforce the new legislation, and it will be treated as an adversarial iterative game, where v2 of the legislation will eliminate some of the more malicious interpretations of how to comply

AlphaGeekZulu2• 4 years ago

OK, so I just tried to look up my Prime account number. All I can find, pretty hidden, is an order number, which changes with every prolongation. Legally, I have one contract, that prolongs every year if I do not cancel. This contract has no ID (it is my email address, sort of). So if I enter the Prime order number in the new cancellation form, would I cancel the entire contract or just the running instance?

My parents wouldn't know what to fill in the contract identification field of the cancellation form.

Plenty of room for dark patterns.

voakbasda2• 4 years ago

This is all great, but I do not see any incentive for companies to roll out a broader solution. They will simply enable a workaround for their German customers and continue to abuse the rest of the world.

shoo2• 4 years ago

it's a step in the right direction.

unlike some problems[+], this one doesn't immediately seem like a problem that requires widespread international cooperation. if country X cannot be bothered to regulate against companies using dark patterns for cancelling subscriptions, then the citizens in country X suffer the negative consequences. there's a local and short-term incentive for country X to fix the problem for the benefit of its current citizens.

maybe it breaks down if the state in country X makes policy decisions for the benefit of special interest groups (e.g. those enjoying the riches plundered by companies with hard-to-unsubscribe services) and is unwilling to regulate for the benefit of its citizens

[+] such as global warming

account42• 4 years ago

Maybe but having country-specific implementations is also a cost and often enough things required for one country will also be provided to users in other countries. If that does not happen here then other countries will simply have to enact similar regulations.

germanier2• 4 years ago

Unique identification of the user

"The account logged in right now"

Unique identification of the contract

"The only contract I have with you"

The desired end date of the contract

"Next possible date"

Note that specifications like that already have to be accepted when canceling via email or letter since forever. Requiring anything substantially harder than that won't qualify. In particular, customers can't be required to go through a maze to hunt for some arcane contract number that is not typically used in communication with them.

slim• 4 years ago

I think the law should mandate cancellation at your bank (and no more harrassement from the service)

daenz• 4 years ago

Related, yesterday I tried to cancel my Kindle Unlimited trial. I found the page easily enough, but when I clicked cancel, I received an "400 Oops!" page. Then attempting to visit the original page at all resulted in "400 Oops!" I waited for some time to pass and was still unable to cancel. I nearly forgot about it, but a few hours later, I tried again and it succeeded.

Now, I know it's slightly paranoid to assume that it wasn't just a bug preventing me from canceling, but at the scale Amazon operates at, and the SLAs they shoot for, what are the odds that it would occur at the moment I try to cancel? To the conspiracy theorist side of me, it felt like a dark pattern.

In my mind, the lengths that Amazon would go to to prevent Prime cancellations adds more suspicion about my Kindle Unlimited cancellation experience.

wccrawford• 4 years ago

I recently canceled my Kindle Unlimited subscription as well, and experienced no issues other than the "dark patterns" already outlined in other posts here.

I know it's a massive coincidence that that happened to you, but I really do think it was just a coincidence. If it happened too often, people would be screaming about it on social media in no time.

MarkSweep• 4 years ago

There should be a rule that the percentage of people who successfully cancel and the time it takes them to do so has to be the same or better than the signup process.

lotsofpulp• 4 years ago

Amazon introduced a dark pattern to try to get you to accept your refund in the form of Amazon store credit rather than back to your original payment method.

On my iOS device, going to Amazon.com in safari, I initiated the return, and then the question of how I want to process the return came up, and the top 3 or 4 options all resulted in me not getting my money back. The option to refund to original payment method was all the way at the bottom (had to scroll), and in a different color/formatting such that it took me effort to recognize it as an option.

My parents and their ilk would have no chance against this kind of nonsense.

buzzdenver• 4 years ago

I happened to cancel my Prime earlier this morning. They do make you click through a few pages. They validated my decision by showing how many free prime orders I had, and it'd come out to a wash even if I paid to expedite all of them. Most of the time I would be fine waiting a few days. As a bright spot they had the option to keep enjoying Prime benefits until my membership actually expires. It really pisses me off when companies only have the option to "cancel right now" and forego the membership that you already paid for.

philliphaydon• 4 years ago

This is why I don’t want apple to support other payment processors on iOS. I signed up on my phone and so cancelling is easy. The moment the payments are done by a 3rd party this will be difficult again.

registeredcorn• 4 years ago

Wow. Who would have thought that a company known for treating employees horribly would also treat customers horribly?

prytania• 4 years ago

File this under ‘not a story’. Every subscription service ever tries to convince you to stay before cancellation. At least you don’t have to ‘email support’ or call as I’ve had to do in the past. The meal delivery services are the worst of the worst when it comes to this

SubiculumCode• 4 years ago

I canceled prime, but they make it super easy to accidentally resign up for it when ordering.

testplzignore• 4 years ago

Are there services that are easier to cancel than Prime? I don't use many online suscription services, so I don't know. Of the services I have used, Twitch is the easiest. Prime takes more clicks, but its just a few extra seconds. Maybe I find it easy because I've canceled so many free trials.

A dark pattern I really hate is when you have to use the desktop version of a website to change certain settings or cancel.

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

Anything using Apple's subscription management is easier. It's one reason why many rush to defend Apple's restrictive App Store policies whenever the subject comes up.

mardifoufs• 4 years ago

Yeah same for android. I get that fees are high and the play store has it's issues... BuI still always try to subscribe through the store just to avoid the trouble of having to track down subscriptions. The price is also much more transparent, so there's no bait and switch between annual/monthly prices.

The ideal would be to have a a website like privacy.com here in Canada but there's no service or even bank that allows you to have disposable credit cards. I wonder if it's due to regulatory differences

chihuahua• 4 years ago

Netflix and Zwift are easy to cancel.

ccn0p• 4 years ago

is this even surprising? anyone else notice how when returning something for a refund, the refund option to actually return your money is a hard-to-see link unlike the other options? it might even be a little javascript click away if I recall.

the perfect example of interfacing your cash into their pockets.

jquast• 4 years ago

Pretty certain I was a part of their experiment, not Prime related, I just wished to close my account entirely. They kept replying that "someone will contact you in 24-48 hours", but nobody would. I got more aggressive each cycle, waiting 3 days, 2 days, then 1 day, the process was cyclical, I could not close the account.

When I changed my name to "FUCK AMAZON" my request was immediately processed, prior comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23720203

lfkdev• 4 years ago

surprise?

edmcnulty101• 4 years ago

I use Privacy.com to help with this kind of dark pattern B.S.

nvr219• 4 years ago

I don't know about canceling Prime, but I did delete my account a couple of years ago and I remember that process being much easier than I expected. Didn't have to call anyone, for example (like some other companies).

seandoe• 4 years ago

In other news, water is wet.

patwolf• 4 years ago

I suspect Amazon uses a lot of dark patterns. Multiple times I've discovered that I'm subscribed to some Amazon digital subscription that I had no idea about. I do read my credit card statements every month, but there are enough Amazon purchases on there that I don't notice a small monthly subscription charge.

When I've tried to cancel them, it takes me through a confusing series of dialogs that I have to read very carefully to make sure I'm doing the correct thing.

zitterbewegung• 4 years ago

How was this secret unless your haven’t tried to cancel your prime membership ? Or was that dark pattern shown to people at random?

ineedasername3• 4 years ago

Amazon has a bad history in dealing with ToS for Prime in general.

In the beginning Prime was about free 2-day shipping and $3.99 next-day shipping, and was written into the ToS.

Then one time I wanted to ship something next-day and the charge was going to be $8.99. I was curious about when it had changed, and what the rules were: but the current ToS didn't specify a particular price, and I couldn't find any notification from Amazon about the change, so I went digging in Wayback.

To cut things short, at some point Amazon changed the ToS, removing the requirement that they notify customers of future changes, while the $3.99 price remained the same. Then, at some point in the future, Amazon removed the $3.99 guarantee but was no longer required to notify customers that they'd now be paying more for that service. Very sneaky.

jeppester• 4 years ago

Hopefully it will turn out to be a very shortsighted strategy.

I for one am not going to sign up again.

Still, there should be a rule that cancelling must be at least as easy as signing up.

foolproofplan• 4 years ago

I asked to cancel my subscription once in a chat and they just flat out ignored my request although they said they would. I'm sure amazon has all sorts of scummy ways.

acdanger• 4 years ago

I worked for a big bank building out the software the call center agents used to service customers. One of the changes that was requested from on high was to make the UI around free shipping for replacement bank cards intentionally painful for the agent to use. The hope was that the agents wouldn't mention the free shipping option or talk the customer out of it since it added some annoyances for the agent.

dopa42365• 4 years ago

Recently canceled my Prime (nothing wrong with it, but I don't buy enough stuff to actually save money on shipping etc), it took like 20 seconds and 5 clicks, whatever.

Hate the game, not the players.

mzvkxlcvd• 4 years ago

I have a different interesting "problem".

I have prime and I don't know why. No one is paying for it, but i get prime shipping on everything. If i try to look at my prime settings i have the option to sign up for prime. not complaining though.

icedistilled• 4 years ago

I did a prime trial and then cancelled it... only to get a bill a bit later for prime. My account showed cancelled, I did not have active prime. I had to call in and the phone help explained that the auto bill option was checked... Nowhere on my side of the UI was an auto bill option shown and in what bizarro logic would auto bill stay active after cancelling?

sydthrowaway• 4 years ago

Amazon and Dropbox need to be sanctioned for this dark pattern shit

ozzythecat• 4 years ago

Anyone whose worked at amazon isn’t going to be surprised by this. Much of Amazon’s retail/consumer organization is heavily product management driven.

PMs are under pressure and incentivized to release features or somehow show impact that translates into some bottom line metric. If you can show your work attributed X% decrease in cancellations or Y% increase in bottom line profit, especially with a small engineering team, that’s your fastest path to promotion. This leads to a culture of churning out “features”, often at the expense of the end product or the expense of customers.

I guarantee you there were a/b test results that were summarized and twisted around in a document, presenting the test results as a net win for customers.

And there are second and third order effects - constant tweaks and duct tape on top of monolithic systems that prevent Amazon from being innovative. The company makes shockingly little investment in this area, and when you couple that with engineers constantly churning, it becomes clear that product teams deliver some dark pattern or other unhelpful feature because the poorly strung together architecture limits any real innovation.

The engineers may have their own opinions, but at the end of the day nobody gives a shit about what they think except on design and scale concerns. What’s the operational/support cost of X? If we promise Y to our leadership, can we deliver it by this date?

Most of the recent hiring when I left, especially for engineers, were study abroad students from China or India. They wouldn’t say anything being afraid not to rock the boat, especially because of their work situation. If a manager puts them on a development plan, they will most likely get fired and have to leave the US. The company has found this structure so advantageous to its business that if not for Indian and Chinese talent, in my opinion, Amazon in its current cultural state would implode.

deanCommie5• 4 years ago

PMs are under pressure and incentivized to release features or somehow show impact that translates into some bottom line metric.

So are PMs at all companies?

Animats• 4 years ago

Just buying from Amazon without using Prime requires getting past three dark patterns. "No, I don't want free delivery" is one of them.

Amazon still offers "free delivery" without Prime, but the web site gives you a date further in the future. In practice, they usually deliver faster than that. There are dark patterns to keep you away from that option, but it works fine. I don't have Prime and haven't paid for Amazon delivery in a long time.

skydhash• 4 years ago

I guess they use farther warehouses when doing free delivery without prime. I bought a keyboard on Wednesday and they said Monday. On Thursday, it was still being processed, so I just paid the next-day delivery ($10), and the progress rewinds back to the beginning, so I think they switched warehouses.

awinter-py• 4 years ago

one future here is for gov to mandate 'dark pattern-prone' biz processes to be handled by open APIs or third parties

like email client's 'unsubscribe' button but for everything

designing this feature would be a natural fit for apple if they were actually pro consumer rights, rather than trying to destroy, then become, facebook

giords• 4 years ago

NordVPN is pretty hard to cancel as well

deanCommie5• 4 years ago

Here's a more charitable interpretation to consider that's not "Mwahaha let's make it impossible for people to cancel Prime so we can make more money":

DarkContinent• 4 years ago

Is Amazon even the hardest place to cancel your membership? Udacity for instance required me to talk to a person to cancel a $400/month subscription.

dorgo• 4 years ago

I subscribe/unsubscribe every other month. Depends on whether there is something interesting on prime or netflix. From time to time I get a free month or a week for 1€. Just canceled my free month. Rule of thumb is to never click the button you would click when drunk.

They changed something. I had to allow amazon.dev in ublock origin.

azalemeth• 4 years ago

I've never really understood the value proposition of Prime. Spend a lot more money monthly so that you can... Spend more money with free shipping attached, and get some (variable quality) videos thrown in for free?

mft_• 4 years ago

It’s genius, in a slightly dark manner. I/we bought a new house a couple of years ago and have obviously needed lots of different stuff, large and small, as a result. Our choice of local shops is relatively restricted and I’d estimate that >90% of everything bought online (by volume) has been from Amazon - it’s fast, free, and reliable. That Prime subscription pays for itself several times over in postage costs saved, before you consider any of the other relative perks it brings. It’s an enabler - and means that Amazon is your first choice to look for something you need, before any other site.

If you want to look at it purely mathematically, I find that typical postage from an independent online retailer costs ~€4 for something by small. So if I purchase more than 2-3 items per month, the cost of Prime is already earned back.

hacknews20• 4 years ago

It’s a devious click and switch game. It’s tricked and continues to trick many a person, not least the old and vulnerable. It’s a form of evil cynicism.

Amazon intentionally made it hard to cancel Prime subscription in secret project

Related Stories