<story><title>FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-deceptive-prime-sign-up-and-cancellation-process.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>scrum-treats</author><text>As someone who managed to successfully cancel Prime, and then tried to purchase an item on amazon.com, it took me over a minute to figure out how to not accidentally sign up for Prime membership when trying to checkout.&lt;p&gt;There was only one place I could click that would allow me to advance to the next screen (simple text), the text was super small placed below a giant image, and my cursor didn&amp;#x27;t change to indicate that it was clickable, e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;VNlU9L9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;VNlU9L9&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I received my package in the same amount of time as Prime said it would take. Which leaves the question, what is the benefit of Prime membership? It&amp;#x27;s not free shipping, it&amp;#x27;s not free grocery delivery, it&amp;#x27;s not Music or Video, it&amp;#x27;s not discount prices on Amazon retail website, and it is most certainly not any assurance of authentic goods.&lt;p&gt;Prime is snake oil.&lt;p&gt;After enduring the 10+ page questionnaire on why I was cancelling Prime, the only way to cancel my Prime membership, it is clear no one took the answers to the questions seriously.&lt;p&gt;This lawsuit is long overdue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>Wow, that image is terrible. I usually consider myself pretty good against dark patterns but it took me forever to find what to click to &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; sign up. Once I realized both the gray areas &lt;i&gt;aren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; what you click, I couldn&amp;#x27;t see any other options.&lt;p&gt;That seems like what I expect a crappy deceptive startup to implement in order to try to boost metrics for the next round of investment. It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; the kind of shady UX I associate with the largest tech companies. I seriously would not have expected that from Amazon, so I&amp;#x27;m very happy the FTC is stepping in here.&lt;p&gt;Not to mention that this is very much against Amazon&amp;#x27;s supposed values, including &amp;quot;customer obsession&amp;quot; [1] -- to &amp;quot;work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust&amp;quot; [2]. This is very much the opposite of that, when customers discover they&amp;#x27;ve been deceived into signing up.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aboutamazon.com&amp;#x2F;about-us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aboutamazon.com&amp;#x2F;about-us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aboutamazon.com&amp;#x2F;about-us&amp;#x2F;leadership-principles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aboutamazon.com&amp;#x2F;about-us&amp;#x2F;leadership-principles&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/ftc-sues-amazon-over-deceptive-prime-sign-up-and-cancellation-process.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>scrum-treats</author><text>As someone who managed to successfully cancel Prime, and then tried to purchase an item on amazon.com, it took me over a minute to figure out how to not accidentally sign up for Prime membership when trying to checkout.&lt;p&gt;There was only one place I could click that would allow me to advance to the next screen (simple text), the text was super small placed below a giant image, and my cursor didn&amp;#x27;t change to indicate that it was clickable, e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;VNlU9L9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;VNlU9L9&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I received my package in the same amount of time as Prime said it would take. Which leaves the question, what is the benefit of Prime membership? It&amp;#x27;s not free shipping, it&amp;#x27;s not free grocery delivery, it&amp;#x27;s not Music or Video, it&amp;#x27;s not discount prices on Amazon retail website, and it is most certainly not any assurance of authentic goods.&lt;p&gt;Prime is snake oil.&lt;p&gt;After enduring the 10+ page questionnaire on why I was cancelling Prime, the only way to cancel my Prime membership, it is clear no one took the answers to the questions seriously.&lt;p&gt;This lawsuit is long overdue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Beldin</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;it&amp;#x27;s not Music or Video&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weird. Around here, Prime does give access to video.&lt;p&gt;I know folks around here who have prime just for that.
I doublechecked just to be sure; it still is like that (according to a quick google search).</text></comment>