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EU

Amazon Agrees To Drop Prime Cancellation 'Dark Patterns' in Europe (techcrunch.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Amazon has agreed to simplify the process required for cancelling its Prime membership subscription service across its sites in the European Union, both on desktop and mobile interfaces, following a series of complaints from regional consumer protection groups. From a report: The coordinated complaints about Amazon's confusing and convoluted cancellation process for Prime were announced back in April 2021 -- so it's taken just over a year for the e-commerce giant to agree to change its ways.

Following the engagement with EU regulators, the Commission said today that Amazon started to make some revisions to the Prime web interface -- such as labelling the cancel button more clearly and shortening the explanatory text -- but today's announcement is that it has agreed to further simplify the experience by further reducing the text so consumers do not get distracted by warnings and deterred from cancelling.
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Amazon Agrees To Drop Prime Cancellation 'Dark Patterns' in Europe More

Amazon Agrees To Drop Prime Cancellation 'Dark Patterns' in Europe

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  • Amazon can basically do whatever the fuck it wants.
    • Yes they can, but I just checked how easy it would be to cancel my Prime membership, and it was easy to find a cancel button.

      • Finding the button is not the problem. The problem are the 10 following dialogs asking in cryptic ways for you confirm you are certain while threatening you with doom and gloom.

        • You can threaten back. I was threatened by having my Prime membership paused/flagged because i bought 50+ items in one day. I save up and shop in batches. They shut down my account so I reported all transactions for chargeback. Some of the packages came, their loss.
  • Very simple, just press the button and its cancelled.

    That button is at the bottom of the filing cabinet in the dark unlit basement of the highways department guarded by leopards, but the button is there.

    They should ban one-click-to-buy if there is no simple one-click-to-unbuy

  • Welcome Eagles fans (Score:3)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @02:43PM (#62666520)

    Looks like Amazon have created their own Hotel California

  • Confusing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @02:46PM (#62666532)

    I didn't find it particularly confusing (I sometimes take a free trial when available and cancel it a month later).

    It goes through steps of "we are sorry to see you go, you will lose this and that, etc..." but for me, it is fair game. No bullshit like delays, registered mail, calling support that is never available, etc... Three clicks and done, and best of all, if you forget the deadline and didn't use Prime services during that time, you get your money back.

    I live in France and I have seen much much worse. The government had to intervene and absurd cancellation procedures are less common than they once were, but still I wish it was always as simple as cancelling Amazon Prime.

    • I live in the US. I can't even figure out where to begin cancelling my subscription. From the Account page, I see there is a "Prime - View benefits / payments" button. But no other thing that seems to be for cancelling or managing my prime subscription. From that link there is NO way to cancel Prime. I stopped looking after a few minutes.

      • Re:Confusing? (Score:4, Informative)

        by st33ld13hl ( 1238388 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @03:05PM (#62666568)
        Found it.
        • Go to Account page
        • Click on Customer Support (Not intuitive)
        • Find the small text menu item named "End Your Amazon Prime Membership" halfway down on the left side (Found it by Ctrl+F search for "Cancel")
        • Click End Membership button
        • Click Cancel My Membership
        • Click Continue to Cancel
        • Click Pause or Cancel

        The last half is pretty straight forward (as GuB-42 mentioned). Finding where to begin was a pain.

        • I went to
              My Account
              Prime membership
              How do I cancel my Amazon Prime membership and get a refund?
          There is a cancelation link there
          https://www.amazon.com/mc/pipe... [amazon.com]

        • I've tried canceling the free trials they periodically give me and sometimes it's just a bunch of hoops, annoying but annoying, and other times they pull some really underhanded shit like having the entire UI rigged to trick you into clicking the wrong thing. The worst was several pages in a row that kept reversing the cancel membership/don't cancel links and always making the cancel-membership links tiny text while the don't-cancel links were made up to look like buttons and worded in a way that sounded li

      • Spending spree shuts down your account totally. They will close you out and you can create a new account because Amazon does not care. Report old charges for chargeback because they kick you off the platform. Done.
    • Well all they did is agree to revamp the interface, no penalty, so I can only see good here.

      It should be as easy to quit as to sign up.

    • I didn't find it particularly confusing

      Corporations pray on the weak and stupid with these tactics. These practices aren't particularly confusing to those people who have seen and navigated far worse, but they can be quite daunting for others who experience it first time.

    • I was a bit curious what the process looked like, so I initiated the process to cancel Prime. The most prominent view was a summary of exactly how many times over the past year I used Prime services, with an indicator at the top that this was a three-step procedure, with you at step one of three. There were three distinct yellow buttons below that.

      Two of three initial buttons (Remind Me Later, Keep My Benefits) that did NOT continue, while one button continues the three-step process. And the two "no canc

      • Re:Confusing? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @03:33PM (#62666642)

        Correction: The "Cancel" button is actually labeled "Cancel My Benefits". It's still a bit confusing, IMO, in that you're trying to cancel Prime, not some "benefits." "Cancel Prime Subscription" would be completely unambiguous, so obviously they wouldn't do that.

  • You really want to fix this crap? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @02:59PM (#62666556)
    Trial offers should be just that, trial only. At the end of 30 days if the person trialing the offer doesn't confirm they want to keep it the cancel process is automatic. That would fix it. Way too easy. Good for consumers, but bad for the almighty companies that line political pockets.

  • It's going to be interesting to see if Amazon does the same for the UK now it's no longer an EU country.

  • Funny (Score:3)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @03:41PM (#62666674)
    Funny that a company that patented the one-click order can't make it just as simple to cancel something.

  • Penalties for bad corporate behavior should be very costly to the corporation, none of this "steal a billion, pay a ten million fine, but keep the billion" cr@p.

    The cost for this deliberately sluggish behavior should be to forfeit all prime subscription fees for the period they dragged their feet.

    • That's not enough. A lot of bad corporate behaviour is actually criminal, criminal law just isn't enforced on people working for corporate profits. For instance, if a webpage is designed to give people the impression they've unsubscribed when actually they haven't, that's fraud by false representation (in the UK, I'm sure other countries have similar laws). So everyone involved in that crime should be prosecuted.

  • what about US? (Score:3)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @04:14PM (#62666750)

    I cancelled a few months ago and was surprised that it took five pages in order to cancel. It not paying attention, it would be easy to think you were done after each page. It used to be so simple - just one click.

    I am willing to bet, Amazon will find ways around the EU required changes.

  • due to a confusing UI, most likely intentionally designed to be confusing, i.e. dark patterns.

    Amazon has a real problem there.

    They also try to trick you into more expensive shipping.

  • What's maybe even more annoying than the artificial hurdles for cancelling are Amazon's permanent attempts to bully non-subscribers to subscribe with additional pages they have to click away before they can even submit a simple order.

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