In six -year time intervals established in the settlement, anyone who “unsuccessfully tried” to cancel their main subscription online, is entitled to pay up to $ 51 from Amazon. People who have signed up for Prime in the same period can also escalate to $ 51 if they registered in the “questioned flow of recruitment” – a page with a misleading interface that can lead to accidental purchase of people. Previous court applications determined that in some cases some users could choose a “two -day shipping” for the subject and did not realize that in this way they enrolled in Amazon Prime.
The FTC spokesman says Wired that automatic payments will be transferred to some customers within 90 days.
“The rest of the eligible consumers will receive a notification from Amazon and will be able to submit a simple claim form,” says FTC. “Amazon is obliged to publish information on this subject to Amazon.com and the application. The settlement also requires Amazon to have an independent third page, which will monitor its compliance with these claims.”
A court application says that Amazon is also “permanently” disturbed in the main registration structure with the misleading “negative function of the option”, in which it is assumed that the customer makes a purchase, unless he actively refuses.
For example, as the application says, the button “No, thank you, I don’t want free shipping” does not clearly indicate that the customer will be registered in Prime, unless he clicks. Amazon must also make a person decide to sign up for a prime, and attach a language like “Join the Prime” to the user interface. Similarly, Amazon must communicate clearly when the main subscription is subject to an automatic kindergarten using words such as “renewal”.
The initial complaint, which was filed by FTC in June 2023, claimed that although Amazon improved its process of canceling Prime members, the company spent years consciously complicating the cancellation process.
The attachment in a court submitting of May 7 covers the E -Mail chain with Amazon employees from December 2020, which was described as “privileged and confidential” in the subject. In E -Mail, the first content and marketing manager paired key points that appeared at the last “meeting in the first results in the USA”.
“The subscription leads a some shaded world”, reads one paraphrased quote, assigned to an unnamed person at a meeting.
“We should deviate from experimenting with registration clarity and focus more on conducting general members and increasing confirmation that you are perfect,” we read in another paraphrased quote from another person at a meeting, contained in the same attachment.
Another attachment shows that Amazon was aware that customers were frustrated. Presentation of the company of September 17, 2017, focused in particular on complaints regarding customer service regarding “unintentional” registration. (It seems that another attachment, which includes the E -Mail chain of September 25, 2017, refers to the presentation. Two dozen people were asked to “delete the PowerPoint document” and sending “confirmation” after that.
One complaint of customers in the presentation claims that they were “cheated” to sign up for a free rehearsal for Amazon Prime when they chose a two -day shipping when buying, not knowing that it would also be enrolled in the Prime process.
“I don’t like your service,” we read another complaint. “It’s nonsense that I ordered the product at Amazon Ads [sic] I am for a program with a car account that I did not sign up for. I will not use Amazon and I will not tell everyone about the kind of crap you pull. “
“He is crafty and bloody, unfair forcing something [sic] I never wanted to, “we read another complaint.
The same presentation of Amazon Slide noticed that the misleading main registrations led to increased burden for Amazon customer service employees, as well as “loss of customer trust”.