Amazon Violated Online Shopper Protection Law, Judge Rules Ahead of Prime Signup Trial

Amazon violated consumer protection law by gathering Prime subscribers' billing information before disclosing the service's terms, a judge ruled on Wednesday, handing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission a partial win. From a report: The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Chun in the case accusing Amazon of deceptive practices to generate Prime subscriptions puts the company at a disadvantage at trial.

The FTC is poised to argue that the online retailer signed up tens of millions of customers for Prime without their consent, and thwarted tens of millions of cancellation bids through complex cancellation methods. The agency says those actions violated the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA).

Twice

[RitchCraft]

Back when I still used Amazon I was signed up for Prime twice when I went through the checkout, knowing damn well I clicked on "no thanks" in very small print. Going through the process of cancelling those was a royal pain in the ASCII.

Re:

[sinij]

Not doubting that what happened to you. At the same time, my expiriences were different - every time I cancelled Prime (twice so far), it was painless and it stayed cancelled.

For me, the issue with Prime is that value is no longer there. Especially after they added ads to Video.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

I kept getting handed off from one agent to another while they tried to "resolve" my issue. They were also very hard for me to understand with their thick accents. I have no problem with overseas agents, but they seemed to get annoyed when I constantly needed to ask for them to repeat their statements.

Re:

[techno-vampire]

Just do what I do: I tell them I'm deaf and am having trouble understanding them even with my hearing aids. Of course, in my case it's true. I've only had a very few people refuse to speak more clearly and/or a little slower when I tell them that.

Re:Twice

[taustin]

There are multiple opportunities to sign up for it during checkout, some of which are . . . subtle.

"No thanks", followed by "FREE SHIPPIN" (in big letters) "with Amazon Prime" (in tiny letters in a font color with poor contrast to the background), for instance.

(The difficulty in cancelling, IMO, should be a prosecutable criminal offense with automatic prison time, starting with the CEO of the company.)

Re:

[sinij]

(The difficulty in cancelling, IMO, should be a prosecutable criminal offense with automatic prison time, starting with the CEO of the company.)

That will never work even if passed into law (they will hire people to go to jail while real decision makers will remain unaffected). What would work is to make service free for a decade at the highest possible service tier. Can't cancel gym after making reasonable effort? It is free! That will stop this BS almost immediately.

Re:

[taustin]

That will never work even if passed into law (they will hire people to go to jail while real decision makers will remain unaffected).

That's why you start with the CEO. The plea bargain is, "Either a) you made this decision, and we assume you did since you're the CEO, and therefore get the longest prison sentence, at least a year for every person ripped off (and we know there were millions of people ripped off), and no concurrent sentences, or you testify against whoever did make the decision, and you get a lesser sentence." The second time you do that, the patsy will have extensive documentation to back up their testimony. If there is a

Re:

[gweihir]

Yes. That is how engineering liability works. Know why engineers routinely refuse to do dangerous things they are now qualified for? Because they would personally go to prison. And they all know that.

Now, this liability idea can be overdone. Look at the geologists that got prosecuted for failing to predict an earthquake correctly in Italy. That is counter-productive, because that just means nobody is willing to do these predictions anymore, because these predictions are and can only be unreliable. But clear

Re:

[taustin]

Yes. That is how engineering liability works. Know why engineers routinely refuse to do dangerous things they are now qualified for? Because they would personally go to prison. And they all know that.

According to a friend with a PE license, his signature now also carries and unlimited civil liability. But yeah, the potential prison time is the bigger deterrent.

Re:

[sinij]

Civil engineering have very clearly defined set of standards for everything they do. Engineers are not liable when they can demonstrate they followed standards. This approach is not feasible in other disciplines, scope is just much wider and standards non-existing (and probably not desirable, due to being too rigid).

Re:

[gweihir]

(The difficulty in cancelling, IMO, should be a prosecutable criminal offense with automatic prison time, starting with the CEO of the company.)

Fully agree. Or an automatic $1000 to the consumer affected per instance, no lawsuit needed.

Re:

[taustin]

no lawsuit needed.

Yeah, that couldn't possibly be misused, ever, under any circumstances, by anyone.

Break it

[abulafia]

When it shoves one of those interstitials at you, you'll see a URL parameter like this: "pipelineType=Chewbacca".

Change the Chewy reference to some other word of your choice.

It breaks the rest of the bullshit.

On every transaction

[Slashythenkilly]

Amazon pushes the Prime checkout so hard its cringeworthy. There were a few times I couldnt seem to get to the next screen without clicking that option so i stopped and shopped elsewhere. Renewal was even worse after i had purchased it for a year because they just took it for granted you wanted to re-up. If they would focus on quality of goods, ethical treatment of employees, and proper delivery it would be a step in the right direction.

Re:On every transaction

[Tony Isaac]

I quit Prime several years ago, and never looked back. They still ship my stuff for free, as long as my order is at least $35. And it usually arrives in 2-3 days, instead of 1-2. Sometimes, they'll send me a notice saying that my order will be early.

It's no wonder they push Prime so hard. You get almost nothing for it, it's basically free money to them. And besides that, if you get Prime delivery, and it's late, all you get is an apology, no refund for the expedited shipping cost.

Oh yeah I know they include video, sort of. A few mor titles are free to watch, but for most of the really good stuff, you still have to pay a rental fee, even with Prime.

So no, no thanks.

Re: On every transaction

[sodul]

Many of my prime orders arrive in 1-2 weeks. There are still some items that arrive in 2 days or less but it is only a subset of what you can find on their platform.

Now that ads are in videos I stopped watching the videos. I really should cancel and hold orders until I get that $35 free shipping level.

Cancelling Prime

[crunchy_one]

Sometimes I take Amazon up on their 1 month free Prime offer. Not trusting Amazon as far as I can throw them, I make certain that I cancel Prime before the renewal date and remove all payment methods from my account when I do so. Their automated systems then scream bloody murder when they ignore my cancellation and try to bill me.

I sincerely hope that Amazon gets reamed by the FTC, but given the anti-consumer sentiment of the current people in power, I'm not holding my breath.

Re:

[gweihir]

I had prime for a months and they messed up my billing and could not bill me. (Apparently they now have two accounts for me with same user name and different passwords since I changed my password. Talk about incompetent.) No bloody murder, I just gets some emails now about stuff I do not want on prime and these are easily blocked. Of course, that was in Europe.

Re: Obviously didn't donate enough to Trump

[sodul]

Not only that but the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, has been critical of Trump. So of course Amazon is not going to get favors.

We've seen it with the big gov cloud bidding not going to AWS on dubious grounds.

I still use Amazon and haven't been tricked yet.

[Fly Swatter]

But I actually read things often twice before submitting any payment. Is that not the case for everyone today? Are they buying things through AI or something?