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Tell HN: Amazon keeps renewing Prime even after I cancelled it

4 points by samh748 ↗ HN
It's been like this for many months now.

I'm an occasional Prime subscriber, and I cancel the subscription whenever I'm done using it. Several months ago I noticed that my subscription was renewed despite I had turned off the renewal. I thought it was my own mistake at first, but after several iterations, I've concluded that Amazon is forcing the renewal on me every time.

Thankfully each time I can request a refund because I didn't shop during those times, so I'm not too bothered personally.

But I can't help but wonder how many people are being charged unknowingly and not catching it. This can't be legal right?

4 comments

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version_five
Amazon is king of dark patterns so there may be some more aggressive trick they've used to get you to technically "agree" to the renewal? It seems an obvious endgame for prime that they'd make it impossible to cancel. It's lost all its value, so the only way for whoever's in charge to keep their numbers up is to use progressively more trickery. It's funny because 6 or 7 years ago I voluntarily paid for it and considered it a great value.
PaulHoule
I subscribed to Prime as soon as it came out and enjoyed it for a long time but I let my subscription lapse for two major reasons: (i) bogus product listings, and (ii) Prime deliveries going from 2 days to 5 at my location.

In the last few years every other retailer has sped up, somehow I get free shipping for Ebay items from Japan faster than AMZN chooses to send me things from a warehouse about four hours away. Personally it is a violation of my self-respect to be paying for a ‘premium’ service that is worse than what I get from every other retailer without a paid subscription.

Maybe I will be an early adopter for quitting prime. I am definitely thinking of switching my Pillpack and also my AWS to Azure.

marymkearney
Yup me too. Just cancelled it (and it took). Back in 2005 Prime was a great deal at $79. It was like Aladdin's magic lamp. Formulate a desire, click a button, poof! The thing appeared the next day.

Started buying on Amazon in 1996-ish, back when they didn't require email verification, with the email none@none.com. (Which I didn't own.) So my "account history" with a verified email only goes back to 1999 or so.

Now? What a pile of crap, literally, and it takes 5 days? No thanks.

Whatever metric they're optimizing for in 2023, it ain't the customers.

ofalkaed
I get the free trial most every year, only time I use Amazon. Last time I got it I had this issue, it turns out you have to confirm your cancellation, at the bottom of the page where it says you are unsubscribed there is a little link saying "confirm my cancellation" or something like that and there is some fine print on the page explaining it, they make it look like it is survey or something.

If someone is getting unknowingly charged they probably are not good with money in general and never look at their bank/credit card statements/accounts.