Amazon Prime Member Fee? Charged £48...

DVardysShadow

Prodigal_Gil wrote: »

I have been aware of Amazon Prime for some time, but never felt the need for their service due to lack of urgency in my purchase and happy with the free 3-5 days delivery.

Recently, I did decide to want my purchased goods delivered quickly and I have been buying more and more items on Amazon due to their extremely competitive price (down to their buying power). Only other site I buy from is Play. Lack of trust for any reseller or unknown/not reviewed websites.

I was goggling reviews of Amazon Prime service as consumer feedback can be useful (mostly of the time, I have to say it is not partially rational opinions), I was shocked to have come around this post which has been going on since 2009! (Maybe even further...I have not read every post on this thread).

I am in rage, but not surprise, to see how many irresponsible consumers there are still on the net today. Amazon being able to provide such extensive customer service is a luxury, hence their success.

As consumer, one needs to accountable for their selected options on online purchasing per click!!!

We can all complain about User Interface on sites not being cleared or being deliberately misleading under find print for subscription services. However, this is NOT a scam or con. Ts and Cs are stated in all E-shops!

For Amazon's case, they have made it very clear. Amazon should not be responsible for ignorant consumers.

On a customer experience front, which is what most successful E-commerce are aiming to achieve, sites like Amazon will make sure it is easy for consumers to identify service offered. They will go to the point of mapping out the on-line purchasing experience and procedure in relation to UI and information accessibility.

In my opinion, Amazon has more than achieved that.

One more point for on-line consumer is that we all know with free trials service, even with offline, what ever the medium, it is almost standard procedure for automatic subscription to be set up. Why? This is to filter out consumers who have no intention to join the service being offered and only using it for free trail and short term gain. Please note FREE TRAILs are there for potential interested party to test out the service. If the service make sense, than it save the customer having to re-registered the subscription to the service, saving them time, i.e., an act of automation. This is certainly considered as a valued added set-up.

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After taking the free trial, under:
Your Account > Your Amazon Prime Membership

Trial Membership Dates: 26 Aug 2010 - 26 Sep 2010

Your trial membership will upgrade to a full membership for £49.00 automatically on 26 Sep 2010 [DO NOT UPGRADE]Button

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*Remember to click the [DO NOT UPGRADE] button with shown date advised for credit charged if you are not happy with the service being during your trail. The word 'TRAIL' is particularly important to note!

BTW, at £4 a month for multiple 1 day delivery, Amazon are pretty much giving away the upgraded delivery service and am sure (not margin focus and possibility to cover cost) in order to provider better customer service. Try buying fashion products on line and see if you get stiffed at elast £10 for delivery with at least 28 days refund policy for returned items. Unlike other online stores, they use local courier and that is why thier delivery service is great. On 3-5days free delivery, most of the time, I receive it within 2 days. The only package that was lost was when they were forced to use Royal mail...typical!

I am not even going to begin on responsibility on courier service vs. Amazon responsibility to despatch.:money:

Good rant against the consumer, but as I understand it, the large and visible [DO NOT UPGRADE] button is irrelevant. It is people being signed up to the service in the first place without this being immediately obvious or without requiring them to click something in the first place.

If they have to unclick something not to sign up in the first place, then many will miss what has happened and never get to see your [DO NOT UPGRADE] button.

So your essay is misdirected.

spadoosh

I got signed up for it without purchasing anything so dont play 'blame the consumer'. why are amazon so willing to refund if they know there not at fault?!? What there doing isnt illegal but it certainly takes advantage of us. it would be like going round asda while an assistant keeps chucking stuff in your basket!!

pinkteapot

deanos wrote: »

If they sent everything on time then that's the courier at fault ?

I was expecting a Prime delivery yesterday by City Link and it turned up today a day late, but it was despatched on time by Amazon

I phoned Amazon to complain because I ordered something with Prime on a Friday, and waited in all day Saturday for it. The item page had clearly said "Get it guaranteed on Saturday". When I called, Amazon said that they had posted it using Citylink who did not deliver on Saturdays. They said it was in the Prime T&Cs that Saturday delivery wasn't guaranteed. I asked why the product page had said "get it by Saturday" and they couldn't answer that.

As a goodwill gesture though they extended our Prime membership by a month for free.

I'm happy - this was the first time we had a problem and have ordered many, many times! A month's Prime membership isn't much for a wasted Saturday in but is better than nothing, so worth the phone call.

Do be careful that items you order say they are eligible for Prime. More and more stuff on the Amazon site is actually sold by other shops, and they don't guarantee delivery even if you're a Prime member.

Prodigal_Gil

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Good rant against the consumer, but as I understand it, the large and visible [DO NOT UPGRADE] button is irrelevant. It is people being signed up to the service in the first place without this being immediately obvious or without requiring them to click something in the first place.

I[FONT=&quot]f they have to unclick something not to sign up in the first place, then many will miss what has happened and never get to see your [DO NOT UPGRADE] button.

So your essay is misdirected.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]

Apologies if I had cause much misdirection. In my 'essay':

[One more point for on-line consumer is that we all know with free trials service, even with offline, what ever the medium, it is almost standard procedure for automatic subscription to be set up. Why? This is to filter out consumers who have no intention to join the service being offered and only using it for free trail and short term gain. Please note FREE TRAILs are there for potential interested party to test out the service. If the service make sense, than it save the customer having to re-registered the subscription to the service, saving them time, i.e., an act of automation. This is certainly considered as a valued added set-up.]

Therefore, the [Do NOT UPGRADE] button, provided as an option, is relevant in regards to how companies set up on-line automatic payment processes when subscribing to their services.

Let me try to clarify with an example. I needed to subscribed to a pension management service for my pension plan and looking to appoint an IFA (Independent Financial Adviser). The majority of IFAs will provide a free consult session (masked over the qualification process of potential client) and perhaps even provide a quotation. This is a human to human interaction within the service subscription process; offline business if you can all it. Take into account this analogy that the free consult is almost a free trial; a flavour to the type of service it can provide.

Next stage will be for the IFA to call/email back to make a decision to hire them.

Perhaps not the best analogy typing form the top of my head...for on-line businesses, they do not utilise their resource to allocate to outbound calls. They sell through marketing/promotions/advertisement..etc. If the payment model did not set up payment to renew automatically, after the free trail, as a business, they will have to employ a sales team to contact all free trial users, in which case, I am sure it will be followed up by a list of questions to why they did not find the service useful and why did they not renew the subscription. Consumer hates sales and telemarketing calls. Any company that does that will just annoy the potential cusotmers, hence, bad PR. Moreover, you are relying on consumers (who change thier minds constantly) to take an extra step to o on line and accept the service subscription. Very reliable hey!

This certainly does not provide any value to the customer.

The way to set up the subscription sales model for on-line business is to allow interaction for the customers. Provide the option and ease of use for the potential customers in the least number of steps. (You cannot win both ways with ignorant consumers who doesn't spend the effort to identify why business do such other than complain, because it is never the customers' fault).

Free trial: 1click
Decision:
Yes: Good service, automatically join; Total: 1 click
No: Unsubscribe - 1 Click; Total: 2 clicks

The key point for the business is to weed out consumers with no interest in the service and looking for freebies. If you do not have an intention of joining a service that will meet your need, than you should first read what the service provides:

[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Google 'Amazon Prime Help'. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
Not just willy nilly click on free trails and blame a service provider for scams.
Amazon clearly menitoned about reminder to unsubcribe...even with a follow up email.

Consumers needs to take some responsibility for thier actions!:money:

Rant part 2 over [Essay Form]:D!

Sorry..having digressed for a centry now...your point being...that is a system issue and not intentional. How much waste of resource would it be for Amazon with the refunding procedure? Make a lost for wasting customer time and their time.
[/FONT]

Prodigal_Gil

spadoosh wrote: »

I got signed up for it without purchasing anything so dont play 'blame the consumer'. why are amazon so willing to refund if they know there not at fault?!? What there doing isnt illegal but it certainly takes advantage of us. it would be like going round asda while an assistant keeps chucking stuff in your basket!!

1) In your case, I completely agree Amazon is at fault. They are willing to
refund even if you did buy something and took the Amazon Prime option. It shows good cusotmer service. This looks actually more like a coding error. Something happend during maybe a transaction during your shopping experience. You may have not decide to purchase, but across the Prime free trail functinoality perhaps. System error and rightly refunded.

2) As for your statment on legality, its is legal as long as Ts+Cs are presented in what ever way. The illegality issue is actually surounding delibarate making it diffcult to present those Ts+Cs to buyers. Up to some office of fair trading I presume to do something it. Thus, they are NOT taking advanatage of consumers. It does not do them any favour to create a bad situation for bad cusotmer user experience.

3) LOL...Asda anology...don't you relaised we are already flooded by people putting stuff in your basket. Its is call the manipulation of marketing and advertisement mate!:money:

*In business school, they teach you that Marketing is about identifying needs that customers are not aware of....and all the time I though it is only about creating awaress of product and service!:rotfl:

Alanood

joanne35 wrote: »

hi i didnt know where to post this so thought this was as good a place as any!
i ordered a book from amazon months ago and thought nothing of it, well until i noticed 49 quid missing from my bank account a "prime member fee" that i apparently signed up to when i got the book delivered i am flamin raging i live on a minimum wage and was managing to scrape through the past couple of months i have 3 kids under 6 and am struggling for xmas and stuff as it is and since they took out this money i have 6 pound left in my account until next thurs when some money will go in!

has anyone else had any experience of this?

i have written of an email to them asking for my money back asap as i feel i was duped into this i received no correspondence from them to say they would be taking this money i feel they have been very under hand about it.

apparently if you havent used the service you are entitled to your money back so i havent so heres hoping !!

any advice would be grately appreciated.

joanne

The same thing happened with me today!!!!! They charged my account by £49...I am International student and my budget so limited I can’t offer to lose this amount of many!!! And I have not filled in or sign any trial for amazon...
How I can contact them....I search in their website but could not get any phone NO or email...
Can anyone help me pleaseeeeee...it’s urgent...
Thanks,
Alanood

Alanood

This happened with me today!!!!! They charged my account by £49...I am International student and my budget so limited, I can’t offer to lose this amount of many!!! And I have not filled in or sign any trial for amazon...
How I can contact them....I search in their website but could not get any phone NO or email...
Can anyone help me pleaseeeeee...it’s urgent...
Thanks,
Alanood

custardy

you cant find how to contact Amazon on their site?

Pollycat

Look under 'Help' - there's details there about how to contact Customer Services.

I found it in less than 1 minute.

Re whether you did or didn't sign up for Amazon Prime, I suggest you take a look at this screenshot (originally provided by custardy):
You can clearly see that there's a button to click to "learn more" and if you click on that it tells you that it's free for one month and as long as you cancel it anytime during the free trial you won't be charged for it.

I can't really see how Amazon can be any clearer than that.
Failure to read details by a buyer isn't really the problem of the supplier.

Alanood

custardy wrote: »

you cant find how to contact Amazon on their site?

Thank you Custardy for your help!!!

Please I do not seeking this kind of mockery respond....