MSE News: Been charged for unwanted Amazon Prime? Here's how to cancel

biscit

zagfles wrote: »

You should have read all the wise rants in this thread and berated yourself for your stupidity and accepted that Amazon deserved to keep your £79. You stupidly ended up getting your money back.

Huh? No-one says that people shouldn't claim the money back, just that blaming Amazon rather than contritely admitting foolishness is rude.

biscit

NiceCupOfTea wrote: »

I got that free credit card sized thingy and waited about two months then signed up for the month long trial round Christmas. Forgot to kill it, but then thought 'hey, only a month!'. No.

If they would charge monthly, like everyone else on the planet seems to, I wouldn't mind. I did not know it was an annual up-front charge.

Obviously I now have it for the year, and have to say it seems OK so far. So I tell friends to sign up for the free month but make really sure to cancel before the deadline if you find it is not for you, as it is not clear at all you'll be charged for the full year if no one has warned you beforehand.

I think you can still get your money back if you haven't used it. You may well get the fee for the rest of the year back if you have. Just ring them and ask, so long as you have no expectations there is no harm in trying.

nicola130601

I received the email from MSE yesterday and logged into my Amazon account to see that I had Prime (don't remember signing up to it) and was charged £79. I contacted Amazon to ask for a refund and received an email this morning to say that since signing up, I had not used any of the Prime services, so it was obvioulsy and error and they are issuing a refund in the next few days.

rachkalassa

I remember signing up for the free trial and have to admit i completely forgot about cancelling it. However, i use my account for both personal things and work so have used 2 different cards for payment. The card registered to my account, and the preferred payment card, is my personal one. I have used my company credit card a couple of times to purchase things for work but never changed my 'preferred' payment card. Just after my Prime trial expired i found a charge of £79 on my company credit card! I double checked my Amazon account to see if i had accidentally changed my preferred card but i hadn't. I went on live chat to someone at Amazon and they apologized and said they would refund the amount and i cancelled the Prime, but no reason given for charging the wrong card. I agree that you are informed about having to cancel the trial or you will be charged but sometimes i think Amazon may do things wrong.

callistris

This will drag on and on.

Most people using the internet are sensible and read everything carefully first and they understand what they are doing.

Then you get the 'click happy' people that have very little sense of what they are doing on the internet, and its these that are most likely getting caught out by this.

I work for a company that provides an online service, and we offer a free trial. We take no card details from customers for the trial, so we don't have this problem.
But we still get many people complaining about the auto generated free trial emails that we send out, as they are adamant they never signed up to our free trial.

If Amazon Prime just covered the Instant Video service, and didn't include the free next day deliveries, then people could sign up for the free trial without giving over any card details.
That way to continue, they would physically need to create an account once the free trial ends, so the Prime video service could continue.
As this covers free delivery for items purchased from Amazon, you have to enter your card details to actually pay for what you are buying, and is where this problem lies.

There's no excuse for not reading the small print first so that you know what you are signing up to, or the emails that follow from Amazon.
Yes, maybe Amazon can make some changes, to allow for the ignorant amongst us so that its so clear that they have no excuse, but even this won't work for the most stupid people on the internet.

They will always click away quite content, and will never learn.

cristol

My complaint is that having continually neatly sidestepped all attempts to get me to sign up to prime, including the enticing default postage option - the website inserted yet another "trap" during the ordering process. This urged me prominently to "continue" - as I was ordering, I assumed this meant continue with my order. Only when the screen came up with free delivery did it dawn on me that I had been instantly signed up - to prime - no mention of a free trial or cancellation here. Of course (in hindsight and with better eyesight!) I should have pressed the tiny "no thanks" button hidden at the bottom. Not easy to find a way to contact Amazon re Prime but eventually used an unrelated link and got money refunded. But why treat loyal customers this way? To try and flog an additional service that obviously can't sell itself without tricks.

Percy1983

cristol wrote: »

My complaint is that having continually neatly sidestepped all attempts to get me to sign up to prime, including the enticing default postage option - the website inserted yet another "trap" during the ordering process. This urged me prominently to "continue" - as I was ordering, I assumed this meant continue with my order. Only when the screen came up with free delivery did it dawn on me that I had been instantly signed up - to prime - no mention of a free trial or cancellation here. Of course (in hindsight and with better eyesight!) I should have pressed the tiny "no thanks" button hidden at the bottom. Not easy to find a way to contact Amazon re Prime but eventually used an unrelated link and got money refunded. But why treat loyal customers this way? To try and flog an additional service that obviously can't sell itself without tricks.

It is very mena of them to offer a free trial of a service which you don't have to accept.

Interestingly I admit fact postage does infact default to the free prime trial, but before this it always defaulted to the most expensive/quickest and I always ticked the free/cheap options unless I wanted the faster delivery.

Is it just me who checks these things before continuing (not just with amazon)?

carlcollinge

I also fell into this trap, however I was fully aware that I had to cancel the free trial subscription before the 30 days was up. I totally forgot, and had the money deducted out of my account. I thought it was worth trying ringing up and explaining that I had never intended to use the prime service, and that I had just forgot to cancel it. luckily they totally agreed and refunded my account. excellent service:)

Carl

zagfles

biscit wrote: »

Huh? No-one says that people shouldn't claim the money back, just that blaming Amazon rather than contritely admitting foolishness is rude.

WHY OH WHY can't people READ WHAT'S IN FRONT OF THEM??

The PP to whom I was replying described him/herself as "very thick". Is that not good enough for "admitting foolishness"? What more do you want?

Now kindly "contritely admitting foolishness" for not reading what's on the screen in front of you :rotfl:

zagfles

nicola130601 wrote: »

I received the email from MSE yesterday and logged into my Amazon account to see that I had Prime (don't remember signing up to it) and was charged £79. I contacted Amazon to ask for a refund and received an email this morning to say that since signing up, I had not used any of the Prime services, so it was obvioulsy and error and they are issuing a refund in the next few days.

Success story after success story! And to think some posters were questioning the wisdom of the MSE article! And of course there's probably loads of people who get the email who never use the forum.

Excellent article MSE. Well done :T