Inadvertent Amazon Prime

inspectorperez

My experience with Amazon (which is mainly all good) is that you do have to be alert to what you are doing when you are making a purchase. You can easily subscribe to Amazon Prime without intending to, or forget that you have a trial free membership of Amazon prime which auto renews at £x per month. Personally I do not regard this as entrapment, perhaps more a pitfall for the unwary.

Even if you do end up subscribing, as a previous poster has commented, it is easy to cancel and they do send out email reminders if a particular service is going to auto renew.

Not a plug, more of an observation, I find Amazon Prime to be excellent value in both money terms and convenience.

dan958

Amazon also tend to be pretty decent at refunding any accidental memberships, as long as they were not used.

jon81uk

I always check on any site what is being charged for delivery, I have Prime and I still double check what delivery method I'm getting on Amazon!

couriervanman

Never had a problem with amazon prime i sign up every 6 months for the 1 month free trial mainly for the prime video stuff grand tour/jack ryan/football. The rest of the year when buying stuff i get the do you wish to sign up for 99p for a week trial or £7.99 a month but its always clear how to opt out/say no, along with wife and sons account we manage 6 months a year

More4me

Amazon tried to sign me up to their prime service few times with initial one month free trial. What usually happens is that after you have selected the items you wished to purchase and proceed to basket the next screen which pops up is to sign up to free trial, now there is no option anywhere on the screen to proceed with your purchase without signing up to free trial.

first couple of times I abandoned the transaction by closing the amazon  site, however, last time I inadvertently clicked on hoping the next screen will offer option to accept or reject the free prime trial, nothing. finished my order.

Next I received email saying my one month free trial has started or to that effect. Immediately I wrote back stating that I have not signed up to Prime service, have no intentions to do so and could Amazon cancel the membership. This was more than six months ago and I am still awaiting their response. Since that incidence I have not purchased anything from Amazon. May be I am loosing out may be not. But one thing is sure that the Amazon uses unclear practice to sign up to prime membership.

Neil_Jones

More4me said:

Next I received email saying my one month free trial has started or to that effect. Immediately I wrote back stating that I have not signed up to Prime service, have no intentions to do so and could Amazon cancel the membership. This was more than six months ago and I am still awaiting their response. Since that incidence I have not purchased anything from Amazon. May be I am loosing out may be not. But one thing is sure that the Amazon uses unclear practice to sign up to prime membership.

You could have cancelled it yourself in your My Account area on the Amazon website; you didn't need to wait for Amazon to get back to you - its far more likely the email you replied to goes to an unmonitored alias so you'll be waiting forever and a day for a response if your enquiry has gone there.

wongataa

More4me said:

Amazon tried to sign me up to their prime service few times with initial one month free trial. What usually happens is that after you have selected the items you wished to purchase and proceed to basket the next screen which pops up is to sign up to free trial, now there is no option anywhere on the screen to proceed with your purchase without signing up to free trial.

There always is an option to proceed without signing up for Prime.  That option is small and designed to be a lot less prominent so people are more likely to sign up for Prime but it is there. It would be better if the option not to sign up was more obvious.  You can always immediately cancel Prime if you do sign up in error, just go the Prime area in your account and choose the cancel option.  Amazon will encourage you not to cancel but there is no problem in cancelling.

GaleSF63

More4me said:

Amazon tried to sign me up to their prime service few times with initial one month free trial. What usually happens is that after you have selected the items you wished to purchase and proceed to basket the next screen which pops up is to sign up to free trial, now there is no option anywhere on the screen to proceed with your purchase without signing up to free trial.

The page you are talking about is probably the one where just about the whole page is about Prime, that has the opt out option bottom left in one line of small letters - and a not very prominent colour, if I remember correctly. 

I've got used to looking out for that, but you have to be alert for other ways that they put it. 
Another way they do it is to put "we're giving you a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime!" , not "offering" as it ought to be, as if it is already settled, and may mean someone is less alert for the opt-out option that follows. 

A_Lert

I've been caught by it myself too. It !!!!!! me off and is one reason I rarely shop at Amazon.

It's known as a "dark pattern" and there are many such examples. I believe the EU was set to investigate such behaviour by companies, but that doesn't help UK customers now.

Bigphil1474

MY OH regularly accidentally signs up for Prime on her account, but it is easy to cancel with no cost. Fortunately, I've now got it on my account anyway so we both use that, partly for the TV and partly because we're ordering more from Amazon at the minute. To be fair, the free trial period is worth it, and you can cancel before it ends and still get the full trial period.