Underhand Amazon Prime

CardinalWolsey wrote: »

What is the consumer rights question? If only there was a forum where you could vent your anger and warn others...

I guess that would be the bit where the OP said

noisla wrote: »

Is this practice actually legal?

BBC article says:

The page in question, seen in May and June 2019, included a gold box stating: "Order now with Prime." Directly beneath that, in a grey box, text stated: "Continue with free one-day delivery - pay later." Both these options signed users up to Prime.

In its ruling, the ASA said the presentation and wording of the two boxes had been "likely to be seen by the average consumer as separate options".

The option to not join Prime at all had been presented on the left-hand side of the page, had been smaller and "could easily be missed by consumers," it said.

"It was also in a faint colour - and compared to the option presented in the grey and gold boxes, it was significantly less prominent," the ruling said.

You have to ask why the opt out button was elsewhere on the page and fainter in colour if Amazon didn't have any intention of making the opt out difficult to find?

This is the same company that introduced a price parity policy to prevent marketplace sellers selling items elsewhere at lower prices and then dropped the policy when it was officially questioned.

Like all big companies they will push their luck as far as they can and it's positive to see rulings keeping them in check.

Why give the OP a hard time. The only criticism I have is the OP should always add amazon's email address to their favourites so they don't miss the email informing them when prime subscription has been activated.



The bad news for "average consumers" out there is that this practice continued in to September, longer than is implied in the ruling. I assume Amazon have only recently changed this practice. Not sure why it took 3 months to rule on this. The only time I have complained to the ASA (not about Amazon) they ruled 15 days after my complaint was submitted and a TV advert was pulled.


On 9th September I placed an order using my mobile and I clicked on the grey button immediately below the orange prime button, as described in the complaint. Instantly knew I had been signed up to the 30 day free trial as the Amazon prime welcome email arrived.


As an experienced web user, former IT manager and web developer (semi retired) I am not an ignorant or !!!!less shopper who doesn't know what they are doing. I never willingly sign up for such offers and have never paid for prime, even after being tricked into signing up, as I don't need it. I thought I knew how to avoid the prime sign up and the hoops you have to jump through every time you place an order. I also advise my friends who do not want prime on how to navigate through the amazon pages. I therefore suspected I had somehow been duped. This ruling confirms I was right, and how they did it.


I did not complain at the time as I had no screenshot of the page to submit to the ASA in evidence. I was also recovering from an accident and 'assumed' my index finger had strayed onto the orange button by mistake as my motor skills were affected by the accident.


It's unfortunate that most threads on this subject inevitably derail as the fan-persons pile in and tell you how wonderful prime is. Yes, it was great during the 30 day trial as I bought quite a few things (retail therapy after my accident). But that is not the point. Deliberately misleading even tech-savvy users to get them onto prime should be outlawed.


You wonder why 'only' 10 people complained?
My one experience of making a complaint was it took over 2 hours to go through the reporting process, including signing up for an account with ASA, accurately documenting the issue, gathering and submitting evidence etc. However now I have plenty of time on my hands, I will be gathering evidence for my own complaint about another issue with amazon prime sign-up on mobile browsers, assuming the coding issue I have identified hasn't been fixed yet.

born_again wrote: »

DO NOT SELECT FREE NEXT DAY DELIVERY

Alternatively, do not select Prime if you don't want it and only agree to a free trial if you will remember to cancel at the end of it...