U.S. regulator accuses Amazon of tricking Prime customers

Published: Jun 22, 2023 Duration: 00:03:49 Category: News & Politics

Tags : CBCNews cbc business news Amazon prime members prime tricking

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the many companies that count on you to join and pay monthly subscription fees are watching a legal challenge unfold the outcome could influence the way sign ups and cancellations are done and the business whose practices are being challenged is none other than Amazon Jeannie Lee Joins us with more on this one Genie first tell us about the accusations against Amazon well Hannah these are really being levied by the FTC the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S which is existing to protect consumer rights and this now is being led by a woman named Lena Khan who became kind of famous about six years ago when she was a law student and she wrote an article slamming Amazon for basically Anti-Trust issues and of course antitrust is part of the ftc's Mandate but today she is going against Amazon or slamming Amazon for the practice of when that you sign on and when you try to cancel Amazon Prime so let's just walk through this first of all she's saying that there's just too many hidden ways that Amazon gets you to join up and this is the kind of thing you'll see for example and anyone who has been on Amazon will will know this that there's always kind of enticing offers and reminders of just what you get and prompts to sign up and sometimes even as you're checking out they continue to ask you to join Amazon Prime and reminding you of how much you would save on shipping even though if you were to click through you would find that if you were willing to wait long enough you would get shipping for free perhaps so just a lot of reminders of just how much this will get you and of course we know why Amazon does this it is a business after all and it wants you to pay the fee and for you know ten dollars a month furthermore Amazon Prime offers you all kinds of things but of course Amazon gets this continuous Revenue stream money that keeps coming in month after month after month and it tends to come in for a long time because people forget that when you sign on you agree to opt out by cancel canceling by specifically opting out making various steps and this is where the head of the FTC is also kind of upset because when you go to cancel if you remember to cancel so that you can save your ten dollars a month or more well it's kind of hard try to find exactly where you must go it's a tab that isn't exactly visible it's not being shouted at you to come here and cancel you have to find it then you have to click through what Ms Khan says are eight different steps and yes it is kind of hard it you know you might click to cancel but then you're reminded that maybe you don't want to cancel maybe you just want to pause this Etc it takes you eight steps to finally cancel and so this is what she's after she's basically saying that it's just too hard to get out of it once you're in it and this is the kind of negative billing option that once upon a time Canadians I don't know if you remember this uh Hannah really were upset about when a cable company specifically got people to have to take specific steps to sign out that is something that made people a lot of very angry but now of course it's something that's just done so just remember Hannah to cancel if you don't want your money to keep going to these big companies well thank you for that reminder Jeannie okay thank you

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