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If you’ve ever accidentally signed up for Amazon Prime or found the subscription tricky to cancel, you’re not alone – and now the retail giant is getting sued for what the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is calling “manipulative, coercive or deceptive” tactics.
The FTC, which is the US consumer rights watchdog, has sued Amazon over the retailer’s website design, which it claims has both “duped millions of consumers” into signing up for Prime and made the cancelation process “knowingly complicated”.
In the FTC case summary, the watchdog explains that it’s taking action against Amazon “for its years-long effort to enroll consumers into its Prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime”.
The FTC’s two main criticisms of Amazon are its user interface and cancelation procedures for Prime. It claims that Amazon uses design tricks known as “dark patterns” to “trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions”.
The FTC highlighted Amazon’s checkout process in its press release, saying “in many cases, the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was more difficult for consumers to locate”.
