The Amazon will pay $ 2.5 billion to settle the FTC suit, which claims “dark patterns” in the initial subscriptions

In the six -year timeline established in the settlement, anyone “tried to no avail” to cancel his main online subscription to get money up to $ 51 from Amazon. People who subscribed to PRIME during that same period can reach $ 51 if they register by “Following the Challenge” – a page with a confusing interface that might lead to people who unintentionally. The previous court files have proven that in some cases, some users may have chosen “two -day charging” on an element and they did not realize that, when doing this, they were also involved in Amazon Prime.

A FTC WIRED spokesman tells that automatic payments will go to some customers within 90 days.

“The rest of the qualified consumers will receive a notification from Amazon, and they will have the opportunity to submit a simple claim form,” says FTC. “Amazon is required to publish information about this to Amazon.com and the application. The settlement also requires that Amazon have an independent third party that monitors their compliance with these claims.”

The court file says that Amazon is also “permanently” is forbidden to structure the initial subscriptions with the confusing “negative option feature”, where the customer is supposed to perform a purchase unless he actively rejects it.

For example, the file says, a button that reads “No thanks, I don’t want free shipping” not clearly indicates that the customer will be registered in Prime unless he clicks it. Amazon must also explain when a person chooses to subscribe to Prime, and includes a language like “Join Prime” in his user interface. Likewise, Amazon must communicate clearly when the main subscription is subject to automatic renewal using words such as “renewal”.

The initial complaint, filed by FTC in June 2023, claimed that although Amazon has improved its process to cancel the Prime membership, the company spent years of the complexity of the cancellation process intentionally.

The facility in the court file on May 7 includes an email chain with Amazon employees from December 2020, which was described as “distinct and confidential” in the subject line. In the email, the main content and marketing manager has reformulated the main points that appeared in the “American Main Performance Meet” recently.

“The subscription leads to some extent from a shaded world,” as it reads a re -formulated price, and is attributed to a person whose name has not been revealed at the meeting.

“We must tend away from the experience of clarity of registration, focus more on the leadership of the members in general and increase the assertion that you are a prime,” also reads a different quote from another person at the meeting, listed in the same facility.

A different attachment explains that Amazon was aware that the customers were frustrated. The company’s slides of September 17, 2017 focused, specifically on customer service complaints about the “unintended” preliminary recordings. (It appears that a different attachment, which includes an email chain dated September 25, 2017, indicates the presentation. Ten people were asked to delete the PowerPoint document “and send” confirmation “as soon as they exist.)

One of the customer complaints of the presentation claims that they are “deceived” to register for a free trial for Amazon Prime when they chose to ship for two days at the purchase, without knowing that this would also participate in the PRIME experience.

“I don’t like your service,” he read another complaint. “This nonsense I asked for a product in Amazon ADS (SIC) to me to a program with car bills I did not register with. I will not use Amazon and tell everyone about this kind of nonsense that you pull.”

“It is an evil and bloody thing that compels something (such) I never wanted,” as he reads another complaint.

The Amazon Slide itself indicated that the confusing confusing registration operations were increasing a burden on Amazon customer service workers, as well as “losing customer confidence”.