Tech

Amazon Prime: canceling your subscription has become hell

As Amazon’s internal documents show, the American company has made the procedure for unsubscribing from Amazon Prime more complex year after year. The strategy is simple: deter customers from leaving the service and reduce churn.

amazon prime unsubscribe
Credits: Unsplash

Amazon Prime is one of the most attractive offers from the e-commerce giant: free delivery within one working day, access to Amazon Prime Video, Twitch Prime, Amazon Music, Amazon Drive and Prime Photos, a free Kindle book per month… The formula from Amazon is rather complete and inexpensive, since it will cost only € 5.99 per month to take advantage of all the services offered by Prime.

But for one reason or another, there are times when you want to unsubscribe from Amazon Prime. However, as evidenced by the company’s internal documents, Amazon doesn’t really like the idea of ​​you leaving. On the contrary, it has put everything in place to discourage the user from looking elsewhere.

As reported by our colleagues from the Business Insider site, these documents describe in detail the “Project Illiad”, a multi-step strategy that involves reducing Amazon Prime churn and maintaining an optimal revenue stream from subscribers to the service. Organized over several years, the “Project Illiad” introduced multiple steps to complicate the unsubscribe process. Obviously, this increased complexity paid off as soon as it was implemented, with a 14% drop in departures in 2017.

Read also: Amazon raises the price of the Prime subscription by 17% but has a good excuse

Amazon turns unsubscribing into an obstacle course

Even today, it takes several steps to finally arrive on the screen to confirm its “end of membership”. This convoluted procedure has also earned Amazon several complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. and several consumer advocacy organizations. “Throughout the process, Amazon manipulates users through wording and graphic design, making the process unnecessarily difficult and frustrating to understand,” explained the Norwegian Consumer Council in a report published in January 2021.

He pursues : “Companies such as Amazon seem to speculate that they can discourage customers from canceling their subscriptions either by heavily emphasizing the benefits that will be lost in the event of cancellation or by making the process so complicated that its users give up. simply”.

This method, which consists of making simple operations such as unsubscribing more complex, has a name: dark patterns. Simply put, they describe a particular design of a site/service/app interface that prompts or encourages the consumer to make choices that are in the interest of the company, and not in his. In the case of Amazon Prime, keep your subscription. For its part, Amazon defends itself and assures that it does “make it clear and simple for customers to join or cancel their Prime membership”.

Source: Business Insider

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