What The Tech: Amazon customers eligible for settlement over prime cancellation complaints
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Technology Reporter
If you pay for Amazon Prime, you may be eligible to claim a share of one of the biggest consumer settlements in history.
An Amazon Prime subscription costs $139 a year. That’s a good chunk of change. Now, Amazon has agreed to pay a $2.5 billion settlement, and of that, about $1.5 billion will go directly to customers.
Amazon makes it easy to subscribe to Prime. During its huge sales events, all it takes is a click. But canceling? That’s tricky. The FTC ruled the retailer deceived people into signing up for Prime, and kept them locked in.
The result is many Amazon Prime customers will get a refund. So who qualifies? If you enrolled in Prime between 2019 and June of this year, and used the Prime benefits fewer than three times in that first year.
If you tried to cancel Prime but couldn’t, you are also eligible.
To submit a claim, you’ll need to log on to the FTC’s website, enter the email tied to your Amazon account, and provide simple proof that you were enrolled or tried to cancel.
If approved, eligible Prime members will receive about $51 in an Amazon refund. Maybe more important than the money, is Amazon must change its sign-up and cancellation process.
Ending what regulators call “dark patterns” that trick people into staying subscribed. And it isn’t just Amazon, all companies are required to make it as easy to cancel as it is to subscribe.
