It seems just about everyone has an Amazon Prime subscription nowadays—but how many people actually want it? In a new lawsuit, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims Amazon has used “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive” tactics to obtain and maintain Prime customers. Amazon could end up paying millions in penalties for using these tactics, which are often referred to as “dark patterns.”
A case summary published Wednesday states Amazon regularly tricks users into enrolling in $139 Prime subscriptions, which automatically renew year after year. When a non-Prime customer adds an item to their cart and goes to check out, they inevitably come across pop-ups and embedded upsells that aim to convert the customer into a Prime subscriber. These interruptions offer free Prime trials and reminders that without Prime, the customer will not receive free shipping. Neither "adequately" discloses the price of Prime’s auto-renewal, leading the FTC to refer to the phenomenon as “nonconsensual enrollment” in its complaint.
The FTC says the retail conglomerate also “knowingly complicated the cancellation process” in order to keep customers paying for a subscription they don’t actually want. Amazon reportedly knew the Commission was eyeing its conversion practices. Before the FTC filed its lawsuit, the company slightly adjusted its Prime cancellation scheme—but only for some subscribers. The FTC claims Amazon leadership even internally referred to the updated process as “the Iliad flow,” referring to the labyrinths found within ancient Greek literature, while rejecting any suggestions that would make cancellation easier for customers to navigate.
Amazon issued a startlingly dystopian statement in response to the FTC’s lawsuit: “The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership."
Dark patterns are essentially any elements of an interface that manipulate users into doing something they wouldn’t naturally do. They’ve been used across search engines, apps, and even video games to manipulate users into giving up location data, looking at harmful content that keeps them online, and buying things they don’t really want. (Some researchers even consider infinite scroll a dark pattern, though others disagree.) Though disappointing, it’s no surprise that Amazon would use similar strategies to deceive users into becoming paying Prime customers, given recent reports on Prime’s growth. The company is said to have made roughly $35 billion off the subscriptions last year.
The FTC pledged back in 2021 to begin “ramping up enforcement” on companies that manipulate people into starting subscriptions or make it difficult to cancel services. While companies don’t necessarily have to use dark patterns to catch the FTC’s attention, cracking down on those that do certainly won’t be outside the Commission’s wheelhouse.
