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Did Amazon trick people into paying for Prime? Federal case goes to trial
The U.S. government says Amazon manipulated people into signing up for Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel. The company says its designs and disclosures follow industry standards.
The Federal Trade Commission has accused Amazon of violating consumer-protection and competition laws in how it got people to sign up for Prime, the subscription service that costs $139 a year or $14.99 a month. The FTC alleges that millions of people signed up for Prime unintentionally thanks to Amazon's use of what's known as dark patterns, which the lawsuit describes as "manipulative design elements that trick users into making decisions they would not otherwise have made." "Millions of consumers accidentally enrolled in Prime without knowledge or consent," the FTC says in its trial brief, "but Amazon refused to fix this known problem, described internally by employees as an 'unspoken cancer' because clarity adjustments would lead to a drop in subscribers."
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