According to news agency Reuters, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Amazon with signing up millions of customers for its Prime subscription program without their consent and making the cancellation process difficult.
The commission filed complaints against the e-commerce behemoth in a federal court in Seattle, alleging that Amazon “knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime.” The business responded to the accusations in a statement, claiming that they are “false on the facts and the law.”
Amazon is accused by the FTC of using “manipulative, forceful or misleading user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions,” and the FTC is requesting “civil penalties and permanent injunction” to prevent similar situations in the future.
In response, Amazon said, “The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design, we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for and cancel their Prime membership.” It said the body filed a lawsuit without notice among the discussions with the commission’s staff.
According to the lawsuit, Amazon changed its cancellation procedure as a result of intense FTC pressure. However, the protocol “requires five clicks on desktop and six clicks on mobile for consumers to cancel from Amazon.com.”
When the FTC claimed that Amazon’s Ring doorbell camera unit was being used to spy on customers, the corporation and the agency reached a $ 5.8 million settlement, which was revealed on May 31. Later, the agency disclosed that the e-commerce site had reached a $25 million settlement with the privacy complaints. According to the research, the platform stored Alexa recordings for longer than necessary and did not remove them when parents requested that they be deleted.
The day of case filing coincided with the date of announcements of the Prime Day sale. Speaking of India, Amazon was recently in the news in India for introducing Prime Lite annual plan in India.
