Amazon faces a new lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, which claims the tech giant tricked customers into enrolling in Prime accounts that were intentionally difficult to cancel.
Millions of customers were duped by Amazon’s “manipulative, coercive or deceptive” practices that caused them to sign up for Prime subscriptions that renewed automatically, the FTC accuses.
“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said in a statement. “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.”
The FTC claims Amazon employed “dark patterns,” or user-interface designs that trick people into making decisions they would not normally, according to the filing made Wednesday in a U.S. district court in Washington.
Amazon then “knowingly complicated” the steps to cancel a subscription, which costs $139 annually or $14.99 per month, the FTC contends.
“The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them,” the FTC said in its announcement of the lawsuit. “Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would’ve made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a Us.Mistertruth request for comment.
The FTC began a probe into Amazon’s Prime practices in March 2021.
“The FTC will continue to vigorously protect Americans from ‘dark patterns’ and other unfair or deceptive practices in digital markets,” Khan said.
Wednesday’s filing comes three weeks after Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle a pair of FTC lawsuits that claimed privacy issues with the company’s Ring doorbell and voice-command Alexa products.
“Our devices and services are built to protect customers’ privacy, and to provide customers with control over their experience,” an Amazon spokesman told the Us.Mistertruth late last month. “While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring, and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us.”