In the filed complaint, the FTC claims that Amazon violated the FTC Act and Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) using manipulative, deceptive user-interface designs (a.k.a. ‘dark patterns’) to subdue consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions.
The ROSCA, established in 2010, aims to prohibit certain practices, such as “data pass”, where consumers are charged for products or services they did not explicitly agree to purchase.
Here’s what FTC Chair Lina M. Khan says:
‘Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money. These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike. The FTC will continue to vigorously protect Americans from “dark patterns” and other unfair or deceptive practices in digital markets.’
Homer’s Iliad in the voice of Amazon
The FTC alleges that Amazon deliberately deterred users from easily unsubscribing from Prime. Ironically, Amazon used the term ‘Iliad’ to describe their own canceling process, reveal internal documents obtained by The Insider. That’s an allusion to Homer’s 24-book-long poem in nearly 16,000 lines about the decade-long Trojan War.Allegedly, Amazon has been aware of customer objections since at least 2017: a single click at checkout produced an active 30-day trial Prime subscription, but at the cancel front, multiple pages awaited the user to get lost into.