Saw the other day a charge get refused on a credit card I cancelled. 3DSecure is mandatory on it, so I kinda panicked thinking I got phished somewhere, but no, it was just Amazon reusing their authorization to charge a year later. I would have actually updated my info if I had a heads up, but now that my membership has been canceled following the charge refusal, it's kind of an occasion to let it go.
Lucky you who was able to get through the dark patterns in the unsubscribe page. I got one extra charge because the first time I tried, I fell for one of their dark patterns and believed it was canceled while it wasn't.
Before each subscription payment there after, The Bank reminds us with SMS about the payment and we can cancel it through that. For amount > INR 5000 (~ 60$) each subscription payment has to be approved by the consumer.
Amazon still does employ dark patterns, Like having 'Prime membership cancellation' behind several pages and the final confirmation located in a non-prominent location; But Indians can cancel Prime membership without even visiting Amazon's website.
I gave up and blocked it through my bank and the customer service rep said she had to do the same thing. She also said Amazon will blacklist my credit card ... ummm i dont care I dont and will never subscribe again. Just use a friend or family's account and pick it up from them.
Amazon is stupid for pulling these anti-consumer tricks .. all about bottom line now vs. the future. Stupid!!
I don’t think Amazon would be viable today if they dropped their dark patterns and held vendors accountable.
I am at a point where I’d rather go shop at a physical Walmart or Target than buy something from Amazon.com. Driving to a physical store causes me less frustration in 2022.
By chance I looked into the Prime membership page. An obscure page listed the recent Prime charges. Yep, it's the Prime membership charge. The amount looked odd because tax was added to it, where the old charges were like $119 or $139. Amazon employs a dark pattern of not sending to the users any notification on the Prime renewal, no billing statement, no invoice, no email, just a silent charge on the credit card.
I promptly canceled my Prime membership, not for the money but for not rewarding dark pattern behaviors.