FTC sues Amazon, claiming duping customers into getting Prime

Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by Amazon Prime’s user design.

The FTC certainly thinks you have. Yesterday, the agency filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon violated consumer protection laws by manipulating millions of customers into signing up—and staying signed up—for its $139-a-year Prime service. The lawsuit claims Amazon did this by:

• Making it harder for customers to buy products without a Prime membership.
• Utilizing “dark patterns,” a design tactic that subtly convinces users to perform a specific action, to get people to enroll in Prime without their consent.
• Designing a cancellation process that took six clicks, which was referred to internally as the “Iliad Flow,” a reference to Homer’s doorstop epic poem.

The lawsuit accused Amazon leadership of being complicit in the company “tricking and trapping” customers, saying that they “slowed or rejected changes that would’ve made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.”

It’s not just Amazon: The FTC proposed rule changes in March that would require companies to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. So, the days of spending an hour on the phone to cancel that subscription you signed up for impulsively may soon be over.