Oh the irony
I went to buy a book on Amazon on Friday.
I found the book I wanted and went through the process – Name, Address, the usual malarkey. However when it came to paying I ran into a problem. It insisted that I get free postage and all I had to do was sign up to Amazon Prime.
I don’t want Amazon Prime. I order things off Amazon maybe once a year so signing up to a service that offers free delivery but costs me £9 a month doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I know there are extra things like some television channel to add to the thousand or so other channels I already have but I’m not interested in them so I do not want Prime.
But they insisted. It’s a free trial they said. It will only cost £9 a month after that but you can cancel before that they said. No. Fuck off. I DO NOT WANT PRIME. But their system insisted I give them my card details and wouldn’t give any alternative. And I don’t want to give access to my bank details and then have problems cancelling it.
I bought the book off Easons.
A couple of days later I got an email from Amazon –
We noticed you tried to sign up for your 30 day free trial of Prime but may have had difficulty verifying your payment method. Payment method verification is required to sign up for Prime.
Please complete a one-time verification for your payment method again, or choose a different payment method. You will not be charged until your free trial ends, and you can cancel any time.
When your free trial ends, you’ll be charged £8.99 per month.
They gave me a link in the email to verify things.
I binned it.
Yesterday I got another email from them –
Stay safe from scammers this holiday season by getting to know their most common scams:
- Order Confirmation Scams. These are unexpected calls/texts/emails that often refer to an unauthorised purchase and ask you to act urgently to confirm or cancel the purchase. These scammers try to convince you to provide payment or bank account information, install software to your computer/device, or purchase gift cards. Remember, if you received correspondence regarding an order you weren’t expecting, you can verify orders by logging into your Amazon account. Only legitimate purchases will appear in your order history – and Customer Service is available 24/7 to assist.
- Tech Support Scams. Scammers create fake websites claiming to provide tech support for your devices and Amazon services. Customers who land on these pages are lured to contact the scammer and fall prey to their schemes. Remember, go directly to the help section of our website when seeking help with Amazon devices or services. If you do use a search engine, use caution. Legitimate Amazon websites contain “amazon.com” such as “amazon.com/support”.
A case of “physician heal thyself”?
My book arrived this morning.
Yes, the reason I no longer buy from Amazon, navigating all the elephant traps they set to trick you into signing up for prime. For books Blackwells cost no more, for everything else eBay.
I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. Normally my only use for Amazon is my Kindle. For everything else I try to buy off local shops [i.e. Irish] with eBay as a last resort.
They scammed my poor old Dad into signing up for it. It was only after he died that we discovered they were taking money every month for a service he was not using.
It really is a scam. They do everything in their power to get us to sign up and if we forget to cancel, they silently continue to debit our accounts. Unless we check our accounts regularly their little scheme will go unnoticed.
When they started Prime they managed to trap me not once but twice by the auto enroll tactic. I got revenge the second time though, the family bought everything they needed and stocked up with various stuff using free delivery then I cancelled on the last day of the free period.
I have a policy of never signing up for a free offer, particularly if they demand my card details in advance. The only exception I ever made was with Netflix whee we decided to give the service a go and the free month was incidental. We use the service most nights so I’m happy to pay.
I didn’t choose prime or the free month offer. They got the card details because I was trying to buy something like a book or CD then applied the card details to prime.
There is usually a very small text link that allows you to continue without signing up to Prime. It down in the left, small font and black text, easily missed considering the size and colours of the banners for signing up.
However, even knowing that I’ve been tricked several times into having it in my basket when we come to checkout and twice I haven’t noticed it before I clicked confirmed. The first time I phoned up and cancelled it. The second time they cancelled the renewal and let it run. I check my CC bill to see if it shows up regularly.
Maybe trading standards or somebody can do something about this. I’ve heard of a few people that have signed up and paid for months without anyone noticing.
I looked hard for a link or other way past but couldn’t find anything. Maybe I should have waited for my new glasses first? I’m not going back to take a look as it would only annoy me.
The last book I bought on Amazon was something called “Head Rambles”.
(Hopefully the $1.19 royalty didn’t bump you into a higher tax bracket.)
I used Dollars rather than Euros for the same reason I use English measures rather than Metric.
A base 10 system makes much more sense, but I like a challenge.