Prime without end: Consumer protection criticizes Amazon subscription


It doesn’t matter whether it’s about terminating an online contract or refusing the storage of cookies: companies come up with many tricks to make such steps particularly difficult for their customers. While the conclusion of subscription services, contracts & Co. is often done with one click, cancellations and rejections often require a minute-long discussion with unmanageable menus and buttons that are misleadingly worded. Some providers are taking this game so far that consumer protection is now getting involved.

As reported by Spiegel.de, the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) has publicly criticized the business practices of individual companies with regard to termination options. The online retailer Amazon, the e-mail provider Web.de and the dating platform Lovescout24 are particularly targeted. What they all have in common is that, according to the VZBV, they make it more difficult for their users to make terminations and rejections. According to the report, the consumer advocates evaluated 168 customer complaints about said providers. They came to the conclusion that users can hardly avoid being manipulated by the stumbling blocks known in technical jargon as “dark patterns”.

Customers feel taken advantage of

Many people therefore feel exploited and tricked in view of the complicated termination and rejection options. Dealing with the complex processes often results in users giving up and abandoning the process. According to the VZBV, the method of massively lengthening processes and making them as uncomfortable as possible is particularly widespread. A scam that, according to consumer advocates, is also used by Amazon to prevent its Prime customers from canceling their contract. Although the online retailer has streamlined the process over the years, there are still manipulative tendencies in the termination process.

In the course of the cancellation dialog, Amazon offers four possible answers to continue the initiated process. Three of them cancel the process, only one confirms the desire to cancel the subscription. Amazon described the cancellation process to Der Spiegel as simple and transparent. The company pointed out that it even offers a reminder function to inform customers of the possibility of termination in good time before an automatic contract extension.

Awkward cookie rejection

At Web.de, the VZBV complained about the unnecessarily complicated refusal to store cookies. According to this, users would have to scroll through a long and confusing dialog and always ran the risk of unintentionally giving their consent. Lovescout24, on the other hand, allows you to subscribe to its services via an app. A termination, on the other hand, does not work that way. According to the company, this is due to the terms of use of the Google Play Store, which are due to change in April 2022. Then the termination problem would also be superfluous.

However, the VZBV insists that terminations and refusals should not be any more complicated than the conclusion of contracts or approvals. However, there is not yet a blanket ban on the so-called dark patterns. Therefore, lawsuits are only possible with complex individual examinations. According to the report, the first improvements are becoming apparent in the Digital Services Act, where individual regulations for online cancellations have already been laid down. In addition, the Telecommunications Telemedia Data Protection Act (TTDSG) has prohibited the more difficult rejection of cookies since December 1, 2021. To this day, however, many website operators do not comply with this requirement.



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