The FTC suit also claimed that Amazon slyly tricked customers into an auto-renewal program without warning, leading them to unwittingly signing up for Prime when making purchases.
Amazon has refuted these accusations, calling them misguided. The online retail giant has pledged to battle the FTC in court over the claims.
The agency declared that Amazon created the Iliad Flow exit strategy in 2016 and only scrapped it in April after hearing about the impending lawsuit.
After arriving at the Prime Central page, customers need to click “manage membership” to reveal options, including an “end membership” button. But that’s just the beginning.
The Dreaded Subscription Cancellation Process
Their insanely complicated cancellation process has led to legal action against them, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeking $25 million in damages from the company.
The FTC claims that this page would present the customer with a number of discount options, such as switching from monthly to annual payments or taking advantage of student discounts or discounts for people on government assistance. However, the page also included warning icons and links warning users that their Prime membership would be affected if they cancelled and that they would be no longer eligible for their unclaimed Prime exclusive offers.
Clicking on any of these icons or links would take users out of the “Iliad Flow.”
On this second page was found yet another “continue to cancel” button, which then took the user to Page 3.
Here, customers were presented with five options, with only the last option – “end now” – actually allowing them to cancel their subscription. The other options included pausing the subscription or canceling its auto-renewal function. Pressing any of the four other choices would bring the user out of the “Iliad Flow,” and they would need to start over if they wanted to continue.
The suit filed against Iliad claims this process caused cancellations to drop significantly. With such a complicated system for cancellation, it’s no surprise that customers were frustrated and likely opted to keep their subscription active rather than deal with the headache-inducing cancellation process.
