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Default Is there a law gainst this?

On 22/04/2018 09:59, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/04/18 09:49, Nightjar wrote:
On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I hadÂ* not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.


SFAIK, it is illegal for you to be enrolled in a paying service
without your consent. However, if you have, at any time, accepted a
trial of Prime, you have agreed to it being automatically renewed when
the trial period ends. Given the way they present the options, it is
not difficult accidentally to chose to trial Prime when navigating to
the checkout.

Except that having been caught that way once, I am uber careful.


It's the "yes I'd like free delivery" (and a free trial of Prime) that
most likely catches people.



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On 22/04/2018 11:38, Jimbo ... wrote:
I have been signed up TWICE ....is this a record ?


No. Happened to me too - and I tried to be extra careful the second time.

--
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On 23/04/2018 10:01, John Rumm wrote:
On 22/04/2018 11:53, Huge wrote:
On 2018-04-22, Nightjar wrote:
On 22/04/2018 10:32, alan_m wrote:
...
I have noticed that Amazon are pushing Prime and to make a
difference in
the service they are hanging on to other orders for a week before
dispatching them. The dispatched order will then arrive the next day!

I regularly use Amazon, but don't use Prime. Looking at the last month,
none of my deliveries have taken more than 2-3 days.


Prime isn't worth having in the UK. It's mainly aimed at the US, where
deliveries routinely take over a week.


If it were just discounted/free delivery then that could be true. If
however you want/value some of the other bundled bits (TV/Music/eBooks
etc) then the package as a whole can be a bit more attractive IMHO.



I use my daughters prime account.
It pays well if you choose the no rush delivery and you want kindle
books as you get a pound back for each book.
They actually pay me to use prime ATM as the wife reads lots of books.
They would still be paying me if I paid the full £70 myself.

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On 23/04/2018 10:04, Huge wrote:
On 2018-04-23, John Rumm wrote:
On 22/04/2018 11:53, Huge wrote:
On 2018-04-22, Nightjar wrote:
On 22/04/2018 10:32, alan_m wrote:
...
I have noticed that Amazon are pushing Prime and to make a difference in
the service they are hanging on to other orders for a week before
dispatching them. The dispatched order will then arrive the next day!

I regularly use Amazon, but don't use Prime. Looking at the last month,
none of my deliveries have taken more than 2-3 days.

Prime isn't worth having in the UK. It's mainly aimed at the US, where
deliveries routinely take over a week.


If it were just discounted/free delivery then that could be true. If
however you want/value some of the other bundled bits (TV/Music/eBooks
etc) then the package as a whole can be a bit more attractive IMHO.


The video offering is crap. Everything I wanted to see is extra money.


I find it has its moments. The video offering is probably not good
enough as a standalone offering for the price - but ok as an "extra"
alongside the other bits. Some of their original series have been worth
watching. ("Halt and Catch Fire" being a good example)

And the comment about "aimed at the US" was from a friend in the US, so
I guess he knows what he's talking about.


I am not in the US so can't comment on their version of it. I was just
going on my experience of the UK version.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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On 4/23/2018 1:47 PM, John Rumm wrote:
On 23/04/2018 10:04, Huge wrote:


And the comment about "aimed at the US" was from a friend in the US, so
I guess he knows what he's talking about.


I am not in the US so can't comment on their version of it. I was just
going on my experience of the UK version.


I use Amazon Prime in both the US and the UK.
I was given 4 years free US Prime, and find the video, music, and
delivery benefits very useful.
In the UK, I get Prime a month or so at a time, when I know I'll be
ordering major amounts of stuff. The UK video streaming is of little use
to me (except when travelling) as broadband service in my part of the
north of Scotland is truly pitiful - as is delivery service. Prime
delivery means I may get shipments in a week or so, rather than a month
or so.


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On 22/04/2018 10:32, alan_m wrote:
On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I hadÂ* not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.




Are you sure that they signed you up?Â* They are rather sneaky in what
options they present on the screen when you want free postage. Say yes
to next day free postage and you are signed up to the Prime trial period.

In my experience you have to say no to the free postage for next day
delivery at least twice (after reading the small print) and then in one
of the final screens change the option from postage with an additional
cost to the 3 to 5 day delivery option.

I have noticed that Amazon are pushing Prime and to make a difference in
the service they are hanging on to other orders for a week before
dispatching them. The dispatched order will then arrive the next day!

They do now have 100 million customers. I must have made a mistake once
and I did then ring them to cancel. I find some things that Amazon sells
are reasonably priced, but I have to be careful as that is not always
the case.



--
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On Sun, 22 Apr 2018 20:47:31 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I had not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.



They probably signed you up with your agreement, but you just missed
what you were agreeing to (because they make it very easy to do
"accidentally")


IIRC, this web gui trick is named "Dark Patterns" (or something like).
It's where the buttons they want you to click on are all in nice friendly
and inviting colours (usually large green buttons with duplicates
scattered about the web page) and the ones they'd rather you didn't
select are shown in grey, the default for a de-activated option, further
aggravating this obfuscation of function by leading you through more
hoops where there are tiny preselected tick boxes with even tinier ticks,
along with more empty tick boxes that require a tick to avoid unwanted
'freebies' for options no one in their right mind would even consider
(assuming they were in their right mind by then).

Add to this, the trick of randomising the order and the sense by which a
commonly repeated set of options are presented to catch out those who've
seen it all before and know reflexively which boxes to check and which to
leave alone. Believe me, these web sites represent the efforts of a high
pressure salesman on a mission using every sneaky trick in the book just
a gnat's dick away from being on the wrong side of the law.

The only reason you even have a 'sane choice' at all at the end of this
process is purely to avoid prosecution for inflicting crapware, spyware
and malware onto their users' computers by being able to claim, hand on
heart, that user options to avoid such selections do actually exist on
their website pages and are fully functional.

But for the fear of serving time in prison, there'd be no opt outs at
all for even the savviest of user to choose, leaving the savvy user to
navigate away from the site before ever giving out any personal details,
followed by a cookie clean-up session before surfing for alternative
sources of whatever free goods or services they were trying to track down
which they know will almost certainly fail when that adage, TANSTAAFL
finally hits home yet again.

As to the question posed in the op, yes there are laws but the scummy
*******'s know just how close they can skate to the edge of legality to
cajole their visitors into signing up for an over-priced service or an
unwanted download of spyware and worse.

The process of using "Dark Patterns" should be banned outright but it
takes time for the legislation to catch up with the ever evolving digital
landscape. You just have to be ultra careful when using these websites
and never Ass/U/ME that you're protected in law against making bad
choices when buying goods or services on line.

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Bob Eager wrote:
On Sun, 22 Apr 2018 09:59:27 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 22/04/18 09:49, Nightjar wrote:
On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I hadÂ* not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.

SFAIK, it is illegal for you to be enrolled in a paying service without
your consent. However, if you have, at any time, accepted a trial of
Prime, you have agreed to it being automatically renewed when the trial
period ends. Given the way they present the options, it is not
difficult accidentally to chose to trial Prime when navigating to the
checkout.

Except that having been caught that way once, I am uber careful.


I have just given up using Amazon. Except in extremis, where no one else
has what I want.

Absolutely useless and dearer than the many alternatives.
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Nightjar posted
On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I had* not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.


SFAIK, it is illegal for you to be enrolled in a paying service without
your consent. However, if you have, at any time, accepted a trial of
Prime, you have agreed to it being automatically renewed when the trial
period ends.


Have you really, or does that depend on just how your 'agreement' was
obtained?

Given the way they present the options, it is not difficult
accidentally to chose to trial Prime when navigating to the checkout.


--
Jack
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On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 8:13:28 AM UTC+1, Handsome Jack wrote:
Nightjar posted
On 22/04/2018 09:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I hadÂ* not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.


SFAIK, it is illegal for you to be enrolled in a paying service without
your consent. However, if you have, at any time, accepted a trial of
Prime, you have agreed to it being automatically renewed when the trial
period ends.


Have you really, or does that depend on just how your 'agreement' was
obtained?

Given the way they present the options, it is not difficult
accidentally to chose to trial Prime when navigating to the checkout.


--
Jack


They caught me as well so I set a reminder in Google Calendar to cancel it before the renewal date.

I do the same with any 'free for a period of time' trials I may try


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The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon signed me up without my say so for 'Prime' and if I had not
taken prompt action it would have cost me £75 a year.


I thought I'd accidentally signed myself up recently; but it turns out
that the missus had accidentally done it, and since it regards us as a
family, it was saying 'Your Prime' this and that everywhere; which was
really confusing, since I also could see no option to remove it. Only
when we went into the missus' account were we able to completely remove
it for both of us. Bloody annoying.
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