Amazon Prime - inertia selling?

Hull Telecom became KCom (via Kingston Communications). They provide my service, buT I don't deal with them directly.

Thanks for the update charles.

Cheers, T i m

In article snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com, pinnerite snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

"Knowingly" being the important word

It was.

Complain and you will probably get it back. You can cancel Prime on line.

Could be, but it's UK law that matters now.

Please do. They do their best to trick you into signing up. I got caught out once but got an immediate refund when I complained.

Some things are actually dearer by Prime.

Either way, they can still setup a deal that is only available to prime members...

I *suspect* their algorithm tries to recognise people who might be price-insensitive and therefore they sometimes do dynamic pricing. I still get most of my stuff from them because IME their customer service if you do have a problem is normally second to none.

I think almost everyone I know (no matter how IT savvy) has been 'tricked' into that one, they actually seem very keen on sending me 7 days of prime for 99p offers, which comes in handy to get everything off the wish list, watch a box set and maybe a few years old film, then wait for another few weeks for another offer.

Every few months Amazon offers me a free trial of Prime for a month, I always take it up, set the "remind me three days before it expires" E-Mail flag and cancel it before it costs me anything.

You *can* beat Amazon at their own game.

Not me

never fallen for it

Having just done my first Amazon order for a long time, I now realise what the hurdles are in avoiding Amazon Prime - could hardly believe the hassle involved !

It is almost impossible to check whether you have opted out of the free trial period. I have cancelled my Amazon account as I am worried that they will catch me out. What a way to keep customers happy. If you are duped into a free trial and then get billed at the end of it, that would appear to be inertia selling. If they sent you an item you had not ordered and then billed you, that is inertia selling. Trading Standards should look at this. Sort of underhand dealing you might expect from large businesses. They probably make more from enough duped people to compensate losing a few disgruntled customers.

Exactly.

I never tick the prime button in the first place. You can see if its accidentally ticked in checkout and correct it. What confuses me is whether I can get discount Prime video, and music unlimited if I sign up. If yes, then it might be worth it on cost grounds. Brian

You get prime video, and music prime included. Music "unlimited" is extra.

easy to cancel the free trial if you are caught out plus you can still enjoy prime benifits for the period of the trial ....win win

But it seems that most people that get caught out don't realise it until they see the bill which is much like a DD from the card they used to purchase the goods.

The whole process is designed to deceive. It is very easy to accidentally do ( or more likely fail to do) something that signs you up without knowing you have done/not done it. We are Prime members (on purpose) and use Amazon a lot, but I still think the sneaky ways they use to sign folk are are close to fraud.

I accepted a 7-day 99p trial, placed one order and cancelled the trial. They gave me a 50p refund.

In my experience acceping a Prime trial is accompanied by an email saying that's what you've done. So if someon's got a membership without realising it must be because they weren't paying attention to what they were doing or to their emails. And if you want to cancel it, it's not difficult. And if you have used it for an order, say, they'll refund part of the fee if they think you've not had full value, automatically, without asking.