fekin' amazon prime..

Do you mean the phone calls that ask you to press 1?

(I shall have to try it next time; I expect a nice person will come on line as ask me to "confirm" my details.)

I'd like to say something dispariging Jim, but I fell for that too. There is a button somewhere that removes it from your account, but it's well hidden.

No, the telephone spammers simply exploit the fact that it's so easy to accidently sign up for Prime.

I've also bought an item when I simply intended to put it in my "basket" like you can do on almost any other platform. It was possible to cancel it, but it's clear to me that Amazon are bastards.

FWIW, I did just that this morning. Person with non-uk accent wanted me to complete an online form, so messed him around a bit before telling him to f*ck off. Oddly enough,they rang back a few times, hanging up before I could press 1.

Usually a lady with an American accent here.

Is there any likelihood that *1* is a premium rate call?

Yeah, the initial recorded message is that. Pressing "1" got me an American male recorded message saying I'm being transferred to a person

Just checked my usage, no. The pont of the scam is to give control of your computer to them. Basically the "Microsoft support" re-hashed for suckering people who think they have Amazon Prime to cancel or whatever.

No, there's no way for receiving a call to incur charges on your bill.

(with the exception of premium rate texts and reverse charge providers, which are quite stiffly regulated)

Theo

OK. It obviously connects you to someone else. Paranoia worried that it might be *something* else:-)

My voicemail contains a DTMF number tone as the 'beep' after the message. It's remarkable how many robocall operators end up having a nice chat into my recorder...

(I get them as email which tells me the caller ID and length of the recording in the Subject - it's easy to skip the ones that didn't leave a message)

Theo

My 'number withheld' script starts with the tri-tone that says the number is not in use.

Mine is an endless ringing tone. I could have presented it on my SIP channels as early media, but I prefer to let the bastards pay.

No I imagine he means the one on the web site, but its simple, it says delivery options, and one is always something amazing with a free trial of prime, I just avoid that one, I mean I can't see the screen so what is the sighted excuse? I think if I bought all my groceries from them and ordered a lot of stuff, It would be worth Prime, but not when you are an as required user. Brian

Well your experience must be different from mine. Every item nearly always asks you either at buy time or at shopping basket time. If you click it before you check out then there is an item in the checkout to the effect of what reductions you have through prime, you simply edit basket or if at the end change the delivery options. Brian

surely they can do nothing unless you give them some bank details

and why the **** would you do that?

Nope - they phoned you!

(they whole press 1 bit is just so they can use a robo caller to do the legwork and feed live prospects to the team of scammers)

Oh, now I like that idea :-)

You are too kind....yes I went to put something into the amazon basket and pushed the "continue without prime" so I thought and up came "congratulations you have supscribed to 90 day prime free trial...bastards...had to cancel it but I still get the trial for a month and then it cancels....this has happened twice before... but we shouldn't have to do that...swear they are at it...anyway I didn't order what I was looking at so their loss....

The way to make them pay is to get past the 'press 1' step and waste a human's time, otherwise all it costs them is for originating the robocall, which is centi-pennies.

Theo

The other day I gave up trying to order a CD from Amazon as I couldn't work out whether they still do the "autorip" thing that means you can download the MP3s before you receive the CD. I don't think they do; they used to save all the MP3s of all the CDs you had bought from them, and let you upload ones of your own. That doesn't seem to exist any more.

I thought that online retailers were supposed to make it really easy to order stuff. Amazon are the opposite.

I found the CD (and others) on YouTube, downloaded the tracks and converted them to MP3 for free. It's not always clear whether this violates copyright as sometimes the copyright owner puts it up. In any case most copyright owners don't mind other people uploading their stuff provided you don't benefit from advertising revenue.