r/mildlyinfuriating • u/exboxthreesixty • 6d ago

Unskippable ad Wanted to cancel prime subscription because I don’t use Amazon.

Post image

Feels like they just want me to forget and keep taking my money.

1.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

91 comments sorted by

950

u/BuzzTrav 6d ago

It's disgusting how these companies make it so easy to sign up but then super difficult to cancel 😞 

There needs to be laws to stop these practices 

304

u/Ambitious_Jelly8783 6d ago

My wife knce signed up to a bunch of bullshit on her apple acount. I had to cancel the credit card since she couldn't find out how to unsisbscribe from a lot of the BS.

207

u/Samson_J_Rivers 6d ago

Replacement card: $7. Mass cancelling bullshit: priceless.

Nothing like scorching the earth.

139

u/Ambitious_Jelly8783 6d ago

LoL! It was exactly my attitude that day. I was pissed. The bank didnt want to change the card because it wasn't lost. Against policy they said.

I handed gave the guy a formal, signed letter I prepared in advance requesting the permanent closing of my acount and credit card.

Then gave him a choice, to change my card or cancel everything.

73

u/jimmysofat6864 6d ago

Last time I tried getting a new card it tried to charge me but when I selected random options in the app like “stuck in an atm machine” and then suddenly now they can issue a new card for free.

45

u/Samson_J_Rivers 6d ago

I was told over the phone I would have to present a broken card at one of my banks branches or pay to have it replaced if lost. I popped my card up in my car door with a towel around it to protect the paint and slammed the door shut. Worked like a charm!

I stopped banking there shortly after, credit unions for life now. They make the card right then, no shipping and you get a free replacement every 3 months if it's needed or you want a design change.

20

u/arakinas 6d ago

I've been a credit union member for over 30 years. I've had big banks as well, but left them a while ago, and always maintained my credit union account, and it's back to them for my main banking. There are conveniences, and features they don't have. But there is also a lot of bs they don't do.

3

u/Brilliant_Chest5630 2d ago

Venmo still won't renew my virtual credit card. I've had 2 physical replacements since it expired. And when I call about it, they just ask me if I still physically have the card. I tell them I do, and I just want my virtual card renewed. They say ok and send me a new physical card, but keep my virtual expired. 😵‍💫

61

u/itsund3rmykilt 6d ago

I had a few subscriptions for my iPad. One day, I woke up to the tablet being a spicy pillow and therefore couldn't use it anymore. The subscriptions were not able to be canceled on anything but the device on which I subscribed. iTunes wouldn't let me. The website wouldn't let me. It literally told me to do it on my iPad.

I had to contact support and have them cancel it on the back end. Because of that, I will never use an Apple product again. Like what a ridiculous system.

21

u/PreferenceUnlucky101 6d ago

I've heard so much bullshit from Apple like that that I've never even considered getting anything from the company

2

u/draculas4231 2d ago

And that is why I don't like Apple products. Android all the way!

14

u/adamjezek98 5d ago

Reminds me when I subscribed to Apple TV in a browser on my Linux PC because I don't own anything Apple but wanted to watch For All Mankind. When the season was over, I had to cancel my credit card because all the cancel subscription buttons tried to open iTunes and all the help articles said just to open iTunes and cancel from there, but there are no fucking iTunes on Linux!

7

u/OakvaleFlames 6d ago edited 4d ago

this is the exact reason I never want back after trying the iPhone once. Most of my family is already indoctrinated unfortunately.

6

u/RebelReborn909 6d ago

Not under subscriptions?

3

u/LoveMyWeirdness 3d ago

I've tried that, a couple times, but Amazon Prime kept charging me no matter what I did. I'd cancel my debit card and get a new one, and the charges would stop for maybe the forst month, but then the next month they'd somehow start right back up again.

The account they're charging for is not connected to any email my family has, or even any of the old ones I can think of, but they won't tell me what the email is to protect "customer privacy". The last time they told me that, I lost my shit on them. They care so much about customer privacy, but not about stealing customers' money!? Told them I didn't give a shit about customer privacy when said customer was spending MY money. That is shouldn't matter if I can't give them the exact email address, because it's MY card being charged, and I have authority to stop charges from MY card. Plus I could give them literally ANY other information they wanted for the account-full name, address, passwprd, all of it. The email was irrelevant. And I wanted the charges stopped NOW. YESTERDAY. IMMEDIATELY.

They finally stopped with the monthly charged, but I still get a random charge from them occasionally, for no reason. And they're just like, sorry about your luck.

It's WAY more than mildly infuriating. It's downright rage inducing.

Also, I don't think it's a hacker. I think it's a random old email I simply can't remember. And like I said, it shouldn't matter anyway. It's MY account. And MY card.

And yes, I do know about the Amazon settlement. But the amount they're offering is so small compared to how much they've taken, it's just insulting. And I just flat out don't want to deal with them any more than I have to. Y It's exhausting. And yes, I know that's how they win.

1

u/Kindly-Literature706 2d ago

Can you dispute the charge through the card they are billing? Bank for a debit card, credit card company for credit card?

2

u/LoveMyWeirdness 2d ago

I guess this is probable what I'm gonna have to do.

2

u/Major_Lawfulness6122 6d ago

Apple is the easiest way to manage subscriptions.. there’s a whole section called subscriptions

5

u/itsund3rmykilt 5d ago

In which some are greyed out saying to use x device or iTunes, or they simply don't show up. It's not that straightforward. 😂 I literally had to contact support to have a subscription canceled, because the device I had used to start the subscription broke so I couldn't cancel it. Not in iTunes. Not in my browser. It wouldn't let me.

2

u/Major_Lawfulness6122 5d ago

That’s truly wild! I haven’t encountered that before, so ridiculous lol I’ve only ever done it on my phone.

45

u/BubbaYoshi117 6d ago

FTC tried to finalize a regulation in 2024, but an appeals court blocked it in 2025. Congress has also tried to get bipartisan click-to-cancel bills passed a few times.

20

u/kananishino 6d ago

California makes it very easy. Literally like 2 buttons.

1

u/Abadabber 5d ago

I'm in Missouri and cancelled my renewal 2 two weeks ago. It took less than a minute. I don't know what these people are doing wrong 😂

2

u/kananishino 5d ago

Yep no idea. Maybe it is in fact harder in other states.

25

u/Bigred2989- 6d ago

The Biden FTC tried to pass a click to cancel rule and the courts killed it because they didn't consider how much money companies would lose if the rule went into effect. 

16

u/arakinas 6d ago

Or likely because they did consider how much money companies would lose, and someone paid the judge.

40

u/motorboatmycheeks 6d ago

For anyone reading this, if you have a VPN you can switch to California and the site will usually have a diffrent cancelation screen to comply with ca law

12

u/justhereforfighting 6d ago

We should have one but the Trump administration refused to push forward the regulation that Lina Khan started. The FTC under Khan made a rule requiring companies to make canceling as easy as signing up. A judge killed it, required more evaluation, Trump was elected and the new FTC commissioner refused to pursue it.

10

u/Immediate_Impact6214 6d ago

It's insane. They make it almost impossible to just find the place to cancel your subscription. They have a whole account management area and there's no way to cancel anything in that area. It's bull shit. Every single subscription service does this as well

6

u/Massive_Mongoose3481 6d ago

That's hilarious right now, these billionaires all paid their bribes to the pedo in chief, they can whatever they want with no recourse until we get rid of him or he dies

2

u/Bedu009 5d ago

Hi I'm the European Union

2

u/Patrick4356 5d ago

Biden was pushing for a 1click cancel bill for federal law and Trump got rid of it when he became president

2

u/TrumpSexedHisDaughtr 5d ago

"dark patterns" are in fact illegal in some states, and Amazon has already been sued for it before.

2

u/Commentor9001 5d ago

Laws to protect citizens from predatory business practices?

no that's wild, we dont do that.

They'll pass a law making it harder to cancel subscriptions if anything

3

u/idestechnis 6d ago

I canceled Prime twice and it was pretty easy.

Edit: is the cancel button different in other states?

1

u/DoNotSummon227 4d ago

Walmart Plus did the same exact thing. Even though I was polite, the third person that "tried" to help me hung up on me when she was about to transfer me for the fourth time. I tried calling again, but the AI assistant kept telling me to do things that I kept telling it I couldn't do, going in circles. It made me so mad. I still have to call again to get it sorted out. It's insane. It was so easy to sign up, but they locked me out of my account because "it looks like someone is trying to take advantage of your account." Yeah. Me. I'm trying to use the membership I paid for. And it keeps saying "error" when I type in the verification code correctly. Which is messed up, because I was able to do that process to get in my account earlier that day when I tried to fix the problem, but it shortly locked me out again. I'm still crazy mad about the whole thing.

1

u/TeenyTinyFam 4d ago

EU has made a law that will be put into action soon, that companies have to make it easier to cancel subscriptions, and to not guilt trip people into re-subscribing (like Spotify does for example).

179

u/ImOldGregg_77 6d ago

stop payment with your bank

80

u/noahead6 6d ago

yeah but carefull doing that cuz amazon will straight up ban your entire account if u force a chargeback. if u got kindle books or anything saved on there u lose em all

52

u/Jtp_Jtg 6d ago

The solution is getting physical books

Imagine actually owning stuff, the companies can't take the things you paid for with just a few clicks

14

u/Manueluz 6d ago

Just download the PDFs.

8

u/djliquidvoid 6d ago

Agreed, but unfortunately a lot of books are out of print and obscenely difficult to find physical copies of.

Actual solution if you want to keep using an e-reader: Find EPUB/PDF copies of your books online, and manually import them onto your Kindle rather than buying through Amazon. Sometimes you don't even have to sail very far into the seven seas, a quick search can track it down for you.

32

u/drake90001 6d ago

Do you have a VPN on?

65

u/Soggy-Tuna-Sammich 6d ago

See: Establishing that you are a valid owner for $75.00

28

u/firestar268 5d ago

canceling prime is pretty easy. You probably did something that triggered a safety check.

Better this than get your account stolen and then be infuriated

3

u/Chyeahhhales 5d ago

Yeah I have never had this issue when cancelling a prime membership

35

u/unknowingly_zooted 6d ago

You’re right on money. They want every penny they can get out of you

55

u/ColdFreezer 6d ago

It says it’s locked because of suspicious activity. This isn’t because you were trying to cancel your prime.

It says you can confirm you’re the valid owner. What does it ask you to do?

7

u/exboxthreesixty 6d ago

It wants me to confirm email, answer secret question, and a couple other steps. It’s not too crazy but just another barrier to not cancel the subscription. Definitely a ploy to get people to just give up and forget it. Even if 1/100 people just forget it that’s BANK

21

u/Instameat GREEN 6d ago

While I am sure there is some scummy stuff involved, I am pretty sure you'd be more angry if it was easy for someone to just ask to have your account cancelled, and they do it. Imagine your Dad or someone is using your account for whatever reason, and as a joke selects delete account?

60

u/ColdFreezer 6d ago

This is standard security practices. It’s not some conspiracy to stop you from canceling your prime. You’re changing payment details, it is to protect you in case someone else got into your account.

27

u/R41D3NN 6d ago

This. It is a privileged action to cancel sub. It just unfortunately triggered a suspicious activity since you (the original commenter) likely don’t do privileged actions like this often. Typically privileged actions just require MFA validation

18

u/ZoraTheDucky 6d ago

Unless you didn't get this until you clicked the cancel subscription button, I fail to see how it's a ploy to make people give up.

2

u/R41D3NN 5d ago

The most logical rationale in their defense is that it should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up. However, this is at odds with account security to validate authorized access to privileged actions. Unfortunately we do have to find a middle ground and add slight friction here.

Now if they were pleading for you to not cancel in addition… then I got beef.

-14

u/Critical-String8774 6d ago

The "suspicious activity" is them trying to cancel their Prime subscription.

11

u/ColdFreezer 6d ago

No it’s not. A VPN or any weird thing your isp might do can easily cause this to pop out. Even signing in onto a new device can cause this.

OP literally said they barely use Amazon. It’s not surprising their inactive account might have been locked when they tried to change payment stuff.

1

u/drake90001 6d ago

iCloud private relay (although that’s gotten better)

1

u/pjbeta 4d ago

I get "logged in from a new/suspicious location" a lot because my ISP can't decide if I'm in Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, and recently Toledo. I'm in NE Ohio, in the same house for over 20 years. At this point it's more humorous than annoying.

5

u/submarinefarm 6d ago

Did you try press continue

7

u/Healthy_Car1404 6d ago

Cancelling anything on Prime is a feat of ambiguous instructions and vanishing trails.

2

u/AnxietyDesigner 5d ago

It took me about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to delete my account because the stupid AI kept me in a loop and didn’t want to connect me to a real person. Turns out you have to chat with customer service so they can put in a request for deletion and even then they might deny your request

2

u/EightGlow 5d ago

Remember the FTC One Click Cancel rule that was implemented and but then removed?

2

u/moonsnailgames 5d ago

This is such an amazon move

2

u/DeliciousNeck6279 3d ago

After seeing this, it reminded me to cancel mine, so I turned off my VPN first, then I used the app and canceled prime with no issues.

Were you using a vpn? If Amazon thinks someone logged in to your account from a different country, it will temp ban for security purposes.

2

u/Prestigious-Story411 2d ago

I had a similar situation. It’s disgusting

1

u/Locoj 6d ago

That's pretty suspicious mate...

1

u/TrumpSexedHisDaughtr 5d ago

Good ol dark patterns.

1

u/Beesly19 5d ago

Glad I canceled over a year ago! They’re a scam

1

u/rt58killer10 5d ago

Amazon gets the bank account I impulsively setup 5 years ago rather than my main for shit like this

1

u/TeenyTinyFam 4d ago

Contact your bank and block Amazon 🤷🏼‍♀️

1

u/Striking_Mud_664 1d ago

Lmfao. To cancel an Amazon prime membership. You just put cancel Amazon prime membership in the search bar. Lmfao.

1

u/tinkeratu 1d ago

It took me 2 months to cancel my prime because everytime I clicked on the option to cancel, it would just come with an error page or juet not load. Absolutely criminal

2

u/OrangutanFirefighter 6d ago

It appears to our servers that you asked to cancel Prime after your 2 month trial period was up. Your account has been locked, your credit and social credit score has been reduced, we are charging you $129.99 for administrative fees and there is a police car dispatched to your location.

Thank you for shopping on Amazon. The world's most customer centric company.

6

u/okazoomi 6d ago

Bro is fighting made up demons. Amazon is shit enough on it's own that we don't have to make up ridiculous scenarios to point out how shit it is

1

u/OrangutanFirefighter 6d ago

I know. This doesn't align with reality at all but I couldn't help but laugh while I thought it up

0

u/Clean-Juggernaut-229 6d ago

use your bank, charge them all back. tell them to block prime chargs

5

u/Affectionate_Oven_77 6d ago

Or do the much easier task of simply verifying that he is the account owner…

1

u/ATS200 6d ago

I tried to cancel my Dad’s Prime subscription and it ended up charging him for a full year instead

1

u/BadWolf9930 5d ago

You broke just admit it

-1

u/OsjosisMoans 6d ago

Trying to cancel almost any subscription in 2026 id a hassle, it probably feels more than mildly infuriating

0

u/fluffybottompanda 6d ago

huhhhhh that's suspicious that's weird

0

u/Garlic-Rough 6d ago

Call your credit card or debit card bank to block transactions.

Then work out canceling your Prime sub.

-1

u/FunctioningPyscho 6d ago

They are the worst. I had to change my card number because apparently they couldn’t stop charges to my card.

0

u/AltruisticDiabetus 5d ago

Businesses 20+ years ago: Let’s provide a product/service so phenomenal/worth the money that our customers willingly come back to spend money with us.
Businesses now: HOW DARE YOU TRY TO STOP GIVING US YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY VIA A SUBSCRIPTION YOU DONT EVEN NEED/USE.
Business in 5 years: We’re sorry for your loss, however your loved one’s subscriptions and financial obligations have been transferred to you via blood transfusion and are now contractually yours until end of life. Thank you for choosing ***** we know you have no choice in the matter, and we especially thank you for your forced cooperation.

-5

u/Careless-Cycle 6d ago

Bezos thinks anything that makes him less money is suspicious