Another related dark pattern: When cancelling a Prime trial, Amazon makes it appear as if you're going to lose the Prime benefits immediately, not at the end of the trial, to keep you from cancelling early.
(It seems like you DO keep them until the end of the trial, but you only get told that after cancelling)
Together with their decreased support quality (agents barely understanding what I write + the typical "tell the customer what they want to hear so they go away and give you a good CSAT, by the time they realize you lied it won't matter for you anymore"), I have a _very_ low opinion of Amazon. They still have a service (delivery time), price (free shipping) and consistency advantage in many cases, but it's quickly shrinking, and I am much more likely to buy from alternative places if they can make a competitive offer.
Same story with a full Prime subscription, not just the free trial, they use several dark patterns to confuse you about what will happen when you actually hit the cancel button.
When I found myself slowly buying fewer things on Amazon a few years ago and decided to cancel Prime after many years as a subscriber, I was so grossed out by the cancellation process that I’ve actively avoided ordering from them ever since.
I just got fooled by another Amazon dark pattern and ended up with a Prime free trial I don’t want. Went to cancel it immediately, and wow so many hoops to jump through. Hopefully I did it right. If they end up forgetting I canceled they are getting a chargeback so fast it will make their heads spin.
Curious, I cancelled mine yesterday because they messed up my billing and wouldn't/couldn't unsuspend it¹, so the CS person suggested to cancel and resubscribe. I did have to confirm about three times that this is what I wanted to do, but in no case was it hidden or not obvious.
¹ it was a bit of a mess, they first tried to bill an empty credit card, but only notified me after several attempts when prime was actually suspended. I added a regular credit card, but they don't conform to the new EU rules about authentication so it just got declined. Again, they didn't tell me they were even trying. So I added a SEPA account which is possible through the UI, but apparently they required a credit card. In the end I just cancelled, and re-signed up under the amazon of the country I live in (which is fairly new, hence not doing it the first time.) At least I get another free trial month for the hassle.*
I cancelled it a couple of years ago so perhaps things have changed, but afaik I'm not alone in feeling it was intentionally designed to confuse...lots of scrolling, multiple buttons with slightly different wordings, confusing warnings about when exactly the benefits end.
Just the fact that I–a software engineer and longtime Amazon customer–felt compelled to open a new tab and Google questions about the cancellation process, seemed ridiculous to me. Plenty of less tech savvy folks are sure to have been confused, tricked or given up in the process.
I've experienced the opposite with Amazon. If you complain about a product you've gotten they simply refund the full purchase price, no need to return the item or anything. I've even gotten months of prime refunded by telling them I forgot to cancel.
I assume that eating the cost of a bad purchase is cheaper for them than upsetting a long-term customer.
I've never had that experience with Amazon UK, they've always demanded that the broken / damaged item be returned.
On one occasion when I had to return an item I ended up £30 out of pocket because it had to go by courier instead of post, due to length. I had to argue with their customer support to obtain recompense despite it having been them who told me to send it courier. The item was only worth £80.
Nowadays I just use Amazon as a price baseline but shop elsewhere.
On returned items, both Amazon US and Amazon DE have been quite helpful. I think Amazon US is even more over-the-top, but I think the local retail standards for this are much higher in the US so it makes sense.
On memberships, I don't mind the Prime cancelling issues very much because they seem to always credit back a month if you later tell them you forgot to cancel. Unfortunately, there are annoying dark patterns when signing up, hiding the "No thanks" button when trying to get through an order, etc.
I just returned an item and they arranged for a courier to collect. They acknowledged the return after one day and credited my account the following day.
The only thing I noticed is they hide the collection options under a button. By default they encourage you to drop off at a depot or post office.
In my recent experience this has changed drastically. Amazon was
on average the cheapest, fastest online marketplace I'd used,
and any issues were resolved within an hour.
Now I'm still waiting for a product I ordered 3 months ago. The
only option I have is contacting the seller - who doesn't
respond. I wrote a review about the experience, which then got
promptly removed.
More recently I've ordered a few things from multiple places,
the one outstanding delivery is from Amazon, and now almost a
week late. It'll probably be the last one; their obvious lack of
interest regarding fake reviews, review resetting and
obfuscation, misleading pricing, counterfeit products and the
constantly shrinking number of quality products have taken a
toll. More often than not products are shipped from China,
making it a worse choice than many local competitors who may ask
higher prices for delivery but at least ship in two days instead
of two weeks, have a phone support hotline and a reason to care.
Very slowly but steadily the reasons I started using Amazon's
platform eroded away until it became more or less a more
approachable middleman for aliexpress dropshippers.
(It seems like you DO keep them until the end of the trial, but you only get told that after cancelling)
Together with their decreased support quality (agents barely understanding what I write + the typical "tell the customer what they want to hear so they go away and give you a good CSAT, by the time they realize you lied it won't matter for you anymore"), I have a _very_ low opinion of Amazon. They still have a service (delivery time), price (free shipping) and consistency advantage in many cases, but it's quickly shrinking, and I am much more likely to buy from alternative places if they can make a competitive offer.