YOU CAN LOG OUT, BUT YOU CAN
NEVER LEAVEHow Amazon manipulates consumers to keep them subscribed to
Amazon Prime
14.01.2021

Table of Contents
Table of Contents......................................................................................... 2
Executive summary ...................................................................................... 3
1

Introduction ......................................................................................... 32 Background .......................................................................................... 5
2.1
Dark patterns ........................................................................................... 6
2.1.1 Types of dark patterns ..................................................................... 8
2.2
2.3

Legal context ..........................................................................................10
Amazon Prime ........................................................................................11

3 Case: Unsubscribing from Amazon Prime ............................................ 14
3.1
Unsubscribe process ..............................................................................15
4

Assessment ........................................................................................ 27

5Conclusion.......................................................................................... 29

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Executive summary
In this report, we show how Amazon makes it unreasonably cumbersome tounsubscribe from the Amazon Prime service. The process of cancelling an
Amazon Prime subscription is riddled with a combination of manipulative design
techniques, known as ‘dark patterns’. Consumers who want to leave the service
are faced with a large number of hurdles, including complicated navigation
menus, skewed wording, confusing choices, and repeated nudging. As we argue
in this report, the sum of these practices is a process that seems designed to be
obscure and manipulative, in order to keep consumers bound to the paid
service. These practices were observed on Amazon’s platforms in both the US
and in Europe.

In our opinion, the use of dark patterns to prevent consumers from leaving aservice is in breach of consumer law. Although Amazon is one of the largest
online platforms globally, the dark patterns described throughout this report
are emblematic of a broader problem. Consumers are faced with dark patterns
on a daily basis; whether they want to use an online retailer, unsubscribe from aservice, protect their privacy, and in many other situations. These manipulative
design features undermine consumers’ ability to make free and informed
choices by making us act against our own interests in favour of the interest ofservice providers. We call on service providers to stop using dark patterns andon consumer authorities to crack down on infringements of consumer andmarketing law.

1 Introduction
Consumers are increasingly moving to subscription-based services to accessdigital content rather than directly purchasing content. Digital content providers
charge a regular set fee for access to a number of different types of content.
Examples of subscription-based digital content services, or streaming services,
includes services for movies and TV series, music, newspapers, audiobooks, ebooks, sports broadcasts, video games, and more.

Although the shift toward subscription-based streaming services allows
consumers to access an unprecedented amount of content at relatively low
prices, how this content is provided may also pose a number of challenges.
While many streaming services may be provided at a small monthly sum, thenumber of different services offering exclusive content means that many
consumers will end up paying significant amounts to various content providers
on an annual basis, as the number of services they subscribe to increases.

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This report is a part of a Norwegian Consumer Council investigation into
consumer rights in digital content services. As another part of this work, we
conducted a survey in autumn 2020 of 1,000 consumers in Norway.1 We foundthat Norwegian consumers subscribe to an average of four digital content
services, paying around NOK 400 (€ 38/$ 46) for these subscriptions eachmonth. However, around 10% of male respondents reported that they pay
more than NOK 1,000 (€ 95/$ 115) per month.

Almost half of the respondents said that they probably or definitely pay for atleast one service they do not use often enough to justify the subscription.
Furthermore, around 25% of respondents had experienced problems cancellinga digital subscription because they found the process difficult and/or
frustrating. These numbers confirm that, while consumers generally haveseveral digital content subscriptions, these subscriptions are often left runningwithout being used. Although Norwegian consumers, in general, have a highdegree of purchasing power, these numbers may show a similar trend in othercountries.

Subscription-based services are not a novel phenomenon – consumers havebeen paying monthly or annual sums for having physical products such as
newspapers, books, CDs, and more delivered automatically to their homes for
decades. Digital content services differ from these models in a number of ways.
Platforms such as Spotify, Netflix, and Xbox Game Pass provide access to large
selections of content as long as the consumer pays for a subscription. However,
due to the lack of a physical product and automated payments, thesesubscriptions can become ‘invisible’ or hidden from the consumer.

With an increasing number of streaming services reaching high levels of
popularity among consumers – and a variety of free trial subscriptions lowering
the cost of entry – consumers sign up for services, and the prospect of keeping
track of every subscription becomes complicated. In short, it is very easy to sign
up for services, while cancelling subscriptions may be challenging for a numberof reasons.

As such, consumers may end up with a large number of subscriptions to digitalcontent services, with a mix of services that they make use of often,
occasionally, or not at all. There may be many reasons for consumers to keep
paying for a digital content subscription, first and foremost because they wantto keep using the service, but, as our survey shows, consumers also subscribe toservices that they do not actively use. The combination of a large number of1‘Population survey on digital content’ https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wpcontent/uploads/2021/01/population-survey-digital-content.pdf s

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services and the automated renewal and payment for subscriptions often
means that consumers end up paying for services that could or should havebeen cancelled. Consumers might sign up for a free trial period and forget to
unsubscribe before the trial period ends, or they may stop using the service
while neglecting the running payments for various reasons. Finally, consumers
may attempt to unsubscribe, but be discouraged by an unreasonably difficult
cancellation process.

This becomes a problem if the consumer is tricked into continuous
subscriptions that they do not want to continue because the bar for
discontinuing the service is unreasonably high. As a rule, it should not be moredifficult to unsubscribe from a service than it was to subscribe in the first place.
In the following chapters, we will describe a number of dark patterns, i.e. design
techniques used to manipulate or deceive consumers. This is followed bydescribing the legal context, where we elaborate on how dark patterns may beat odds with consumer and marketing law. We use the process of unsubscribingfrom the Amazon Prime service as a representative case, illustrating a numberof problematic practices that are used to prevent consumers from leaving theservice.

The Norwegian Consumer Council is a government funded organisation that
represents consumer interests. The project was produced with additional
funding from the research project AlerT, which is led by the NorwegianComputing Center.2 We wish to thank Arunesh Mathur from the Princeton
Center for Information Technology Policy, Cristiana Santos from the Universityof Utrecht, and Ingvar Tjøstheim from the Norwegian Computing Center forinvaluable input to this report.

2 Background
Service providers facilitate interaction between consumers and platforms
through user interface design. Every element of a platform or website has been
deliberately placed, either as part of a pre-made template or tailored to aparticular platform. In short, everything from the placement of a button to the
choice of fonts and text colour is a part of a deliberate process. This means thatmany online interactions are relatively seamless and low on friction, but thisease of use can also come at a cost to personal autonomy and, consequently, abreach of consumer rights.

2“ALerT - Awareness Learning Tools for Data Sharing Everywhere”
https://www.nr.no/en/projects/alert-awareness-learning-tools-data-sharingeverywhere

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2.1 Dark patterns
User interfaces can be employed to steer consumers into prioritising certain
choices over others, to hide or omit relevant information, or to otherwise trick,confuse or frustrate users. These practices can be collectively referred to as
dark patterns or manipulative/deceptive design. Dark patterns can be summed
up as features of interface design that push or nudge people into making
choices for the benefit of the service provider, often at the cost of theindividual’s money, time and/or privacy.3 Several scholars have expressed
concern about the use of online manipulation, of which dark patterns are asignificant element, calling the practices a ‘grave concern’.4

Dark patterns may be described as a negative form of ‘nudging’, which is aconcept originating from behavioural psychology. Nudges and dark patterns
work by exploiting pre-existing cognitive biases in consumers and are,therefore, often fundamentally manipulative. Such cognitive biases may include
choosing small, short-term rewards instead of larger, long-term benefits, or thetendency to choose the path of least resistance.

Another highly relevant form of cognitive bias is known as the ‘endowment
effect’, which posits that people have a tendency to value goods that they own
higher than they value those goods before they first acquire them. One
explanation for this effect is that individuals assign more value to the positiveeffects of their possessions, than to any potentially negative effects.5 This isinterconnected with the cognitive bias named ‘loss aversion’.

According to academics in the field, loss aversion is an asymmetry of value,
where the disutility of giving up an object is greater that the utility associatedwith acquiring it. One implication of loss aversion is that individuals have astrong tendency to remain at the status quo (e.g. subscribed to a service),
because the disadvantages of leaving a service appear more prominent than theadvantages of doing so.6

3

Harry Brignull, ‘Dark Patterns’ https://darkpatterns.org/
Daniel Susser, Beate Roessler, Helen Nissenbaum, ‘Online Manipulation: Hidden
Influences in a Digital World’https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3306006
5Keith M. Marzilli Ericson Andreas Fuster, ‘The Endowment Effect’
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19384/w19384.pdf
6Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch and Richard H. Thaler, ‘Anomalies: The Endowment
Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias’
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1942711?seq=1
4

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Although nudges can be used to benefit people and societies, dark patterns arealways designed to benefit the service provider, whether or not this aligns withthe best interests of the consumer.7 Weaponising cognitive biases to influence
consumers into making choices against their own interests may be exploitative,
unfair and unreasonable.8

Dark patterns pose a number of serious challenges to consumer rights. In ourprevious work, we have documented how digital platforms use dark patterns tocircumvent the legal conditions for consent and, as a result, manipulate
consumers into sharing personal data with the service provider.9 Others havedemonstrated how dark patterns are used in attempts to circumvent European
data protection law through the use of cookie consent banners.10

In addition to being at odds with data protection principles and legislation, dark
patterns are also used to deceive consumers into paying extra for products orservices, or making purchases they otherwise would not have made. A study
from 2019 showed how dark patterns are used at scale on shopping websites todeceive or pressure consumers into making certain purchasing decisions.11 Thismay happen through the use of various dark patterns, for example countdown
timers that stress the consumer into making irrational choices, by adding
hidden service fees, or by making it unreasonably difficult to opt out of a paid
service.

This review demonstrates how design patterns are used to confuse and/or
discourage consumers who want to cancel their Amazon Prime subscription.12
As will be shown in Chapter 3, in order to end a subscription to Amazon Prime,
the consumer has to click through several pages, where almost every page is7‘Nudging’ is often used in a positive sense in the academic literature. However,throughout this report, the nudging we observed takes the form of negative
manipulation. Negative nudges has also been described as ‘sludging’. Richard H.
Thaler, ‘Nudge, not sludge’ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6401/431
8
For further background on dark patterns and cognitive biases, see our previous
report ‘Deceived by Design’, Chapter 3.
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/undersokelse/no-undersokelsekategori/deceived-bydesign/
9Forbrukerrådet, ‘Dark Patterns’ https://www.forbrukerradet.no/dark-patterns/
10
Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Santos, Nataliia Bielova, Michael Toth, Damian Clifford, ‘Dark
Patterns and the Legal Requirements of Consent Banners: An Interaction Criticism
Perspective’ https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.10194
Privacy International, ‘Most cookie banners are annoying and deceptive. This is notconsent.’ https://privacyinternational.org/explainer/2975/most-cookie-banners-areannoying-and-deceptive-not-consent
11
Arunesh Mathur, Gunes Acar, Michael Friedman, Elena Lucherini, Jonathan Mayer,
Marshini Chetty, and Arvind Narayanan, ‘Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawlof 11K Shopping Websites’ https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/
12
See Chapter 2.3 for more details about Amazon Prime.

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designed to create uncertainty about the decision and every click nudges theconsumer back into the subscription through blurring and omitting cancellation
information.13 As indicated below, this gives grounds to ask whether thispractice is in line with the provisions of the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices
Directive (UCPD). The practices described in Chapter 3 may also be at odds withcertain US laws, such as Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act,14and state consumer protection laws.

2.1.1

Types of dark patterns

In recent years, a number of academic works have been published on the
categorisation and taxonomy of dark patterns.15 Rather than establishing new
taxonomies, we draw upon this work to categorise types of dark patterns thatwere observed when unsubscribing from Amazon Prime. The examples given
below of types of dark patterns are not extensive, but cover many of theexamples we observed in this particular case. The below categories containvarious forms, variants, and subcategories, but provide a useful starting
framework to analyse design patterns ‘in the field’.

Obstruction
When browsing digital content services, it is usually quick and easy to set up an
account and start using the service. However, it may not always be as easy todelete an account or cancel a subscription. From non-digital street vendors
selling dietary supplements, to digital service providers, this form of dark
pattern can be classified under the general category of ‘obstruction’.

As a general principle, it should not be more difficult to cancel a subscription
than it was to sign up in the first place, and there are usually few technicalrestrictions to prevent service providers from following this principle. However,the service provider’s financial incentive usually means that they will try toenlist and retain as many paying subscribers as possible. This incentive does notnecessarily align with the consumers’ wishes to end their relationship withservices they deem unnecessary or unsatisfactory.

13

The use of dark patterns by Amazon has also been demonstrated by others. See forexample The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brussels
European Union, ‘Privacy in the EU and US: Consumer experiences across three global
platforms’ https://eu.boell.org/en/2019/12/11/privacy-eu-and-us-consumerexperiences-across-three-global-platforms
14‘15 U.S. Code § 45 - Unfair methods of competition unlawful; prevention by
Commission’ https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45
15
For the particular taxonomy used below, see Arunesh Mathur, Gunes Acar, MichaelFriedman, Elena Lucherini, Jonathan Mayer, Marshini Chetty, and Arvind Narayanan,‘Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites’
https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/

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The dark pattern of obstruction is also closely linked to a pattern called ‘rewards
and punishment’, in which individuals are punished for undesirable behaviour,for example by withdrawing benefits. Furthermore, obstruction can take theform of a ‘false hierarchy’, where certain visual aspects (such as buttons) takes
precedence over others in the design, in order to lead individual’s attention
toward the option preferred by the service provider.16

Another form of obstruction, called ‘overchoice’, is done by overwhelming theuser with too many choices. Research has shown that providing an excessive
amount of choices leads to users being less satisfied with the choice they make,and more likely to regret their choice.17 The use of too many choices orotherwise over-complicated procedures may confuse consumers, andconsequently increases the transaction cost of completing a process in order toexpress their authentic preferences in the transaction.18

Misdirection
There are several ways in which service providers can misdirect or confuse
consumers into making certain choices. These tricks usually take the form ofeither visual elements that distract the user or wording aimed at compelling or
guilting the consumer. A common form of misdirection is known as‘confirmshaming’ or ‘framing’, meaning that the service provider attempts tomake the user feel bad about making certain choices at the cost of alternative
choices.

As will be shown below, confirmshaming can involve buttons with negatively
charged statements, such as ‘I don’t like great deals’,19 making certain choices
seem ethically questionable, or emphasising what a user will lose by making acertain choice while downplaying other aspects. Similarly, graphic design can beused to steer users’ behaviour by making certain options visually unappealing or
obscure, through a technique called ‘visual interference’.

16

Colin M. Gray and Yubo Kou, ‘The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design’
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322916969_The_Dark_Patterns_Side_of_U
X_Design
17
Barry Schwartz, ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less’
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200552951_The_Paradox_of_Choice_Why_More_Is_Less18
Stigler Center, ‘Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms: Final Report’
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/news-and-media/committee-ondigital-platforms-final-report
19
For more examples of confirmshaming, see https://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/

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2.2 Legal context
Although dark patterns are widespread in online user interface design, they are
not exempt from consumer law.20 In the EU, the Unfair Commercial Practices
Directive (UCPD) covers unfair, misleading and aggressive practices that arecapable of distorting consumers’ economic behaviour, thereby causing or being
likely to cause them to take a transactional decision that they would nototherwise have taken. Consumers should not face undue burdens in order tounsubscribe from a digital content service, which, simply put, means thatunsubscribing should not involve more effort than signing up in the first place.

Service providers are required to act within/according to current legislation
when it comes to business practices, and in a European context, the Unfair
Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC is therefore relevant when looking
into the cancellation procedure for Amazon Prime.

The general clause of the Directive in Article 5 of the UCPD prohibits ‘unfair
commercial practices’ towards consumers. A commercial practice includes both
actions and omissions by the trader, and is unfair if it is contrary to therequirements of professional diligence and materially distorts, or is likely tomaterially distort the economic behaviour of an average consumer.

A commercial practice is always considered unfair if it is misleading21 oraggressive,22 or if it leads the average consumer to make an economic decisionthat they would not otherwise have made. Some commercial practices arealways considered unfair, as listed in Appendix 1 to the Directive, referred to as
the ‘blacklist’.

In this context, it is relevant to ask whether Amazon Prime’s cancellation
process is in line with provisions on misleading omissions in Article 7, whichstates that a commercial practice is misleading if the practice ‘omits material
information that the average consumer needs, according to the context, to takean informed transactional decision and thereby causes or is likely to cause theaverage consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken
otherwise.’20

For business-facing guidelines on how to differentiate between acceptable userinterface design and deceptive practices, see the Dutch Authority for Consumers andMarkets, ‘Guidelines on the protection of the online consumer’
https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/guidelines-protection-online-consumer
21
UCPD Art. 6 and 7
22
UCPD Art. 8 and 9

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Furthermore, according to the UCPD, aggressive commercial practices are
considered unfair,23 whereas Article 9(d) states that ‘any onerous ordisproportionate non-contractual barriers imposed by the trader where aconsumer wishes to exercise rights under the contract, including rights toterminate a contract or to switch to another product or another trader’ should
be taken into consideration when determining whether a commercial practice isaggressive.

The UCPD Guidelines24 also highlight that Article 9(d) prevents traders from
imposing disproportionate non-contractual barriers that are detrimental toconsumers who wish to exercise their rights under a contract, including theright to terminate the contract or switch to another product or trader.

The review in Chapter 3 shows that the Amazon Prime cancellation process, atseveral points, omits clear guidance text on how to cancel, instead emphasising
the advantages of continuing the subscription through several warnings about
how benefits of the service will be lost if the consumer proceeds withunsubscribing. This serves to confuse and mislead the subscriber into making atransactional decision that they would not otherwise have made. We also find it
reasonable to question whether the cancellation process imposes onerous
barriers on the consumer who wants to exercise their right to terminate thecontract, by designing a lengthy and confusing process that takes at least sevenclicks to complete.

2.3 Amazon Prime
Amazon is the world’s largest e-commerce retailer.25 In addition to providing a
consumer-facing shopping platform and various business-facing services,
Amazon also runs its own digital content subscription service, called Amazon
Prime. Subscribers to Amazon Prime receive, among other things, special offers
and free shipping from the Amazon shopping platform, access to the Amazon
Prime Video streaming service, and a premium membership to the popular
Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch.26 Others have already noted

23

UCPD Art. 8 and 9
European Commission Staff Working Document “Guidance on theimplementation/application of Directive 2005/29 on Unfair Commercial Practices”,
25.5.2016, p. 78
25
Measured by online revenue.
Nina Angelovska, ‘Top 5 Online Retailers: “Electronics And Media” Is The Star Of Ecommerce Worldwide’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninaangelovska/2019/05/20/top-5-online-retailerselectronics-and-media-is-the-star-of-e-commerce-worldwide/#1d555a41cd9f
26
Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/
24

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how Amazon uses dark patterns throughout their services to Amazon’s benefit,
at the cost of the consumer.27

Amazon Prime has more than 150 million subscribers on a worldwide basis.28
Prime Video, the video streaming platform that is part of Amazon Prime,
accounts for 23% of streaming video on demand (SVOD) subscriptions in the
US.29 In Europe, the Prime Video platform is second only to Netflix when it
comes to market share.30 Although Prime Video is included as part of an
Amazon Prime subscription, it is possible to subscribe to Prime Video without
having an Amazon Prime subscription. This analysis deals with Amazon Prime
subscriptions in general, rather than subscriptions directly to Prime Video.31

Monthly
subscription fee

AmazonAmazon Prime

Amazon Prime
Video

No

Yes

Yes

Free delivery,
exclusive deals,
Audible credits,
access to
Amazon Prime
Video, Prime
Gaming etc.

Video streaming

Membership
Online shopping
leads to access to physical anddigital products

Subscribing to Amazon Prime takes only a few clicks, and consumers on various
Amazon-run platforms are often nudged toward subscribing to the service
through reminders about various benefits. Amazon offers a free 30-day trial to
new Prime users, which may also be an effective way to entice new subscribers.
Offers to enter a free trial subscription to Amazon Prime may appear at several
27‘How Dark Patterns Trick You Online’ https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M
Daniel Keyes, ‘Amazon has surpassed 150 million Prime subscribers globally’
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-surpasses-150-million-prime-subscribers2020-2?r=US&IR=T
29
Samson Amore, ‘Amazon Prime Video Tops Streaming Services in New Subscribers
for Q2, Disney+ and ESPN+ Fall Back’ https://www.thewrap.com/amazon-prime-videotops-streaming-services-in-new-subscribers-for-q2-disney-and-espn-fall-back/30‘Netflix and Amazon are leaders of the European SVOD market. And how is it in
Poland?’ https://ictmarketexperts.com/en/news/netflix-and-amazon-are-leaders-ofthe-european-svod-market-and-how-is-it-in-poland/31
A cursory check of the unsubscribe process for only the Prime Video service
indicated that this process is significantly less cumbersome than the process for
Amazon Prime as a whole, which shows that Amazon is capable of designing morestreamlined unsubscribe processes.
28

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junctions when using the Amazon platform or any related platforms andservices, giving the consumer plenty of opportunities to easily sign up for a
subscription.

1 Click ‘Start your 30-day Prime FREE Trial'.

2 Click ‘Start your 30-day free trial’.

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3 You are now subscribed to Amazon Prime.

While signing up for an Amazon Prime account is a seamless interaction,
consumers who wish to unsubscribe are faced with a significantly more
complicated set of tasks. In the following chapter, the process of unsubscribingfrom an Amazon Prime subscription is described, along with a series ofscreenshots.

3 Case: Unsubscribing from Amazon Prime
The screenshots below were taken on an iPhone 8 Plus running the operating
system iOS 14.0.1, in October and November 2020. We also tested the process
on a number of other mobile devices and computers. The user experience will
differ between platforms, and the desktop experience in particular has
variations in the user design for obvious reasons. The mobile version of the
Amazon.com platform was used for screenshot purposes, because consumers
use their phones for e-commerce at a growing rate. Additionally, the smaller
user interfaces on smartphones makes it increasingly important that
information is concise and visually understandable.

There are minor variations to the process depending on local variations of the
Amazon storefront, such as Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Amazon.de, but
the general use of dark patterns occurs across platforms. The following analysis
represents the experience presented to consumers during October andNovember 2020, which means that the interface may differ at other points intime. However, the process was tested on several mobile devices andPage 14 of 30

computers, and across jurisdictions (EU and US), confirming that the variations
were not significant.

While there are some minor variations to the process, such as different graphics
and changes in offers or discounts, we regard the customer journey below to be
representative for what a significant amount of Amazon customers will
experience if they wish to cancel an Amazon Prime subscription.

3.1 Unsubscribe process
The first hurdle to unsubscribing from an Amazon Prime membership is tolocate the option to cancel the membership. Users who want to unsubscribe
first have to log in to their Amazon account. After logging in to their account,the user then has to navigate the Amazon account menu. From this menu, theuser is presented with a vast amount of different options and settings.

1 Locate the Amazon menu.

After opening the Amazon menu in the upper left corner, the user can click the‘Account’ option to be taken to a new page.

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2 Click the 'Account' option.

The ‘Your Account’ menu presents the user with a large number of new options.
In order to access Amazon Prime-related settings, the user must scroll down tothe ‘Prime membership’ option.

3 Scroll down to click 'Prime membership'.

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Clicking on ‘Prime membership’ opens a new page. On the ’Prime membership‘
page, the user is presented with a number of visuals outlining some benefits
and rewards obtained by being a subscriber.

Consumers who wish to unsubscribe have to click the smaller ‘Manage
membership’ text above. This is an example of misdirection through visualinterference, as users’ attention is drawn to the prominent display of ‘Prime
benefits’ while the option to cancel the subscription is obscured behind a muchless prominent link.

4 Click the 'Manage membership' text.

Clicking on the ‘Manage membership’ text takes the user to a new page. This
page implores the user to ‘share your benefits’, and the ‘End membership’button is accompanied by a warning that reads: ‘by ending your membership
you will lose access to your Prime benefits’. This warning is an example ofconfirmshaming, by exploiting consumers’ cognitive bias for loss aversion,
meaning that people have a tendency to fear they are missing out on benefits.
This page also allows the user to set a reminder before the subscription is
automatically renewed, but this option was off by default.

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5 Click the 'End membership' button.

After clicking the ‘End membership‘ button, the consumer is taken to a newpage to begin the process of unsubscribing from Amazon Prime.

The user is met by a yellow warning triangle and accompanying text stating that
‘Items tied to your Prime membership will be affected if you cancel yourmembership’. It is not immediately clear what benefits or items will be affected,
and in what way, which is likely to cause unease at the prospect of losing accessto paid services (for example purchased e-books or movies). This warning isfollowed by another alert that ‘By cancelling, you will no longer be eligible foryour unclaimed Prime exclusive offers’.

The entire process is full of these warnings about benefits that will be lost.
Clicking any of these warnings takes the user to a different Amazon page, andthus stops the unsubscribe process. If the user still wants to unsubscribe, they
have to start the process from the beginning again.

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6 Scroll past a number of warnings and graphics about what benefits ‘you will lose’.

In order to continue the cancellation process, the consumer has to scroll past a
number of graphics and text about ‘Exclusive Prime benefits you will lose’.
Again, Amazon uses confirmshaming to discourage the user from ending theirsubscription. Clicking any of these graphics takes the user to a different Amazon
page and stops the cancellation process.

After having scrolled past the list of benefits that will be lost, the consumer isfaced with a number of choices. The first button, which is coloured bright blue,
states ‘Use your benefits today‘. This is followed by three yellow buttons.

The first button, ’Keep My Benefits‘, cancels the process, meaning that the user
stays subscribed to Amazon Prime. The second button, which states ‘Cancel mybenefits‘, continues the process to unsubscribe. Note that while the button on
the previous page was titled ‘End Membership’, the text has now changed, andthe consumer must select ‘Cancel My Benefits’ in order to proceed. The final
button, which appears to be highlighted by default without any action by theuser, says ‘Remind Me Later’, and implores the user to postpone theircancellation until 3 days before the membership renews, at which point they
will receive a reminder.

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7 Click ‘Cancel My Benefits’.

The wording ‘Cancel My Benefits’ is negatively charged and uses
confirmshaming to make the user feel like they will lose out if they continue theprocess to cancel the subscription.

After having clicked the ‘Cancel My Benefits’ button, the consumer is taken to a
new page. At the top of this page, Amazon uses the first name of the user,
offering alternative purchasing offers to discourage them from ending thesubscription. When first going through the process for the sake of this analysis,
Amazon implored the user to ‘save $ 36.88 over 12 months by switching toannual payments’. In a later test, the user was presented with a suggestion toswitch to an Amazon Prime Video subscription.

As on the previous page, the yellow warning triangle portends that, ‘Items tied
to your Prime membership will be affected if you cancel your membership’.
More whimsical graphics and claims about benefits that will be lost follow, andonce again, the user has to scroll past all of this to proceed.

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8 Scroll past more warnings and graphics (two different offers from two different attempts).

This continues the trend of confirmshaming and visual interference that
dominates the cancellation process and attempts to lock in the consumer for a
yearly subscription, despite their intention of cancelling the membership.

After scrolling past the graphics, the message of switching to annual payments
is repeated, along with a prominent orange button. The consumer has to scroll
past this button to get to another set of three yellow buttons. As on theprevious page, the ‘Keep My Membership’ button appears first, followed by abutton that now says, ‘Continue to Cancel’. The final button, as previously, is areminder to unsubscribe later.

Although the user has already confirmed that they wish to cancel theirsubscription, they now have to affirm this choice again, which seems designed
to either frustrate the consumer into giving up the process, or to create
uncertainty about the decision to unsubscribe.

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9 Click 'Continue to Cancel'.

After clicking ‘Continue to Cancel’, the consumer is taken to another new page.
Once again, they are greeted by their first name. This page leads by stating that
Amazon is ‘sorry to see you go’, and the user has to confirm the cancellation of
the membership once again. Beneath this plea, the warning triangle reappears,
along with another warning that the user will lose their unclaimed offers.

This is followed by a yellow button that lets the user ‘Pause’ their membership.
Pausing the membership means that the subscription will run until the end of
the current billing cycle, and then stop until the user reactivates Amazon Prime.
This option is followed by the ‘Keep My Membership’ and ‘Remind Me Later’buttons.

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10 Scroll past a new set of warnings and yellow buttons.

In order to actually cancel the subscription, the user has to scroll past thesethree yellow buttons. Below the buttons, the warning triangle appears again,
making sure for the fourth time that the consumer knows that they will lose
their ‘Prime exclusive offers’ if they complete the unsubscribe process. Beneaththe warning, the choice between two buttons appears. Here, the consumer canchoose between ending their subscription at the end of the billing cycle, or to‘End Now’, meaning that the payment for the rest of the subscription period isrefunded. If the user pauses the subscription or ends it at the end of the billing
cycle, no money is refunded.

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11 Scroll down to the bottom and click one of the two buttons to end the subscription.

Here, Amazon appeals directly to the consumer by using their first name,confirmshaming them by saying that Amazon is ‘sorry to see you go’. Again, themessage is to make the consumer unsure about their choice, and to make themfeel bad about wanting to cancel the subscription.

After having clicked either the ‘End Now’ or ‘End on…’ button, the user isbrought back to the ‘My membership’ page, where Amazon confirms that thecancellation is confirmed, but reminds the consumer that they ‘may rejoin
Prime at any time’. A link to rejoin Amazon Prime immediately is also provided,in the unlikely case that the user unsubscribed by mistake or if they regret theaction.

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12 Cancellation confirmed, but you may rejoin at any time.

Upon completion of the cancellation, Amazon sends out an e-mail entitled ‘Oh
no! Your Prime benefits are ending!’. This e-mail contained another warningthat the user had chosen to end their Amazon Prime membership and would
lose benefits. Just in case the user had not really meant to cancel theirsubscription, Amazon included a bright yellow button in the e-mail to ‘Continue
Prime’. Clicking this button instantly took the user back to their Amazon
account, with a message stating that their Prime membership had beenreactivated. Thus, re-subscribing to Amazon Prime only took a single click.

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13 E-mail warning that Prime benefits are ending. Clicking 'Continue Prime...’ leads to an
immediate re-subscription.

When testing the process on the Amazon.co.uk platform, the Amazon front
page proceeded to display a prominent warning, stating ‘Oh no, your Primemembership will end’. This warning is accompanied by another yellow button to‘Continue Your Membership’. In another test case, the user was asked tocomplete a 5-minute survey before completing the process.

14 Warning on Amazon.co.uk that Prime membership will end.

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15 Prompt to take Cancellation Survey.

4 Assessment
Dark patterns are a set of design techniques that push users toward making
choices that benefit the service provider, often at the cost of the consumer’sinterests. By using methods derived from behavioural psychology, service
providers may attempt to exploit certain cognitive biases to influence andmanipulate consumer choices. A commonly used dark pattern involves making
certain choices prominent and simple, while the choice the user originallywanted to make is obscured or made into an arduous process.

As shown in the previous chapter, Amazon appears to go to great lengths inorder to discourage the user from unsubscribing from Amazon Prime. Since
payments are automatic, the user must firstly remember that they have asubscription. The next hurdle is to actually locate the option to unsubscribe,
which is hidden behind several layers of the Amazon menu. Users cannot
unsubscribe from Amazon Prime directly through related services, such as
Twitch, even if they only use Amazon Prime for Twitch-related services. Thisappears to be a typical example of using obstruction to keep users subscribed toa service.
The number of clicks necessary to find the unsubscribe settings mean that there
is little chance that anyone would start the process by mistake. Despite this,Amazon warns the user throughout the process of the consequences of
unsubscribing, while simultaneously offering a prominent way out of theprocess at every turn, a total of five times.32 This use of misdirection may serve
to confuse or wear out the user and seems designed to foster uncertainty about

32

A noted above, the number of steps may vary between devices.

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the decision to unsubscribe due to fear of losing something important, or
because the user simply does not understand the process.

Other dark patterns include the use of visual interference through graphics, andconfirmshaming by using warning triangles to steer the user away from theprocess they have started, while constantly encouraging them to turn back inorder to keep their ‘Prime benefits’.

In another example of misdirection, Amazon changes around the name of the
button that takes the user through the process. ‘End Membership’ becomes‘Cancel My Benefits’, which becomes ‘Continue to Cancel’, which becomes ‘End
Now’. Meanwhile, the ‘Keep My Benefits’ button remains static, although thisbutton somewhat obscures that ‘keep my benefits’ in fact means ‘stop thecancellation process’.

16 Different wording, same function (illustration).

While unsubscribing from Amazon Prime is a process filled with roundabouts
and obstacles, creating a new subscription to the service is a straightforward
process. For users who regretted unsubscribing, or who somehow went
through the cancellation process by mistake, it only takes a single click to sign
up again. This shows that many of the barriers put in place to prevent users
from leaving Amazon Prime are artificial; not put in place out of necessity.

In addition to being at odds with the law, the use of dark patterns increases
switching costs for consumers. This may also be harmful to market competition,
as it locks consumers into Amazon Prime at the possible cost of competitors.

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5 Conclusion
There are many reasons why consumers may want to terminate a digital
subscription service. Their needs may have changed, the service could havedeteriorated, or they simply do not use the service anymore. However, thepower and information asymmetry between the service provider and theconsumer means that the service provider has a clear and unambiguous
responsibility to facilitate an easy and problem-free cancellation process, even ifthat does not align with their financial incentives to keep as many paying
subscribers as possible.

As described in Chapter 2, as a general principle, service-providers should makeit as easy to unsubscribe from a service as it is to sign up in the first place. The
process described above shows how Amazon makes it exceedingly easy for
consumers to sign up for Prime, only requiring a couple of clicks on a prominent
advertising banner. This stands in stark contrast to the process of ending thesubscription. Therefore, in our opinion, the process of cancelling an Amazon
Prime subscription is not compliant with European law and may also be inbreach of US law.

When attempting to terminate the service, the consumer firstly has to find theunsubscribe option within a layered menu. After locating the option, there are
numerous hoops to jump through, and at every turn, Amazon implores the user
to keep their subscription through a variety of dark patterns.

Amazon clearly has a financial incentive to keep consumers subscribed to
Amazon Prime, as the service requires a monthly fee. In light of this, thedifficulty of unsubscribing from the service appears both manipulative andunfair to the user. Rather than deliberately placing artificial hurdles in the wayof users who no longer want to pay for the service, Amazon should clean up its
act and provide a simple and unambiguous process that only requires aminimum number of clicks. This would benefit consumers by helping them
unsubscribe from services they no longer need or want and would benefit
Amazon by fostering consumer trust.

As one of the largest online retailers and platforms in the world, Amazon should
lead by example and take steps to ensure that they comply with consumer
protection principles. Instead of relying on deceptive dark patterns, showing
respect for consumer choices should be a win-win situation.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad
Director of digital policy
E-mail: Finn.Myrstad@forbrukerradet.nohttps://www.forbrukerradet.no/dark-patterns/
Front page illustration by Von Kommunikasjon.
https://vonkommunikasjon.no/

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