Amazon cheeky bar stewards! Check your statements for Prime

tedsalad

Well-Known Member
Just cracking on with my year end paperwork and noticed that Amazon charged me £79 for something called Prime back in March 2015! Yeh yeh should check statements more offen!

Anyway onto the bank, no help as its over 180 days but they did say they deal with hundreds of these a day, apparently when you purchase something/anything there is a tick box which you need to untick to prevent them charging you for Prime! Even though you had no intention of buying it in the first place. Cheeky fxxkers!

So rang Amazon 0800 496 2454 and got a refund, check your statements people!
 
I am pretty sure that it worked by offering you the option of Prime, and that you had to select it, not opt out of having it. So if you said, for example, "Yes, I want this delivered tomorrow", then you got signed up for Prime.

I am a heavy user of Amazon and managed to resist Prime until last year. I pay monthly and still find it good value. When you're ordering more than one or two items a month it starts to become more attractive.

For example, last week we placed an order with our normal supplier for the regular dog food we use. We then received notification on Tuesday evening that the order had been cancelled. With four dogs we were relying on that order arriving. I looked on Amazon on Wednesday morning and there it was, at only a few pence above the cost of our regular supplier. I ordered two bags before 10am on Wednesday and they arrived at 3pm today. Along with a book on the Kruger that I'd pre-ordered a month or so ago :oops:

On top of this I get to use Prime for music, instant video, etc.
 

If you read the first bullet point in the news report:

"Amazon Prime' service starts by customer agreeing to a 24-hour delivery"

That's exactly what I was referring to above.

Agreeing to the 24-hour delivery was the trigger for the initial "free" month of Prime membership. I remember it well as I always made sure I didn't select the 24-hour delivery option.

It's classic sales - offer the customer something they think is attractive with an apparent get out clause, and then rely on them forgetting about it until after the trial period is over.
 
It's classic sales - offer the customer something they think is attractive with an apparent get out clause, and then rely on them forgetting about it until after the trial period is over.

TBF I smelled a rat when I tried the 30 day free offer and made a diary entry to remind me to cancel. However, Amazon sent me an email a couple of days beforehand saying the trial period had 48 hours to run.
 
Same thing happened to me last year but I am a rare user of Amazon, so went through the refund policy and it was refunded to my CC.

Just very annoying.

D
 
for £79 its a pretty good deal
everything you ever buy is 24 next day
if you buy 10 things a year that it paid for itself

you also get the prime service streaming decent programs to devices or smart TV

but its cheeky if they do that sneakily
 
It was sneaky the way I got caught. I do not buy enough to warrant the £79 so have always avoided their free trial offer. Until...

I carefully made a selection of products that included carriage in their price rather than carriage extra. At checkout I was given the option of a large shiney button for free carriage or a slightly obscure text message saying I did not want free carriage....well having chosen"free carriage items" I did not want to pay carriage on top of carriage included prices, so clicked free carriage. Only to be welcomed to a trial of Prime...and no way to cancel it. Ten minutes of searching finally find an email address for customer service I emailed threatening no further purchases...nice reply saying they had cancelled the free trial...

Alan
 
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