Signing up for Amazon Prime is as easy as 1-2-3. Canceling it, not so much.
For years, up until this past April, the online retail giant made customers trying to quit its signature service navigate an odyssey through a labyrinthine system called the “Iliad Flow” named after the epically long and complex masterwork by the Greek poet Homer.
According to a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission, Amazon customers were required to make their way through a four-page, six-click, 15-option process to stop paying for the service. One wrong click, and they were sent back to the beginning, the lawsuit said.
The FTC noted that Amazon AMZN, -0.63% maintained the multistep process even though new subscribers in the U.S. to $14.99-a-month or $139-a-year Prime accounts needed only one or two clicks. And even though subscribers could sign up on a multitude of devices, they could only cancel using their desktop computer or mobile phone or by calling customer service.
The FTC suit also accused Amazon of manipulating millions of customers into inadvertently signing up for Prime and then hitting them with automatic renewals without warning.
Amazon has dismissed the charges as misguided, adding that the lawsuit is legally and factually inaccurate. It has vowed to fight the FTC.
The FTC said in court papers that Amazon created the complex “Iliad Flow” exit strategy in 2016 and kept it in place until April of this year, when it caught wind that the agency was preparing to file a lawsuit about the practice.
During that time frame, Amazon quadrupled the number of global Prime subscribers from around 50 million to more than 200 million. The program brings around $25 billion into Amazon’s coffers every year.
The suit described an allegedly maddening process for a customer to actually cancel a subscription.
To start, a subscriber first had to find the “Iliad Flow,” which was not made easy, the FTC suit said. A customer had to select the “accounts and list” dropdown menu, navigate to the third column and then select the eleventh option there: Prime Membership.
That would bring the customer to the Prime Central page. There, one would have to click the “manage membership” button to trigger options that finally included an “end membership” button. But that was only the beginning.
Only after clicking “end membership” would the customer enter the “Iliad Flow” process. From there, a customer would need to navigate three more pages, each with a multitude of options, to finally complete canceling the subscription.
This is one of several web pages a Prime customer would need to navigate in order to cancel the service, the FTC said.
Federal Trade Commission
On the first page, customers were forced to “take a look back at [their] journey with Prime” — a kind of greatest-hits reel of Prime services used over the years. The page was also loaded with marketing material for a multitude of Prime services, with links reading: “Start shopping today’s deals!” and “You can start watching videos by clicking here!” or “Start listening now!”
One wrong click would knock the subscriber out of the “Iliad Flow.”
If the subscriber managed to navigate to the bottom of the page, he or she would finally find a “continue to cancel” button. That would take them to Page 2.
According to the FTC, that page would present the customer with a number of discount options, such as switching from monthly to annual payments, or taking advantage of student discounts or discounts for people on government assistance. The page also included warning icons and links stating: “Items tied to your Prime membership will be affected if you cancel your membership,” and “By canceling, you will no longer be eligible for your unclaimed Prime exclusive offers.”
Clicking on any of those would take the subscriber out of the “Iliad Flow.”
At the bottom of that page was another “continue to cancel” button, which would take the user to Page 3.
If you managed to get to this page, you were only six options away from actually being able to quit Amazon’s Prime service, the FTC suit said.
Federal Trade Commission
On this final page, a customer was presented with five options, only the last of which — “end now” — would actually allow the subscription to be canceled. The other options included pausing the subscription or canceling its auto-renewal function. Pressing any of the four other choices would bring the user out of the “Iliad Flow.” They would have to start over if they wanted to continue.
Only after successfully navigating this maze of web pages would the customer be allowed to actually cancel the service.
The suit said this process caused cancellations to drop significantly.
