The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced that it will sue Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of tricking users into registering for Prime membership services, and it is more difficult for users to unsubscribe later.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the FTC alleges that Amazon tricked millions of customers into subscribing to Prime without their express permission. Amazon also set up a cumbersome and complicated unsubscribe process to deliberately make things difficult for unsubscribers.
The FTC also cited an allusion to the Trojan War in its lawsuit, using “Iliad Flow” to describe the difficulty of unsubscribing.
The FTC believes that Amazon creates $25 billion a year from the Prime subscription service by setting heavy thresholds for unsubscriptions (Note: Currently about 179.5 billion CNY).
“Amazon defrauded and lured people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, frustrating users and costing them significant amounts of money,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.
Amazon Prime costs $139 a year in the U.S. and has more than 200 million members worldwide.
