Since your interpretation added the “immediately” part on your own, I’m not sure how Amazon can be blamed?
The issue is that people assume that’s the case, since it is what happens when you cancel your cable or phone service or many other subscription services. It’s not on Amazon to clear up your faulty assumptions.
And regardless of all that, wouldn’t getting until the end of the month (or whatever term) when you expect to lose the benefit immediately be considered an unexpected bonus, rather than deception? I’d think a deceptive practice would be terminating the service immediately after implying it would remain active until the end of the month. It’s a weird world when getting more than you expect is construed as deceptive.
Oh but it is. And I didn’t “assume”, I read what the page said. I wish I could take a screenshot to see how much of a leap my mind made, but I’m not a Prime member. If I recall correctly, it basically said something like “if you cancel your benefits today, you’ll no longer have access to blah blah blah”. It did not say “your benefits would end on [expiration date]”.
That’s some kind of backwards thinking and self-deception on your part. It’s not a bonus if they say “we’re gonna take it away now,” followed by “just kidding, the contract you paid for ends in a two weeks.”
What contract? Is it really any more of a contract than you have with those cable and phone services that do in fact terminate service immediately when you cancel? Why would you expect Amazon to be different, when you’ve already paid for a specific period of time with those other providers as well?
Myself, I think I’d expect them to cancel immediately and give a pro-rated refund in accordance with whatever refund policy there is. I find the fact they keep your account active even after you’ve successfully cancelled it to be much closer to being deceptive.
When you sign up for one year, it’s exactly one year – they tell you when your membership will expire or renew. When you sign up for a month, I’m guessing it’s a month (never done it).
The cable and phone contract USED TO be for exact dates, and they used to issue prorated refunds. Now they tell you upfront (in the service agreement) that your monthly payment covers the next month and they do not issue prorated refunds if you cancel early.
I don’t need to try again, I think I sufficiently explained why Prime’s cancellation is deceitful and confusing. Just because you’re OK with it doesn’t mean it won’t fool many other people.
You’re like a lawyer arguing with a doctor about what is and isn’t a contract. Of course the lawyer knows better, but not everyone is a lawyer.
Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after being banned for nearly a year over Covid-19 “misinformation.” Last week the former New York Times reporter settled his lawsuit against the social-media company, which admitted error and restored his account. “The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter,” Mr. Berenson wrote last week on Substack. But because the Biden administration brought pressure to bear on Twitter, he believes he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated. He’s right.
it’s worse than we feared. Facts that Mr. Berenson unearthed through the discovery process confirm that the administration has been secretly asking social-media companies to shut down the accounts of specific prominent critics of administration policy.
This goes even beyond what was happening when we wrote the week before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. At that time, lawmakers had repeatedly threatened tech companies with catastrophic consequences if they didn’t more aggressively censor speech the government disfavors. Congress had immunized these companies from liability if they remove “objectionable” but “constitutionally protected” content, to quote Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
In response to these and other inducements and threats, social-media companies were already suppressing speech about Covid that was well within the bounds of legitimate debate and sometimes proved accurate. Facebook had banned anyone from saying that Covid might have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, or that the Covid vaccines didn’t prevent infection.
The Biden administration is using Big Tech as its private censorship arm, and that violates what the Supreme Court, in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), called an “axiomatic” principle: The government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”
Berenson is not finished with the White House Democrats
“I’m going to sue the White House,” he continued. “I think I have proof that they did violate my First Amendment rights, that they forced Twitter to act as a state actor, in other words as essentially an arm of the federal government.”
“I have more documents. I obtained these documents as part of a lawsuit. I think what I’ve already shown is enough that this case will survive a motion to dismiss and will get to discovery and deposition,” he added. “People inside and outside the White House are going to face some very uncomfortable questions, probably not just about me, but about other people who’ve been de-platformed in the last year or two by Twitter.”
Pay attention to what I’m saying. I was deceived by the words on the page. They made me think I would instantly lose my benefits. Before confirming that I want to cancel, I had to go somewhere else (google and a few results) to double check when my benefits would actually end. I should not have had to do this. I’m certain many people do not do this and just wait until the last possible moment to cancel, sometimes missing that moment or forgetting entirely.
I think this argument could be ended quickly if someone would just try to cancel their Prime membership and post screenshots of all the pages they have to go through to confirm their wish to cancel.
I should not have to do a lot of things, but find it prudent to do them. Are you deceived by every ad that you see/hear? How about Nigerian princes?
ETA:
If you paid attention to what Amazon was saying, you would know that your Prime membership ended on a M/D/Y. I find Amazon to be no more deceptive than any other retailer. It doesn’t mean I like it, but by paying attention, it’s a lot easier to avoid being afraid.
ETA2:
Speaking of deceptive, this tidbit wasn’t released until I signed a renewal with C-Span …
We are paying attention - you had already been told that the words on the page were deceptive, therefore when you read the words on the page you immediately interpreted them to be deceptive.
There are extra steps that you “shouldnt” have to do. That makes it unnecessarily annoying and frustrating, not deceptive. Like I said, even if it somehow makes you think your benefits will be cut off immediately, the fact they remain active until the original end date should be considered a pleasant surprise. Getting more than you expected used to be considered a good thing.
Such is the case with a particularly egregious euphemism: “gender-affirming care.” This is the phrase gender activists have coined to describe irreversible sex-change treatments and procedures, such as puberty blockers and hormonal injections and double mastectomies and vaginoplasties. In fact, it’s the exact phrase being used by a major U.S. children’s hospital to defend administering these experimental treatments to minors.
A series of videos posted on the Boston Children’s Hospital’s website shows its doctors advocating the medical treatment of gender-confused children. In one viral video, a doctor promotes hysterectomies as a solution for gender-confused girls. The hospital has since claimed it doesn’t perform this procedure on minors, but between 2017 and 2020, the hospital reportedly performed 65 double mastectomies as part of its “affirmation” program.
Another page on the hospital’s website, which has since been deleted, says 17-year-olds are eligible for “affirming” vaginoplasties. Other videos show Boston Children’s Hospital medical experts promoting puberty blockers for young children, encouraging gender-confused boys to “tuck” their penises to make them look more like vaginas, and claiming that children as young as 2 and 3 years old can know they are a gender different than their sex.
As I’ve said before, encourage kids to drink, smoke, vote, have indiscriminate sex, make porn, shoot heroin, quit school, and carry guns, and I will then try to consider the argument to allow them to mutilate themselves in an attempt to become something they are not. But until then, the entire subject is sheer lunacy. I fail to see how adults encouraging underage kids to permanently mutilate their bodies is any less a crime than statuatory rape - either a kid is capable of deciding what they want an adult to do to them, or they are not.
They’re the same thing! The only confusion here is that these trans nutcases are confusing the difference between gender and gender roles/stereotypes. Break down gender stereotypes all you want - if a boy wants to wear a dress, go right ahead. But he’s still a boy, period.
The British have stopped the crminal abuse in one clinic but you will notice that they spread it around to other clinics. The crimes were so egregious at the one clinic that it was getting too much publicity so they spread the abuse around to other clinics.
But I’ve often wondered about the entire LGB, and I think the Qs too but I’m not really certain about them or about the plusses, alignment with the Ts.
All the others are pretty much normal people. OK, you might argue with that. But I’m a “live and let live” sort. Somebody else’s sexual preference is none of my damn business. Period. End of discussion, at least for me.
But then you come to the Ts. They are different, at least the activists are, not the same attitude at all. They want to cut up little kids. The female Ts want access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. They want to compete in women’s sports as females and win all the trophies and scholarships really intended for actual women. In short, they are FAR from live and let live. They are in our faces.
Why gay, lesbian, and bisexual folks embrace these Ts is beyond me, and it is unfortunate. I don’t even get why the male Ts embrace the female Ts. Male Ts are far less intrusive or threatening to regular society, unless they actively seek to cut up kids. But it’s the female Ts who, in some instances, are the most obnoxious.
For the record I have always believed females, T or not, should be permitted to compete in “all male” sports if they are able and if they are willing to risk being hurt. After all, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs!!
Is every ad deceitful? I thought there were some legal requirements/liability for TV and radio ads (plus I do my best to avoid them all). No such thing online, of course, so uBlock blocks them all for me.
Due to the tips and tricks I provided in this thread, I haven’t heard from any Nigerian princes in a really, really long time. I hope they’re doing well.
But you see, I was paying attention when I signed up and I was paying attention to all the places that tell me exactly when my membership would renew. So my expectation is a specific date. Yet when they tell me that my benefits would end immediately, they make me question my expectations. The fact that they remain active is not a pleasant surprise, it is the expected outcome. The deceit occurs in the middle, when they make me think I’m gonna lose my benefits sooner than expected, making me not want to cancel until the last moment.
Yet you’ve already altered that expectation by trying to cancel in advance of that date.
If not for your bias from already being told they are [allegedly] going to deceive you, when your subscription runs thru December and you attempt to cancel it in August, why wouldn’t you expect them to respect your request and cancel your account in August? After all, you are “cancelling”, not “turning off auto renewal”.
Are you saying there’s a way to “turn off auto renewal” without cancelling? Because that was my intent, I just don’t remember seeing that option. I thought cancellation was the same as turning off auto renewal, but I do see your point if they are indeed separate choices.
And even if that option is there now, was it always there? I’m not sure what time period the FTC is pursuing.
