The online retailer did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the FTC settlement but agreed to pay $1 billion in penalties and $1.5 billion in refunds to consumers harmed by its subscription practices.
Just three days after the case began, Amazon settled with the Federal Trade Commission, agreeing to pay $2.5 billion over its Prime subscription practices. The case highlights the financial and legal risks of faulty subscription practices — a lesson for customer experience leaders to heed. The FTC alleged that Amazon had used “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs” to dupe customers into signing up for Prime and making it difficult for them to cancel. While Amazon and its executives did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement, it agreed to pay $1 billion in penalties and another $1.5 billion to impacted consumers. “Erecting barriers, whether through deceptive patterns or mazes that distract or derail customers from canceling a service they don’t want will not reflect well on the company and could lead to financial, legal, and reputational risk,” Forrester's Judith Weader said. Such "asymmetrical customer experience design between subscription and cancellation processes ... might boost short-term profits, but they inevitably sap long-term business value," said Jon Picoult of Watermark Consulting. So what can CX leaders learn from this? Read more at CX Dive: https://lnkd.in/d8_JP9hq