The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today sued Amazon.com Inc. over the subscription management interfaces of its Prime service.

Introduced in 2005, Prime provides access to free shipping, discounts and other benefits for a monthly fee. The service reached 100 million users in 2018. According to Amazon, it passed 200 million users about three years later.

The FTC’s newly filed lawsuit revolves around two main items. First, the agency is charging that Amazon tricked millions of users into “unknowingly enrolling” in Prime. FTC officials further argue that the company made it overly complicated to unsubscribe from the service.

“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.”

When users make a purchase on Amazon, the checkout interface offers the option to sign up for Prime. The FTC’s lawsuit states that Amazon designed the checkout interface to provide “numerous opportunities” for customers to buy a Prime subscription.

In the suit, the FTC pointed out a button that the e-commerce giant provides for completing purchases. According to the agency, there were situations where the button did not clearly indicate customers “were also agreeing to join Prime” when placing an order. The result, the agency charges, is that the option to complete a purchase on Amazon without signing up to Prime was often more difficult to locate.

The second major focus of the lawsuit is the Prime subscription cancellation workflow. According to the FTC, Amazon made it difficult to find the cancellation page in its e-commerce marketplace’s interface. After users opened the page, they were presented with multiple offers to continue subscribing to Prime at a lower price, stop auto-renewal without canceling or exit the cancellation page.

“The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them,” the FTC stated. However, some on social media have questioned the difficulty of unsubscribing from Prime. It has been pointed out that unsubscribing takes a total of six clicks on desktops and eight when a user is performing the task on a handset.

In its lawsuit, the FTC also charges that Amazon “attempted to delay and hinder” its investigation on multiple occasions. The agency further alleges the company took action to address the usability concerns it raised only after learning of the probe. 

“The FTC’s claims are false on the facts and the law,” Amazon said in a statement. “The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership.”

Amazon is not the only tech giant facing FTC scrutiny. Last month, the agency proposed to ban Meta Platforms Inc. from making money from children’s data. The FTC earlier filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft Corp. from completing its planned purchase of Activision Blizzard Inc., a major video game publisher, for $68.7 billion.

Image: Amazon