[vanilla_nut]

And the inevitable cancellation dark patterns! I cancelled my prime membership the other day, and holy cow, I had to confirm my intent at least 5 times. Offers to “pause”, a page telling me what I’ll miss out on, plus more pages that boil down to “actually?!?!”

Seems like subscriptions have gotten out of hand. Since the goverment can’t regulate meaningfully, I’m at least glad that Apple has some solution to this, even if it feels a bit monopolistic.

[freetime2]

I also learned recently that if you cancel a trial Prime membership early, the benefits end immediately instead of ending at the end of the trial period.

I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. If I end up liking the service then I’ll happily enter my payment info again at the end of the trial. Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach. But Amazon seems to want to take advantage of people forgetting to cancel their unused subscriptions.

It’s really surprising that a company as large and successful as Amazon would feel the need stoop to such levels.

[coder543]

> I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. [...] Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach.

Except for Apple's own services, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness+. All of these will instantly terminate your trial if you cancel during the trial period, rather than terminating at the end of the trial period.

This goes against the way App Store subscription trials work for everyone else. Why? Because Apple isn't bound by their own rules, and I guess Apple wants people to forget and let the trial lapse into actual payment. It is certainly a proven (if unsavory) technique for making money.

[freetime2]

Ah yes I had forgotten that Apple does the same thing with their own services. To make matters worse, they used to annoy me to no end with full-screen popups for Apple Music trials when I was just trying to listen to my local music library. And if you're not careful and choose the option to merge your local library with your apple music library, you can accidentally end up losing all of your local music. Very annoying.

[dont__panic]

Ah, that reminds me -- cancelling your (pre-paid year) subscription also very much makes it sound like you're going to lose your benefits immediately. Another scummy scare tactic to spook you into forgetting to cancel until it rolls over for another year...