I recently signed up for both Mobile Me and Amazon’s Prime service. As it turns out I’m not continuing with either one of them. Mobile Me doesn’t work with Outlook when outlook is part of an exchange server, which makes it useless for my purposes. The Prime service I just don’t get enough benefit from to continue using it.
So Apple sends me an email yesterday saying I have seven days left on my free trial. In the email they tell me how much I’ll be billed, how to change my billing information and how to cancel if I wish. They obviously know they have a good service and assume most people will have a reason for leaving because the service does provide great value if you need it. It turns out I don’t need the service. I was able to cancel my account with no hassle what so ever and I even explained why I was canceling it when they asked because the process was made so easy.
Prime – I logged in to pay bills tonight and I see that my bank account is lower than it should be. Hmmm, I think to myself, Why is this? I look into the account details and what do I see, nothing but Prime staring back at me. No email warning, No this is how you cancel, No here is easy access to your account to cancel, No this is how much we’ll be charging your card in a few days nothing but a big fat hit to my account after the free trial ended. In my head Amazon is thinking “I know we can get at least on month hit out of this guy by charging him without warning. Maybe he’ll just cancel and not ask for his money back! HAHAHAHA” Okay well maybe that takes it a little far but you get the idea. I mean really how hard is it to tell your customers your going to bill them before you do? It creates such a better atmosphere of trust for the company and I can cancel if I really want to because maybe the service really wasn’t for me.
I’ve always loved Amazon and I think they are a great company. They are even one of the few affiliate programs I have advertised for in the past and still do on one of my other web sites, but I felt this Prime service they are offering is too expensive and maybe a little underhanded in how it’s marketed and then charged. The service is only valuable if you are ordering multiple times per month and unfortunately I just can’t afford to order that often.
I did call Amazon and received the service I expected. They removed the charge and took my suggestion to let people know before hand. I just hope they decide to act on it.
