As reported by Business Insider, through a project internally dubbed “project Iliad,” Amazon is intentionally making it difficult for users to unsubscribe from their Amazon Prime subscription service, hiding the option to unsubscribe behind multiple layers of prompts. This practice has apparently resulted in substantial reductions in the number of users that unsubscribe from Amazon Prime since 2017. 

Additionally, Amazon appears to have offered some users free trials of Amazon Prime, and then is making it difficult for users to cancel their subscriptions, resulting in some users believing that they had canceled the service, but continuing to be charged for a subscription that they began as a free trial.

In 2021, a group of consumer protection advocates led by Public Citizen sent a letter to the FTC complaining about Amazon Prime’s cancellation process. The Public Citizen letter drew on a recent letter filed with Norwegian consumer protection authorities

A similar class action lawsuit was filed against Trustpilot in 2021, alleging that Trustpilot subjected its subscribers to deceptive business practices by sending auto-enroll emails that went to subscribers’ spam boxes, such that they would not be read until subscribers were charged. 

Amazon’s terms of service do not contain an arbitration provision.