Jan 12, 2026
3 min read
A complex and opaque system destined to swell the already bloated pockets of the e-commerce monster, to the detriment of millions of unaware consumers, forced to deal with a mechanism perfectly designed to convince them to sign up for unwanted services.We're talking about Amazon's subscription tactics: a perfect ecosystem for tricking customers into signing up against their will.Jeff Bezos' giant recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion to consumers and pay a $1 billion fine to the Federal Trade Commission to resolve a dispute over how to sign up and unsubscribe from the Amazon Prime service.
But from Moneta's research, it seems that the system also works with other services on the platform, such as Amazon Music Unlimited, thanks to the permission that came from directly responding to Alexa's voice commands.Francesca speaks on the Amazon Italy forum on April 13, 2025 at 4:56 PM: «This evening I was in the kitchen and I heard my nephew, who goes to university, in the living room asking Alexa to play this song.At one point At one point, Alexa said: "This song is not available on YouTube. Would you like to sign up for an Unlimited subscription to Amazon Music?"and before I could intervene, he answered "Yes", and Alexa: "Yes, you have an unlimited subscription to Amazon Music!"and I still get a message on my phone for a price of 10.99 euros." Francesca is angry, because she did not ask for "even a second confirmation".
Of course, the real obstacle begins when customers try to cancel a subscription that wasn't activated properly: "I ended up in a loop of pages with no solution. I tried to write to customer service but there was even an automated chat that kept me in an endless circle," he said. Amazon employees respond quickly to these help requests from customers, but it's clearly not enough. In theory, users in the European Union shouldcomplete the multi-factor authentication procedure within a few days to confirm the purchase, with an automatic cancellation penalty - according to the infrequent subscription that comes without a fee, but which is often canceled by customers.According to FTC research, tens of millions of customers have found themselves subscribing to Prime without fully informed consent or encountering some obstacle in trying to end the US antitrust agency's accusations of using so-called dark patterns - cancellation.More complicated use - cancel digital service.
According to US authorities, Amazon signed up millions of users to Prime without clarifying the service's full terms and conditions and collected payment data before making the terms transparent.This involved an internal cancellation process known as the “Iliad” system, which refers to the Homeric epic and its long and winding path.This is according to internal company documents recovered by the Business Insider website in 2023.
Canceling Prime, like any other Amazon subscription, is a Homeric journey: you have to scroll through pages, click dozens of times, and deal with various and confusing options.The Iliad system ran until 2023: on the way out, users faced alternative offers and warnings to avoid cancellation.Since the system was introduced in 2017, cancellations have been reduced to 14%, not because the customer is more satisfied, but because he could not reach the last page to complete the process.In Italy, there is some similar evidence of subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited, the paid music service provided by the platform.There is no way to get a refund.I don't think that's right: there should be a cooling-off period, especially if I don't want to do it."
Apparently, the company offers the possibility of consulting the purchase of the voice with Alexa, so that there is no response to the assistant that comes with the signing of the contract.The customer can also request a confirmation code to order.11:20 PM on November 23 2025, another user complained that "the payment for my subscription did not work in my Amazon music account and that I did not like" entered the account there.The principle is always there, once the charge was discovered, the return becomes a fight against the Trojans: "I tried to cancel the subscription but it delays the download of the application to buy," he found.
The game has been around for years.On Sep 17, 2023 at 8:22 am, a user named Valentina wrote: "My Music Unlimited subscription was activated by mistake, I think from the Alexa device via the girls. I've been trying to cancel for months and months to no avail."
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