Beth Buckley’s daily existence is so entwined with Amazon’s that she really can’t imagine living without the world’s largest online retailer, although she’s mad enough to want to try.
Buckley recently realized that for four months she’s been paying Amazon $8.99 a month for Starz, the premium entertainment channel, even though she and her husband have no recollection of ordering it.
When she called to complain, Amazon agreed to cancel the subscription and refund her $35.96. But she said Amazon couldn’t give her a good answer for how those charges were authorized in the first place.
“I’m not happy at all,” Buckley told me. “But I use Amazon for everything, and it would be too hard to live without it.”
One isolated case?
I met Buckley last week at an office in Needham, where she works as an accountant. She said she took a closer look at her Amazon charges (scattered over multiple credit cards) at the urging of Patti MacDonald, another accountant at the firm. MacDonald had recently discovered her own monthly Amazon charges for Starz, which she could not remember ordering.
Two isolated cases?
After canceling Starz and getting a refund, MacDonald wondered how many others may be unwittingly paying for one of the many entertainment channels Amazon offers. She mentioned it to family and friends. Then, she e-mailed me.
As I read her note, I thought about how confusing it has become to order and pay for the video entertainment that comes into our homes. We now watch on televisions, computers, tablets, and phones. We get it by cable, satellite, or by streaming over Wi-Fi. There seem to be new options every day: Roku, Hulu, YouTube TV, and so on. And we often allow our accounts to be linked to a credit card and paid automatically — the double-edged convenience of “autopay.”
In my family, I manage the Comcast account, checking monthly bills for basic charges and add-ons, like the four movies we bought last month. (We really liked “The Big Sick.”) I pay the cable bill the semi-old-fashioned way: By opening my online bank checking account, entering the payment amount and payment date, and affirmatively clicking “pay.”
My wife, Deirdre, handles Amazon. We have a Prime account, which gives us free delivery of the things we order, plus access to Amazon Fire TV (for $99 a year).
MacDonald’s note about Amazon’s questionable charges stirred a vague recollection of Deirdre doing battle with Amazon. I forwarded MacDonald’s note to her. “This is a tip I received. Made me wonder,” I wrote in the subject field.
Deirdre fired an e-mail right back: “That’s exactly what happened to us [though it was Showtime, not Starz].”
Now I had three complaints about the same problem. It became apparent to me, after a week of making calls and navigating the Amazon site, that the retailer makes it way too easy to unwittingly sign up, especially with its offer of a seven-day “free trial.” What Amazon doesn’t make clear is that the free trial automatically converts to a monthly subscription, which automatically gets paid and automatically renewed indefinitely, with minimal notice to the account-holder.
I have some advice for readers: Check what you’re paying for. You can do that by carefully reviewing the Amazon charges on your credit card, although that can be an administrative nightmare when a family has multiple credits listed on its Amazon account (as many do) and when the Amazon charges are intermingled with other non-Amazon credit card purchases.
A quicker way to do it may be by looking on your Amazon account, although doing that involves some serious digital drill-down.
This is how to look: Hover with your cursor over the “Accounts & List” button on your Amazon home page (it’s on the top right); find and click on “Membership & Subscriptions” in the drop-down box; when that opens, find and click on “Amazon Channels”; and when that opens, look for “Your Channels.”
Easy, huh?
In my house, we have my daughter, Helen, to thank for noticing the problem. Late last year, she was tooling around our account and stumbled upon the Showtime subscription. “Mom, do you know about this?” she asked. We already had Showtime via cable, so it made no sense to be purchasing it from Amazon.
Deirdre dug out her Amazon Store Card bills and it was true: She had paid for Showtime for five months without realizing it. On the most recent bill, it showed up as “AMAZON DIGITAL,” followed by the charge of $8.99. No other detail. Deirdre told me she probably mistook it for monthly payment for Prime membership (though in fact Prime is paid once a year in a lump sum).
I contacted Rena Lunak of Amazon. How did Showtime get on our account? No one in my family has any recollection of ordering it. Could it be a computer glitch or other malfunction?
No, Lunak said firmly. There’s only one way for a subscription to begin: by an account-holder clicking on a “subscribe” button.
Actually, the button you click on to subscribe isn’t labeled “Subscribe;” it’s labeled “Start your free trial.” I think there’s a big difference. And I’m sure the marketing experts at Amazon do, too. (And have the data to prove it.)
Lunak said new subscribers receive a confirmatory e-mail. I don’t doubt it, although my wife doesn’t remember getting one and has nothing in her archives.
At my request, Lunak dredged up the confirmatory e-mail to Deirdre and resent it. It’s titled “Your SHOWTIME Free Trial Has Started.” (Notice the absence of the word “subscribe.”) The confirmatory e-mail is dominated by a big yellow button, labeled (in large print): “Start Watching.” Deirdre said she may have treated the e-mail as junk mail. And even if she did open it up, she may have figured by not clicking on the “Start Watching” button she had declined an offer Amazon had sent to its account-holders en masse. In fact, that “Start Watching” button was totally superfluous: The subscription had been activated without clicking on it.
“Amazon Prime subscriptions can be tricky,” said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee who now helps businesses that work with Amazon. “Always check your statements and make sure to cancel any trial subscription before the trial period is over.”
So, shame on us for letting our guard down. But shouldn’t Amazon, with all its talent, sell stuff without leaving some of us feeling like we’ve been had?
Sean P. Murphy can be reached at sean.murphy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @spmurphyboston.