Amazon caves in to EU demands to simplify its subscription cancellation procedure

Another tech giant has fallen prey to the European Union’s ambition of establishing control over Big Tech. This time around, the company in question is Amazon, as reported by the Verge in a recent article.

The latter is not particularly known for playing fair. The reason for this latest round of fire from the EU is Amazon’s controversial approach when it comes to how users can manage their Amazon Prime subscription.

Amazon has caved in to the demands of the EU and has significantly simplified the procedure that users have to follow in order to cancel their Amazon Prime subscription. According to the EU Commission, users should now be able to put and end to it in “just two clicks”.

European regulators had major concerns over the “multiple pages” filled with “distracting information” and “unclear button labels”, reports the Verge. As a result, the EU Commission, which has a long-standing reputation of successfully waging war on tech giants such as Apple and Google, intervened and put pressure on Amazon to revamp the cancellation procedure.

Previously, the procedure was fraught with “manipulative design techniques” and “dark patterns” (i.e. interface designs which intend to confuse users), according to the complaint submitted by the Norwegian Consumer Council, which partly triggered the intervention of the EU Commission.

In light of the aforementioned details, the EU Commission considered that the Amazon Prime cancellation procedure constituted an “unfair commercial practice” and was, by extension, illegal under EU law. Amazon has since responded accordingly and both EU and UK consumers (despite the latter no longer being members of the bloc) can now cancel their subscriptions with ease.

Amazon is certainly not the only (tech) company that resorts to cheap tricks to make its subscribers stay. Hopefully, it is only the first of many that is forced to abandon them.