Dear XXX
We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99 when your membership renews on January 13, 2015.
Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same for nine years. Since 2005, the number of items eligible for unlimited free Two-Day Shipping has grown from one million to over 20 million. We also added unlimited access to over 40,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video and a selection of over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
For more information about your Prime membership, visit our Prime membership page.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Prime Team
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Amazon.com
© 2014 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Amazon, Amazon.com, the Amazon.com logo, Prime, Kindle Fire, and 1-Click are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98109-5210. Reference: 113532020
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Update: It’s just before Christmas (2014) and close enough to go ahead and push the End Membership button. So this is what happened to me.
When do you want to end your membership?
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End Now
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End Later
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You do not qualify for a refund and will not benefit from canceling your membership at this time.
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Your benefits will continue until January 13, 2015, after which your card will not be charged and your membership will end.
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OK, end later is good enough if it really stops the automatic charge to my card. I’ve gone to and looked at the page Manage your Prime Membership several times in the last twelve months and it never looks or reads quite the same way each time. (I was offended by Amazon’s crowing about adding millions of new Prime members during Christmas and decided to go back and END NOW. Guess what? That was a one time selection, there is no way to end Prime immediately anymore. )
I ordered one last thing from Amazon Prime last week, a DVD and it arrived practically the next day. Which is of course due to the vast increase in warehouses Amazon now has around the country. It’s possible that they have a warehouse in Massachusetts now, which is why they signed up with the MA Dept. of Revenue and signed onto the effort in Washington DC to enact an nationwide Internet Taxation bill.
They figure that they are now big enough and have enough spare computing power on hand to easily handle the 900 different tax jurisdictions and rates, but their smaller competitors don’t. Another example of large established corporations partnering with Big Government to suppress those competitors and lock up the market for the big boys. I don’t think I like Amazon.com anymore and whenever possible I’m going to start buying elsewhere.
End Update.
(Oops! Another update!) Since I clicked on end Prime guess what I see now, every time I go back to Amazon?
[John XXX: Your Amazon Prime Membership will expire on January 13, 2015 and you will stop receiving Prime benefits.
To continue receiving benefits turn on Auto-Renew: [Icon for Auto-Renew]
(Shit! I guess I should have selected immediate. This is the reason I dropped Norton AV, those unending nagging notices about renewal and the other messages and endless program or signature updates that you can’t turn off. The further the company or people get from their beginnings, the further they get from their customers and the more they decide they know what the customers want and are determined to ram it down their throats!
I assume I will (now) never be free of this nagging about re-subscribing to Prime unless I cancel my Amazon account. Is that what they want?)
(Back to original post) No, Thanks. I’m done.
(Sorry, another update: Amazon is a muddy river relates my latest problems and transaction with Amazon.)
I don’t use Prime Shipping any more for reasons previously enumerated, which includes their other “so-called benefits”.
As I complained before, Amazon has removed or hidden under fifteen levels of menus any way of communicating with them. Apparently they have decided that their Web Site is perfect and they require no further input from the paying customers. Even when you attempt to cancel your Prime membership.
Where did that come from?
Where was I? Oh yes, cancellation. So you go to the Prime membership page and there is a small link for End membership with no text regarding what happens after going down that rabbit hole. Pushing it only brings you to a another page with three doors buttons; Continue Membership, Reminder 3-days, and Cancel Membership. The first two tabs return you to the previous page without ado or further illumination. What happens if you press the third button? What happens to the $79 they just took from me in January? Is Prime Video immediately cut off? Is there any refund, prorated? Don’t know from the Amazon site.
Pursuing the question on independent sites, (which of course doesn’t indemnify Amazon) after going through the rabbit hole you are told if you are eligible for a refund (in Amazon’s opinion) and if not then you can uncheck a box labeled “Do not renew”. Then continue to use whatever Prime benefits that you still are interested in for the remainder of the paid membership. Except that the private descriptions of the page and the process don’t seem to match what you see on the Amazon site. Perhaps they reformatted the page and the process in conjunction with the above Email going out. To make it more threatening perhaps. But, God knows, there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to ask Amazon anything on the subject anymore.
(Update August 2015) It’s been nine weeks since I bought anything from Amazon. Yes, I went cold turkey! For my latest Amazon post, I called it, Amazon is Evil.
(Update October 2015) Twenty weeks since last I bought anything at Amazon, still have the actual account because without that account login I lose my access to my purchased movies and can’t ‘burrow’ ebooks and digital media from the town library. Odd how this post continues to be the most viewed week after week, must come up on the searches for ‘cancel Amazon Prime’. And never any comments. Or cease and desist orders either.
(Oct 2016) I have only been ‘buying’ items from Amazon that I can pay for with my Credit Card Points (yup, still have the credit card from Amazon). Even so, Amazon has fucked me again. Bought a ‘Trump: Make America Great’ campaign sign and after completing the purchase found out it was coming by boat from China. November 9th.
Amazon now doesn’t provide any identifying information on their Marketplace Vendors page. And they denied my review on the item page to warn others of this scam.
(December 2016) After more than two years, this is the most viewed post on my blog. Every week! I just checked and using Google search I’m three pages back on the list of ‘cancel Amazon Prime’ choices. Or 23d non-Amazon selection.
On the North River 
Latest attempt to get information. You get a link to this page;
Cancel Your Amazon Prime Membership
You can cancel a paid or free Amazon Prime membership in the Settings section in Your Account.
To cancel your Amazon Prime membership:
Go to Manage Your Prime Membership.
Do one of the following:
To cancel a paid Amazon Prime membership, click End membership.
Note: Paid members who haven’t placed an Amazon Prime eligible order are eligible for a full refund. You can’t receive a refund if any of the household members have placed an Amazon Prime eligible order.
To cancel an Amazon Prime free trial, click Do not continue.
Note: If you don’t cancel your Amazon Prime free trial, you will be automatically upgraded to a paid membership plan at the end of the trial period. You can find this date listed on the left-hand side of the Manage Your Prime Membership page.
I parse that down to, if I cancel membership then I get no pro-rated refund and its possible that I get shut off from all benefits immediately without recourse. What a deal…/sarc off.
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Pingback: Do you know? Or do you take Amazons word on it? | On the North River
what happens if you dont see either the do not contiue or the cancel buttons?? your screwed.. seems the only thing they will except is to pay it and then hope you can get a refund.. good luck.. i hate dealing with scams llike this.
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I got so pissed off lately that I pushed the cancel button, what happened was I went to another unhelpful page that only gave me the additional option of receiving a reminder three days before automatic renewal. This page also has a cancel button, no, I don’t know what happens when I go down that rabbit hole.
Hate to see Amazon undo all those years of building their business up.
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i cancelled and it said “Your membership will end on [date]
After that date, you will lose access to your benefits and your card will not be charged.”
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When was that date? Immediate or at the end of your paid membership period?
Because if you are not being rebated for X number of months remaining, I’d wait.
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what happens if you dont see either the do not contiue or the cancel buttons?
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Try it and let me know.
I’ll wait until three days before renewal and then cancel.
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Just ended my membership. It will still offer me services up until the end of my already paid for membership period. Hope that helps 🙂
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Yes, it does. Thanks.
I think it is quite deliberate that Amazon provides no information or description anywhere of exactly what happens when you cancel. They want you to hesitate before going through that door.
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I just ended my subscription and the email said “since you’ve only used your benefits on a few items, you will receive a prorated refund of $91.08”. My subscription was 6/30-6/30 and I only placed one order this month.
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Interesting, I had only used my Prime on a “few” items back in January, no refund. So I’m going to the end of the year and cancel at the end of December.
But you weren’t canceling the old $79 rate. You apparently recently joined at the new $99 dollar rate.
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How long will it take for me to get my refund?
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No idea, ask Amazon.
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In answer to the issue with corporations like Amazon, Google Plus (paid Items)…that require a credit card, I simply bought a VISA card at Wal-Mart. I put how much money I need to pay the bill plus 1 dollar. I have 3 such cards I use. When I click cancel, the account is cancelled because there is no money for them to get. Shred the card and the cancellation is complete. Case closed. I also use a fictions name for the account such as Barney Gogle, Dick Tracy, Abner Yokam, Matthew Murdock, Clark Kent…you get the drift. For comic strip characters I look up the strip artist information and use it to fill in the blanks. Like when the character was first introduced, what city, his address.
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And of course the downside of using “nicknames” like that is your comments can get stuck in the Spam filter and I had to argue with the Commenting Engine to get your comment approved.
“Warning we think this message is a scam-spam”…
Citi used to provide “virtual card numbers”, one time use. Using those on new sites and for subscriptions was safe. But for some reason Citi discontinued the feature.
Since Amazon raised the price of Prime and started collecting sales taxes, I find that I don’t buy very much from them any more. What was cute: Amazon apparently added a shipping warehouse nearby, like within the one day local PO nearby and since I had dropped Prime (with the 2 day shipping) when I bought anything that was coming out of the local warehouse (WELL, they certainly couldn’t have me getting fast delivery after I dropped Prime, could they?) the item would be held in preparing for shipment status for the listed time for regular delivery. Five, six days. Preparing for shipment. Then shipped and arrived the next day. Seven days later. Screw them, I buying a lot more at Walmart and traveling to NH when it’s worth it.
If I wanted to pay MA exorbitant sales taxes I would not have bought from Amazon in the first place.
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It’s 2015 and I just went down the rabbit hole toward cancellation/end now AFTER an Amazon Prime purchase. I also got the “since you’ve only used your benefits on a few items, you will receive a prorated refund of $91.08″ reported by Shari. I’d only ordered one thing, and my “paid” account had only been active/converted from free trial, for about 13 days. Thanks for this thread in helping to clear up the ambiguity!
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Just tried to cancel prime membership, which is due to renew in Nov, 2016. As others have been mentioning, Amazon now feels they have the right to refused my prorated refund from now until Nov 2016. Ironically, the reason I am cancelling is consequently the reason amazon says I do not qualify for prorated refund. They claimed I used prime benefits too much to qualify for refunding the remainder of the year for membership. Prime benefits have been failing for me, whether it be SD only video due to their adaptive-bit-rate restrictions or no video at all. The biggest frustration is the lack of seller respondsability and dealing with used items “shipped and sold by Amazon” when bought as new. It’s just too much hassle and now and it seems they feel it’s ok to forcefully lock me into paying the rest of the year, for services they will never be able to provide w/o major headaches and furthermore I have told them I no longer want. Shame, they will loose their main customer base just like eBay did. Sad day… 😦
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Tried to cancel prime membership, which is due to renew in Nov, 2016. As others have been mentioning, Amazon now feels they have the right to refused my prorated refund from now until Nov 2016. Ironically, the reason I am cancelling is consequently the reason amazon says I do not qualify for prorated refund. They claimed I used prime benefits too much to qualify for refunding the remainder of the year for membership. Prime benefits have been failing for me, whether it be SD only video due to their adaptive-bit-rate restrictions or no video at all. The biggest frustration is the lack of seller respondsability and dealing with used items “shipped and sold by Amazon” when bought as new. It’s just too much hassle and now and it seems they feel it’s ok to forcefully lock me into paying the rest of the year, for services they will never be able to provide w/o major headaches and furthermore I have told them I no longer want. Shame, they will loose their main customer base just like eBay did. Sad day… 😦
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You might find this post on Coyote blog interesting ;
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/06/amazons-shipping-estimates-are-becoming-fraudulent.html
I canceled Prime a long time ago and now the only things I buy from Amazon are bought with the points from the credit card I still have and can use no where else. Recently a Amazon marketplace vendor took an order from me but never shipped nor would they reply to emails, tying my points up for a month. After the order was finally canceled (by Amazon) they refused my attempts to rate and write a review on that vendor, since they do not allow reviews or rating unless there is a completed order. Most people would think that a complete failure to ship or respond would be an issue that future buyers on Amazon’s Marketplace would be entitled to know, but not Amazon.
BTW, no need to double post. The first comment from your address must be approved, thereafter when you post it will be seen immediately.
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Thank you for posting the link regarding Amazon prime shipping durations. This false advertisement regarding shipment durations up front to get you to buy, for me, started in 2013 and has become a bigger problem over the last 3 years with Prime membership. This also includes “Amazon fulfillment” items from other sellers and is another big failure of the prime membership from my perspective. There are other products (like spray cans and batteries) which cannot be shipped as air freight, but at one time Amazon was giving arrival times days ahead of actual durations.
You may also find this article interesting:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html
If you look closely at the picture, you can see the previously opened or returned products sitting on top of each pile of product, which I often receive and results in many unnecessary returns and unhappy customers because they do not receive new or complete products.
Sorry about the double post. Let me know if there is a way one can be deleted.
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yeah, I still remember the time I opened a box from Amazon and the (broken) device inside had a tag on it that read “Defective”.
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Funny you mention that, after receiving a “new” product with an “Amazon Returns” label underneath the shipment label with a defective item inside, I started putting notes inside my return shipments with “defective” written on them (big) in efforts to inform the next unfortunate person Amazon ships this same junk back out to until someone doesn’t feel like returning it.
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I found this after literally searching, “cancelling amazon prime is a (f’ing) labyrinth.”
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Is there any way for me to cancel my membership and get my money back? If not, can I cancel the renewal so that the membership I’ve paid for is still valid until it’s termination date? I want to cancel but If i can’t get a prorated refund on what’s left of this year’s membership, I may as well keep using it until the day it runs out.
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Well, it’s been a long time since I canceled and essentially stopped buying from Amazon. At that time there was no pro-rated refund, since than based on other comments here that may have changed, but with Amazon who knows? It is even more difficult to contact Amazon about something they don’t want to talk about and all they want to talk about is “Are you going to buy this?”
Good Luck
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When you are logged into your account, at the bottom of the page on the left there is a column that says, ‘Let Us Help You’, the last option in the column says, ‘Help’. Click it, and you get options for what kind of help you need. In big blue letters, there is the PRIME option. Click it and there is a very simple option to end the auto-renew, so I don’t quite get the point of the column about how difficult it is. I found this article while searching how to end my Books a Million club membership–I wish it was as clear cut as Amazon’s Prime option to cancel.
Anyway, when my membership with Prime auto-renewed a few years ago and I didn’t expect it, I contacted them, upset because it caused another order from somewhere else to create an overdraft. Amazon not only refunded my money–they continued my membership for free until the end of the term and told me how I could uncheck the auto-renew button. I was then able to get my back to refund the overdraft charge, so in the end, I came out ahead. I consider that exceptional customer service and I have continued as a Prime member since then and enjoy all the added benefits.
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Mary,
First look at the date this post was originally posted, much has changed with Amazon (IMHO none of it good).
Second read the multitude of other comments placed over the years, it seems that trying to pin down what Amazon’s policy is at any given moment is impossible. (Hint: print screen shots!)
Third, and really no offense meant, but Mary you seem to be a shill for Amazon. Or a robot.
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A shill? Hardly. I’m a customer who thinks Amazon’s customer service runs rings around many other companies. I’m also an author who uses KDP and wish they had the same customer service on that side of the business. I know first hand that they can be heavy-handed with their enforcement of vague terms of service.
And the reason I posted was because my problem took place at the time you posted your article, so it was relevant. It seems you wanted to end Prime, and you did–but then complained that Amazon reminded you that you were ending it. I don’t see how that is really an issue. Some people may decide to keep it after all, or some may want that notification so they can plan to order something before they have to start paying for shipping.
Anyway, I’ll be bowing out of this discussion. No point in keeping it up since I’m just a “shill”.
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I think she took offense. ;-}
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Glad she got her money back w a free year of prime but I was a long time loyal customer for years prior and got screwed! When I cancelled there was no explanation or refund for remaining membership when canceling! I did see every opportunity, including detailed explanations of what I get by staying but not a single mention of how cancellation was to occur. Amazon’s service used to run around others but today they are throwing around bad quality items with bad seller quality control form Amazon dist centers, wasting time, fuel, packing material and now hiding behind helpless Indian call centers, burying the contact support links three clicks deep in their website.
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Actually I think that getting good customer service from Amazon today is a very chancy proposition, depending on the time of day (which determines the call center you get routed to), the agent and their spotty level of training.
Some people (and Mary seems to have been kissed by the call center fairies) may be granted the benevolence of their fondest wishes, but these days most of us are in line at the Motor Vehicle Registry and Bertha is having a bad day.
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i’m curious why amazon (apparently) won’t let me renew Prime with a gift card balance… They insist it can only be paid for by credit card.
I called and asked why and the CSR said that it’s because in the future (i.e. in a year), i might not have a gift card balance. duh.
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It’s been a while, but didn’t Amazon ‘take’ the yearly prime fee in one credit charge at the beginning? If there is enough money to cover it, then why not?
More likely whoever wrote the software and the call center procedures never envisioned the request to pay by gift card. And Drones don’t react well to the need for creative thought.
Most likely they just want to have a current credit card number on file for you, it encourages impulse purchases.
Best of luck
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yes, they want to be hooked more closely into your wallet!
In any event, the current situation is you can buy a “gift” 1-yr prime subscription and pay with gift card money. It’s not clear if you can gift yourself; in other words, you can definitely buy it but I’m not sure if the renewal will work or not.
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Remember with Amazon take screen shots of all offers, since they can be changed without warning. And save all emails. I have blocked all emails from Amazon that contain “do not reply” in the address. Fuck them, communicate don’t dictate.
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I loved amazon prime for a long time until I noticed that their prime’s 2 day free shipping is only available if you order Monday through early morning Wednesday (usually – sometimes not even then) – after that your orders on late Wednesday through Friday will be Monday/Tuesday and weekend orders are scheduled for Tuesday…. I used to love the fact that they delivered on Saturday but no more… I figured, ok I’m paying $99/yr and I know prime items are often priced higher but the quick delivery was worth it. Now that they’ve changed the meaning of 2 day delivery… I’m out! I’ve clicked the do not auto renew button – farewell Amazon prime, it was good when it was real!
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I feel your pain. After canceling Prime you may notice the phenomenon of items not being shipped (held at the warehouse) until it will arrive no earlier than the ten days for non-Prime shipping. In my state, Amazon has a warehouse and their own trucks, so if their simply pulled it off the shelves and sent it then I would receive it before the ‘Regular’ shipping date. Can’t have that!
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Prepared to cancel my Prime membership with calendar reminder…don’t want to deal with refund. I had ignored a couple issues that I had read about Amazon business practices last couple years but when they fell to pressure to stop selling certain products -costumes misrepresenting one culture while continuing to sell similar products disrespectful to Christian values & specifically when I learned what J Bezos used his profits for prior to last election, that was enough. Good to read your post & find others with same standards.
Thanks.
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