You know, I've seen that, but I guess I didn't pay much attention and assumed it was opt-in. Silly me for thinking Amazon would have the tiniest shred of ethics in their functional design.
There are two buttons, and the huge bright one is "Yes" or something (constantly changing), referring to whatever crap (Prime, credit card, rush shipping) thet are pushing in the big interstitial ads you are ignoring.
Amazon isn't worth the bother anymore. You can almost anything worthwhile somewhere else better.
Amazon was founded and run by proud Objectivists, so the ethics they have might not match yours.
Most big-box stores have horrible stock and their online systems are pretty lackluster, including shipping times.
I don't use Amazon to find what I want to buy - I know what I want to buy (for the most part) before I even begin to look at Amazon. Too many crap brands to rely on Amazon's search features.
I don’t use Prime’s content features and the handful of Amazon orders I make a year usually get free shipping anyway.
I’ve definitely accidentally signed up for Prime and the confusing screen is always a reminder that I should try buying my [whatever] elsewhere. Sometimes it works and I find an alternative, sometimes I find the opt out button and finish my purchase. But their scummy tactics have probably pushed a few $k in annual purchases off Amazon for me.
I mean, if you use all that, sure. I don't do Prime books, the only media I watch on Prime is Legend of Vox Machina, I don't use Prime music, etc. So I'm really just paying $14.99/month for one TV show and faster shipping when I do order a package. I guess that's still not too bad, but it still feels gross that I was tricked into signing up for it, twice.
They raised the price earlier this year. I cancelled immediately upon receiving the email about that raise, but I hear they didn't lose a lot of clients that way
You can still get free shipping if you spend $35 (sometimes $25). I've found that I've really cut back on the number of stupid purchases I used to make because "it's only $5 and it'll be here tomorrow".
