Unethical to you, but profitable to them.
Comment on I have to pay extra to remove ads from Prime Video
TerraNova@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
My Prime subscription renewed in Dec. I didn’t know about the ads arriving. So yesterday I went through support and cancelled my subscription and they agreed to refund what I paid.
If they want to change the membership terms on renewals it’s their right to do so, but changing the terms of an annual subscription after I purchased it is unethical to me.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Aceticon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve worked in Investment Banking for a decade or so some years ago and everything there is calculated and risk-priced with zero moral or ethical considerations (even “Regulatory Risk” or, in other words, “If the risk-adjusted profitabily exceeds other options we will break the Law”).
Funnilly enough I was in the Tech Startup World after than and nowadays (back in the 90s it wasn’t like this) it’s pretty much The Even Wilder Wild West Of Finance - or in other word, riddled with shit from the most speculative end of Finance, only with pretty much zero regulatory oversight so, naturally, riddled with near- and actual-Fraud.
All this to say that somebody in Amazon made the maths using their customer behaviour profiles to calculate the risk of the only negative response possible (people actually cancelling, the other two being the slight positive one of “people stay as they are and watch ads” and the more positive one of “people pay the extra for ad free”) times lost income versus the upsides and determined Amazon’s profit will increase.
Notice how in order to reduce the possibility of people taking the option that’s negative for them, they renew and after it do a one-sided change the terms of the contract, which Nudge Theory tells will yield the maximum number of people just accepting it (so they’ll be in the “stay and watch ads” rather than “cancelling” group), something which for them even has no negatives (people will either still cancel, which is neutral versus telling it to people upfront and they cancelling, or they’ll stick around and take it which is positive for Amazon) hence was a pretty obvious choice for an unethical company.
So, I applaud you for actually activelly even through the gauntlet they purposefull acting on this, though I suspect you’re a tiny minority.
I suggest spreading the renewal and then change of contract terms story is the best way to punish them for their actions, especially emphasising that they’re knowingly pressuring people to stay with highly sleazy screw-the-customer legally dubious techniques. (Though not with a wall of text like I did ;), so thank you kind reader for getting this far!)
I would say that the thing that can really screw Amazon over the mid and long-term is losing customer trust.
TerraNova@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Thanks for the Finance context. I figured they ran numbers and decided to go ahead anyway.
It’s sad that being public also encourages companies to act in ways that aren’t ethical as long as it maximizes shareholder value.
porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
being unethical is profitable, my good sir.