A friend of mine from Slovenia told me she learned English in "the Warehouse" she was describing working for Amazon and how employees had adopted "the warehouse" as a play on the Victorian "workhouse." After hearing about the treatment and conditions first hand, she doesn't work there anymore, simple things like not being allowed to sit down and having to queue for long periods of time unpaid (after clocking out or before clocking in) to enter and leave the building, it changed my shopping behaviour.
A few weeks ago another friend of mine, this time not an employee of Amazon, or ex employee, just a regular consumer was ranting about being charged an Amazon prime subscription she didn’t sign up for. When she had looked into it, it wasn’t on her actual Amazon account and without providing the email to the “correct” account she was unable to get to the bottom of it of get the transaction cancelled. Even a neighbour with a hotline to Amazon customer service who shopped a lot on Amazon and seemed very experienced with the platform, their offers and navigating over charges and charge backs was unable to assist in this case. She didn’t know if it was a hack or just plain cheek on Amazon’s part.
The most difficult part of all was the shut down by Amazon. All they could tell her the charge was not on her account but because of data protection they could not tell her whose account the charge was made to even though it had come out of her bank account. She ended up taking it up with her bank and did eventually get the money back and the payment stopped.
Then the exact same thing happened to me, except I am not an Amazon shopper. I have an account for watching the occasional thing on Amazon prime. But apart from 2 or 3 purchases made on the TV in the last few years I never go to the Amazon website, so how I was suddenly signed up for Amazon Prime at £8.99 per month was a complete mystery.
I have been anti the Amazon monopoly for quite a few years now, following the journey of labour activist Chris Smalls in the US and having watched Inside Amazon, the dispatches documentary and the recently released real stories documentary on You Tube How Amazon Took Over The Internet I couldn't support Amazon as a Prime account holder. So I knew without a shadow of a doubt I had not clicked anything by mistake.
I immediately called the bank to see what could be done. They did suggest I had signed up inadvertently even though I was emphatic this was impossible. It was clear the agent at the bank didn’t believe me. Everyone shops on Amazon right? In the end the only course of action was to stop my bank card, which would prevent Amazon taking any more payments and also prevent me from watching any paid TV programs via Amazon. A price I was willing to pay.
It was a lot of trouble and aggravation to go to for £8.99 but had I not spotted it, Amazon could have got away with taking the monthly fee for ages.
It does make me wonder how many other people with live but inactive Amazon accounts are finding that £8.99 monthly subscription all of a sudden appearing on their bank statement.
I have to say they are tricky, Amazon, a few years back I did by a book on Amazon, a title published by a friend not available anywhere else and I did get caught up in an Amazon prime subscription inadvertently even though I’d elected to pay the £6.99 shipping cost as a one off purchase instead, I knew I wouldn’t be shopping with Amazon again so wasn't interested in the Prime account offering.
When speaking to someone else about this, she mentioned remembering watching a documentary about Amazon labour exploitation where the delivery drivers schedules were so gruelling, they didn’t have time for bathroom breaks and were forced to pee in disposable bottles that were building up and causing bio hazards around the country.
It was just another reminder for me why I won’t be shopping on Amazon. My kind neighbour provided the Amazon packaging for this image.