When Amazon gives out 160 liters of almond milk – again and again
WELT writer Tobias Kaiser is furious with consumer-hostile subscription offers from many online retailers
Source: Jens Buttner/Picture aligned/DPA Central Image; Claudius Plough
You have to be careful if you order muesli, diapers or milk online. He has taken a so called savings subscription in no time and gets the same items delivered over and over again. My mother-in-law has now realized the absurd consequences it can have.
MA mother-in-law Alexandra is almost 80 years old and surfs the Internet a lot. I think it’s great, at least until recently. The courier stopped at her front door: with a Euro palette and a 160 one-liter pack of almond milk.
Obviously he made a mistake while placing the order. She wanted to avoid the joke in the WhatsApp family group. So he didn’t say anything at first, piled the tetrapacks in his pantry and started distributing them to the neighborhood.
When the courier rang the bell again to deliver 160 more boxes, Alexandra was a little nervous. For breakfast with her grandchildren, she brought ten cartons of almond milk. And the conviction: “My Amazon account was hacked.”
A month later, a message arrived on my smartphone. “Again 160 got in one pile. But I stopped it at the front door and didn’t accept it. I’m at a complete loss!”
i advised him heroine To Call The customer advisor knew what to do: Alexandra had not only ordered 20 packs of eight instead of 20 containers of almond milk — she had even signed up for a subscription to this quantity.
No wonder: When ordering muesli, nappies or lipsticks, continuous delivery is selected on Amazon and referred to as a Savers subscription, even if customers don’t save anything. Experts call these tricks “dark patterns,” which are intended to urge users to make decisions.
This week the European Union launched the Digital Services Act, banning the scam. The ban could come into force as early as the autumn of 2023. Amazon, Ryanair and Co. The victory of my mother-in-law.
She’s even more angry about Amazon now: She’s ordering an unusually large amount of almond milk, the mail order company just wrote to her. So you are suspected of running a lively business with the product.
