Washington, D.C. — The Federal Trade Commission today filed suit targeting Amazon’s “Project Iliad,” a plan by Amazon executives to impose illegal hurdles to prevent consumers from cancelling Amazon Prime subscriptions. In response, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“Today’s complaint outlines the truly deceptive business model that Amazon Prime is built on — one that traps consumers in illegal subscription cycles and then increases prices while lowering the quality of service,” said Krista Brown, Senior Policy Analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project.“Amazon executives reportedly made it so hard to cancel an Amazon Prime subscription that the effort was described as ‘Project Iliad.’ In bringing this case, the FTC is standing up for working families to ensure that big corporations can’t trap and cheat them.”

As the FTC’s complaint details, Amazon employed a “Four-Page, Six-Click, Fifteen-Option Iliad Cancellation Process” for cancelling Prime. The process for ending a Prime subscription, which indeed did amount to an ancient philosophy nightmare, trapped consumers even as Amazon degraded the product.

In January 2022, Amazon announced that it was raising its fulfillment fees and storage fees for third-party sellers by 5% and 11% respectively. Then, in February, Amazon announced that it was increasing the cost of Amazon Prime by 17%, impacting at least 126 million Amazon Prime subscribers. Last April, Amazon also unveiled an additional 5% price hike for third-party sellersthat it coined as a “Fuel and Inflation” surcharge. According to research from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Amazon already charges third party merchants an average of 30% of each sale, up from 19% just five years ago.

But higher prices and merchant fees have not translated to better service for consumers. Amazon is also taking longer and longer to ship consumers their goods, with reports from May 2023 suggesting that Amazon has axed Prime 2 day shipping.

In October 2021, the FTC issued an enforcement policy statement which warned companies to stop using misleading tactics to trap consumers into a subscription service and then make it hard to cancel. As said in the statement, these deceptive tactics take shape through confusing language, a lack of sign up notice, obstacles to cancelling a subscription service, and more.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.