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FTC Files Suit Against Amazon For In-App Purchases

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-fool-his-kids-and-his-money dept.

Charliemopps writes The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against Amazon for illegally billing parents for in-app purchases of digital goods prior to requiring a password for making purchases. "The FTC's complaint, filed Thursday, asks the court to force Amazon to refund the money to those customers. In-app purchases typically involve virtual goods bought within an app, like extra coins or energy in a game, according to the FTC. Some bills totaled hundreds of dollars, and some virtual goods cost as much as $99.99." We recently told you about Amazon's refusal to reach a settlement over these FTC complaints.

5 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Where is section 5? by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the complaint in PDF
    http://www.ftc.gov/system/file...

    It says section 5(a) but I'm having trouble locating section 5.
    http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...

    Anyone got any ideas where I'm doing it wrong?

    1. Re:Where is section 5? by Bob_Who · · Score: 4, Funny

      Anyone got any ideas where I'm doing it wrong?

      You actually attempted to read it.

    2. Re:Where is section 5? by itsdapead · · Score: 5, Funny

      Anyone got any ideas where I'm doing it wrong?

      You need to 30 gems to get the Magic Scroll of Tort and unlock section 5. Best way is to purchase the "LawyerUp Gold" pack for $14.99.

      Thank you for playing Crazy Courtroom Saga 3.

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  2. Re:Failing to learn from history? by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Informative
    Indeed. They were persuaded to refund 32.5 million or so US Dollars by the ftc...arguably a small percentage of the take from the operation.

    They knew what they were doing, and they also know only a given percentage of those affected will ever seek damages.

    If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  3. Re:about time by Anubis+IV · · Score: 3, Interesting

    He only claimed that they paid no attention to user experience, not that they're shoddy at engineering things. The examples you provided actually demonstrate that point.

    For instance, I read a few years back about how Bezos had then-recently hired designers to redo the website since its design seems like an over-crowded holdover from the '90s, before disregarding their ideas entirely because he couldn't bear to be without all of the stuff that's currently packed in. Likewise, their software for the Kindle Fire line can do some really neat stuff, but everything I've heard and seen indicates that it's sub-par from an experience perspective (e.g. unresponsive/laggy UI, inconsistent app designs/flows, disregard for common and obvious use cases). As for AWS and logistics, what of them? Logistics is entirely internal, while AWS isn't aimed at end users at all.

    They can and do make cool stuff that's well-engineered, but there's a big difference between good engineering and good design. I, and I believe the OP, are accusing them of lacking the latter when it comes to their consumer-facing endeavors. Pretty much everything about Amazon feels like a cheap commodity, which is fine when I want cheap cables from their Amazon Basics line that I'll plug in once and never touch again, but isn't so good when it's something I'm interacting with on a daily basis, such as their site.