HACKER Q&A
📣 factsarelolz

Amazon Prime Dark Pattern


I've noticed when searching for an item in the Amazon App the Prime toggle switch will be defaulted to off. Which will not filter based on prime. It easy to turn on and I do. But if you change your search query it's turn off again. If I am a Prime member why wouldn't I WANT to see prime first always. It appears Amazon does not want me to purchase prime items.

The above coupled with the fact that all shipping is 7+ days out when this time last year I was able to still get 2 day delivery. I live within 10 miles of a major distribution center yet it takes a week to get a package?

Anyways, might be the last on to cancel my prime in HN.

  👤 beezle Accepted Answer ✓
Over the past year I have bought a lot more from other sellers such as Walmart and Target because they can still get them to me in two or three days with no extra charge (if you meet the low free ship limit).

I've also had Amazon claim two day delivery on an item only to change to five days so as to include with another item out of the same warehouse - after the order has been placed showing that they are to be delivered on different dates. I'm at the point where I will now place future orders seperately if they are not same est. delivery date.

👤 leros
I don't know if it's a dark pattern. In general, as somebody offering a search engine, you want the most flexibility to offer the best result to the user. You might have the perfect item, but it's not available on Prime. Sometimes you even want to show results that break the user's filters especially if the filter is a default.

Think about a real world interaction.

"I want a red sweater shipped via Prime"

What's a better response, A or B?

A: "Sorry, no red sweaters. The closest thing I have is some red t-shirts."

B: "It's not Prime, but I have a highly rated red sweater that can be there in 5 days"

👤 Festro
Because then Amazon would likely get into legal anti-trust hot water with their sellers over Prime being a monopoly.

They would argue that Amazon is being unfair on their own platform by excluding non-Prime products from search results by default when there is no way of telling if a consumer wants results to be filtered that way.