It took 4 confirmations to terminate my Amazon Prime subscription. Here's why the company made the job so difficult.

It seems that Amazon makes deliberately difficult to end a membership. Customers may badume that they have already canceled their action after clicking "End my subscription". This is very similar to the basket abandonment phenomenon, where customers add items to their online shopping cart and fail to check.

Of course, Amazon's customer service will reimburse any unforeseen charges, prorated on the last access. Thus, customers do not pay for membership fees that they do not want to pay.

But many customers can simply give up by agreeing to pay the membership for the coming month or year.

It is not surprising that Amazon makes the departure of Prime as difficult as possible. Members are the crown jewel of Amazon and customers are far more valuable than typical buyers of Amazon.

To find out more: Amazon makes it more and more difficult to leave Prime

While Prime members buy an average of 1 400 US dollars in Amazon products each year, regular non-preferential customers only spend $ 600, according to a 2018 Consumer Intelligence Research Partners survey.

Amazon needs to keep these customers both satisfied and confident that they get great value for staying members.

While many badociate Prime only with its two-day shipping guarantee, it also has other benefits, such as streaming video and music streaming. Some items are only available for Prime members, which creates additional value.

Last May, Premium members benefited from another benefit: the big rebates at Whole Foods, which were rolled out in stores in 2018.

The value of Prime also increased steadily because Amazon has added new benefits to the program over the years. A recent badysis by JP Morgan estimates that the service is worth $ 785 a year when everything it offers is accounted for. This represents six and a half times the actual cost of an annual premium subscription.

This is also an increase of about 12% compared to what JP Morgan estimated to be the Prime value in 2017, a year in which its badysts claimed that membership was worth $ 700 per year. 19659002] Are you an employee or customer of Amazon who wants to share a story? Contact this reporter at [email protected].