I’m hoping you can put pressure on Amazon to change the new terms to their service which allows Amazon Prime subscribers to share benefits with their family.
When I changed my email address I created a new account with Amazon and re-established the Prime service on that address. I then went to share my service with my wife as I used to. However, it seems that I can now only share services if I also share my payment details.
It is against all banking terms and conditions to share your payment details with another individual, even if they are your spouse. Amazon is literally forcing people to break those conditions to use the Prime sharing service.
I asked Amazon to register my complaint on this and it just ended the chat window. Hardly representative of good service. NB, London
Amazon is no more communicative with me and ignores two requests to comment.
Last July, unannounced, it changed the benefits of its Prime sharing service which, until then, allowed subscribers to share the one-day delivery perk with up to four others.
Amazon Household, as it’s now called, restricts this altruism to one adult in the same household and up to four children who don’t need to be account holders and can’t use it to make purchases.
The good news is that the participating adult can now share streaming video and Kindle books. The bad news is, as you say, both adult account holders need to authorise each other to copy their payment details to their own account and use them for purchases.
No doubt Amazon’s intention is to put people off taking up the sharing service and encourage them instead to stump up the £79 a year for their own Prime account. It is always a risk to share your card details unless you have a joint account.
“Generally, a bank’s terms and conditions prohibit customers from allowing other people to use their cards to make transactions, unless the card issuer had permitted this for practical reasons such as disability,” says the UK Cards Association.
“If someone does give another person consent and the means to use their card, the issuer could not be expected to take liability for any transactions made by that third party.”
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.
