Customer says Amazon digital service charges unexplained
BATON ROUGE - For the past year, small charges have slowly been adding up on one man's credit card bill. He recently found out, he'd been paying for TV subscriptions through his Amazon Prime account and had no idea.
Randy Rice lives in an Amazon Prime household and receives packages from the online retail giant multiple times a month. He has a credit card dedicated to the purchases and relies on emails to let him know those purchases are on the way.
The bill is typically paid online, but Rice says he recently picked up his bill to notice charges that should not have been there.
"We were just looking at the bill and were like, what is digital services?" he said.
He found three charges for "Amazon Digital Service" on his November statement. Not knowing what they were for, Rice called Amazon and found he'd been charged for HBO, Starz, and children's video streaming service Ameba since January. The charges rang up to about $28 a month and totaled about $300.
Rice found out about the charges on Wednesday. He says he never agreed to this.
"Didn't order it, didn't authorize it, didn't know we had it, didn't want it because I have those channels through our cable provider here," said Rice.
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He already pays for HBO and Starz through Cox Cable. He didn't find out much more from Amazon.
"Nobody ever addressed the issue of how it started who authorized it to start, nothing, they were very, very evasive about that," he said.
At first, Rice says Amazon offered to cancel the subscriptions and refund him for one month. Rice managed to wrangle an extra $100 out of it but is still at a loss of about $150 for services that went unknown and unused for about a year.
"It was like, well that's all we can do," he said.
Rice is warning others to check their bills, especially with the busy holiday shopping season approaching.
Friday, 2 On Your Side reached out to Amazon and have not received a comment in return.