Sneaky subscriptions.

I got an email on Sunday morning congratulating me on my new subscription to Amazon Music, which was weird, because I hadn’t subscribed to Amazon Music.

My first thought was that it was a scam trying to harvest my login details. But no, it turned out I really did have an Amazon Music subscription.

How did that happen?

We have an Alexa in the kitchen, and apparently someone had asked it to play some music. Rather than just using the limited library that comes with a Prime subscription, it had decided to sign us up for the full-blown Amazon Music service. Nobody in the house remembered doing this, and I don’t doubt it was a sneaky process that got somebody to okay the subscription by voice while they were distracted.

It took me a couple of hours to get to my desktop to cancel it. I didn’t even bother trying on my phone because I assumed it would be impossible. Turned out, it wasn’t much easier on the desktop. There were about a dozen screens to get through, each one offering me a “special deal” if I kept the subscription. Naturally, all the offers were time-limited, so after three months I’d be back to paying the full price for a subscription I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want..

In the end, I couldn’t be entirely sure I’d unsubscribed until I got an email confirming it.

By that point, I was so annoyed that I decided to check my Amazon account for any other sneaky subs hiding in there. Sure enough, I found two more, one for a documentary service, and another for some shit I can’t even remember, but which was costing me another seven or eight US dollars a month.

While I was in there, I figured I might as well cancel my Kindle Unlimited subscription, too. I was in a pretty bad mood by then, and Kindle Unlimited was just sitting there being guilty by association.

All up, I saved myself about forty US dollars a month, on things I either wasn’t using, like Kindle Unlimited, or didn’t even know I was paying for.

So it’s worth checking your own subscription list. Or maybe even signing up for that service I keep hearing about in podcast ads, the one that unsubscribes for you.

Of course, to get that service, you need… a subscription.