How to cancel Amazon Prime and get a refund
End Prime from Your Account, open your Prime membership, select Update, Cancel and more, then follow the prompts. Amazon refunds the current period in full only if you and your account haven't used any Prime benefits since the last charge.
Two ways to end Prime, and only one gives money back
Cancelling Amazon Prime is the easy part. The refund after cancelling has rules attached. Either let the membership run to its renewal date and use everything you've already paid for, or end it now and try to get the unused portion back. Amazon refunds a membership period you haven't touched, and won't refund one you have. Before you cancel, check what you and anyone else on the account have used since the last charge.
How to cancel your Amazon Prime membership
- Go to Your Account and open your Prime membership.
- Select Update, Cancel and more.
- Follow the on-screen instructions through to the confirmation.
Amazon documents a second route as well. Go to Your Memberships and Subscriptions, find the subscription, select Manage Subscription, then Cancel Subscription under Advanced Controls. Both routes end on a confirmation screen that spells out when your benefits stop. Read that screen before you close the tab, because it is the only place Amazon states the outcome back to you.
When Amazon refunds, and when it doesn't
Whether money comes back depends on when you cancel and what you've used. Amazon's Prime terms set out both rules, and they're stricter than most people assume:
- Cancel within 3 business days of signing up, or of converting from a free trial to a paid membership, and Amazon "will refund your full membership fee". It still reserves the right to charge you, or to withhold from the refund, "the value of Prime benefits used by you and your account during this 3-business day period."
- Cancel at any other time and Amazon "will refund your full membership fee only if you and your account did not make any eligible purchases or take advantage of Prime benefits since your latest Prime membership charge."
Amazon's cancellation help page puts it in one line. Paid members who haven't used their benefits are eligible for a full refund of the current membership period, and Amazon processes it in three to five business days.
"Benefits" is wider than free delivery. A Prime Video stream, a Prime Reading borrow, a Prime-priced grocery order or a Prime Gaming claim all count as using the membership, and any one of them can take an annual refund off the table. On an annual plan, cancel before you touch anything in the new membership year rather than eleven months into it. If you've already used it, stop chasing the refund. Get reminded before the renewal instead, and cancel while the next period is still untouched.
Prime Video Channels don't cancel themselves
This is where Prime gets expensive. Channels are the paid add-ons you subscribe to inside Prime Video, and each one is a separate subscription with its own charge. You cancel Prime Video Channels one at a time:
- Go to Manage Your Prime Video Channels.
- Select Prime Video Channels, find the subscription you want to end, and select Cancel Channel.
- Confirm. If you're offered a self-service refund and accept it, the cancellation takes effect immediately. Otherwise the end date appears on the confirmation screen, and you can reverse the cancellation right up until that date.
Cancel Prime and the channels go with it. Prime Video Channels need an active Prime membership, so they end when it does. Open your channel list before you end the membership, especially if you are three episodes from the end of something. And if you pay for a channel through Apple rather than Amazon, cancel at least 24 hours before it renews or Apple may still charge you.
Student and young-adult memberships
The discounted membership has its own path. Go to Prime Central, select End Membership, then End My Benefits, then End Membership again. Yes, three taps that all say roughly the same thing. The refund rules are the same as for the standard membership.
If Amazon isn't the one charging you
Amazon doesn't always do the billing. Sign up through Google Play on an Android device and Amazon points you to Google's subscription settings to cancel. If Prime came attached to another company's service, Amazon tells you to contact that company. Whoever takes the money owns the cancellation, and no amount of clicking on Amazon's site will move a charge that Amazon didn't make. The same problem shows up in how to cancel Netflix and how to cancel Disney+.
Decide before the renewal, not after
Prime is a good deal in some months and a dead cost in others. The people who get refunds noticed the renewal before it happened. Everyone else finds the charge on a statement weeks later, discovers they've used a benefit, and eats the year.
Whichever way this cancellation goes, write down the renewal date of every other subscription you pay annually. If you've lost track of what those are, start with the 30-minute subscription audit. Annual charges are the ones that hide, because you last thought about them twelve months ago.
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