Founded in 1994, Amazon, the American multinational technology company, today reigns as one of the biggest operating online retailers worldwide, scoring a revenue jumping way more than $280.5 billion.
As a part of its facilitating measures to handle the massive orders, revenue generation, and transactional requirements, Amazon umbrellas the Amazon Digital Services LLC (an electronic e-commerce sub-division firm). This functions to provide the service of online digital purchasing of products and offers from its site, making digital orders a major and crucial mode of revenue generation.
What is Amazon Digital Charge?
You must be thinking about what is Amazon Digital Charge. In simple terms, these are the monetary deductions that Amazon charges for offering its subscriptions and offers to customers. A better and more comprehensive elaboration is penned below.
Digital Services & Amazon Digital Charges
Amazon’s digital amenities extend subscription-based online purchasing offers for its large-scale customers proposing different packages for different models of e-commerce businesses on an affordable monthly or annual fee basis, known as the Amazon digital charge. Some of the currently accessible offers by Amazon Digital Services LLC include:
Kindle Unlimited
This is an Amazon marketed platform for e-books for all the book lovers out there. It offers users to browse an unlimited stock, download, read or buy magazines, e-books (audio & narrative), newspapers, and other descriptive content via the Amazon devices e.g. Kindle App (through which digital charges are deducted after the prescribed period).
Fresh subscribers to the Kindle App can have the advantage of availing of the 30-day free trial, after which further usage requires the purchasing of a subscription costing $9.99 per month.
Amazon Drive
Offering its cloud drive space to download and save your files, the subscription package of the Amazon Drive App is set at $11.99 per month for a storage capacity of 100 GB and an annual subscription of $1799 for 30 TB. Other monthly and annual plans are also available in the range of $59.99 and $599 respectively as per requirement. For fresh subscribers, there is an initial grant of free usage of 5GB.
This Application allows you to download and save your files to Amazon’s cloud drive. It functions similar to that of Google Drive and Dropbox and can be directly downloaded from the official Amazon website.
Amazon Music Unlimited
By signing up on Amazon Music Unlimited, you can tune in to every beat of music and podcasts on almost any device. Its digital charges for its prime members are $7.99 per month & $79 annually. For other members, the cost of a subscription is settled at $ 9.99 per month.
Amazon Kids+
Welcoming children to be a part of its functional domain, Amazon has initiated a child-friendly service to provide easy and safe access for children to a limitless stock of age-oriented games, educational and informative applications, movies, books, etc.
These subscriptions are offered at discounted rates starting from a reasonable sum of $2.99. A free trial is also at your disposal before subscribing to the program.
Amazon Prime Video
This service lets you stream your favorite channels and programs using your smart device. An annual cost of $119 is settled for the prime users with no extra costs, while normal subscribers are expected to pay a sum of $8.99 per month.
There are many more digital services offered apart from the main ones mentioned above.
What to do if You are Wrongly Charged?
Despite the stated monthly and annual subscription fee, a common concern of many subscribers is the deduction of hidden digital charges which users have absolutely no idea about.
Reasons You Can be Charged:
Before we move on towards dealing with such a case, it is important that you remain aware of the fact that:
- Amazon charges a fee of $0.99 to your bill for using its app.
- Another common cause of the addition of charges that may surprise you can be subscription renewal deductions.
- After the expiry of any free trial, charges for downloading videos, e-books, or any sort of content from the Amazon site and its digital services may result in minor added cents.
- A surcharge could also be on account of an illegal purchase made using your details. The matter can, however, be resolved if proved so. In such a case it is advised to immediately contact your bank and have your data and money secured. The bank verifies the transactional activity of the Amazon services to detect any illegal activity, if so, they inform you so that you have a sound endorsement to file your case with Amazon.
- If your bank authorizes a hold on the cancellation of a purchase, it can result in a minimum surcharge.
Apart from the above, it is important that you read out the terms and conditions of Amazon to be aware of what is an Amazon digital charge declared in return for using its digital services. If other than the stated reasons you experience an unusual charge in your bill, you can simply file a case with the Amazon support system. It is an efficient team of people available 24/7 who facilitate patient hearing and are highly responsive to any customer concern or complaint.
Providing valid endorsement to your claim, you will either be refunded with the surplus charge or be informed of the possible cause of charging, whatever the case may be. Customer Satisfaction reigns as the paramount priority of Amazon. So, fret not if you see any additional sum tagged in your bill, there is an amicable solution to simply open a case from your account.
The option to cancel your subscription to digital services at any time is always there. If for any reason you wish to discontinue the subscription you may do so from the settings corner of your account under the manage subscription tab. However, it is to be remembered that if you unsubscribe prior to the expiry of your subscription, Amazon will make no refunds and you will have access to the account till the valid period.
Cancellation of subscription does not affect your order placement if any is in the process.
Apart from manually unsubscribing from the digital services via your account, Amazon offers other alternatives for cancellation too such as a request to cancel a subscription through your registered email ID or by calling them up on their support toll-free helpline number.
Ways to Avoid Unusual Amazon Digital Charge
- Link a working email with your Amazon account to be instantly notified about any purchase you make so that you are informed and in a position to know where it is going wrong, if so.
- Disable the one-click cash-out and one click
- View your transaction history to make sure how much you actually spent. You can do this by logging into your Amazon Account and from the side menu select the “your payments” option and then select the “Transaction” tab.
If after thorough self-investigation and efforts you are still not able to detect the cause of Amazon digital charges through any of the options mentioned or suggested, the unauthorized activity can be reported using the following link.
