Bad experiences with buying music

Just a few minutes ago I found out I was tricked/robbed for the first time, so I'm pretty angry.  I thought it would be a good idea to centralize these kind of experience, in order to learn from each other and avoid bad experiences in the future, if possible.

My bad experience probably comes from lack of previous experience with ordering online. Last month I made my first order through Amazon (I normally buy in shops). They had this customer program through which you don't pay for shipping in the first month, so I subscribed to it.
What they didn't say and I didn't think I should check further was that after that first month it's not like you pay for every shipping you need for your orders, but you pay a 50 euro monthly fee which they automatically take from your bank account without asking you, regardless whether you place new orders or not. I only found about this important detail when I noticed the payment of the first monthly fee.

Probably most of you people who buy regularly on the Internet know about this and take precautions, but I hope this still may be of help for someone.

I've not signed up for the amazon prime deal, but through amazon.de they only charge 29 Euro per year.  I just checked. 

Could it be something only for the French Amazon? It's called Amazon Premium.

http://www.amazon.fr/gp/subs/primeclub/signup/main.html

I think it says 49 EUR per year ... 

Ah. Just checked Amazon premium at amazon.fr.  And wow, it is 49 Euro, but as with amazon.de, this is a yearly fee, not a monthly fee. 

^But I usually buy CDs in bulk from there, and orders over 20 Euro get free shipping anyway. 

Southern Lord takes their sweet time with delivering their goods...but what else would you really expect with people who make music with 1/2 bpm.    

harmonium.ro wrote: If it's only a yearly fee then my loss is much smaller, but still, they didn't say they were going to charge me anything (there weren't many details on the order page, unlike the page with the presentation of the service). They had me thinking that after the first month, I'm going to be charged per order/shipping, not that I would be charged automatically. If I knew I wouldn't have subscribed because I didn't plan to use Amazon soon. Still it's strange, in my account page it was talking about monthly renewal, not yearly renewal.

Well, not that you have Amazon Prime/Premium for a year you might as well use it. If you order 1-2 CDs per month and save 2 EUR compared to the normal price at the store, you could break even.

I just received an email from Amazon, saying that because I canceled the service without taking advantage of it, I will be fully refunded. That's the 100% correct decision, kudos to Amazon! 

I expected nothing less ... I never had any problems with Amazon.