An Amazon FreeTime charge on your bank or credit card statement is the recurring subscription fee for Amazon Kids+, the service formerly called FreeTime Unlimited. It usually appears as “Amazon Digital Svcs amzn.com/bill” and almost always means a free trial that came bundled with a Fire Kids tablet, Kindle Kids device, or similar purchase has ended and converted into a paid plan tied to your Amazon account.1
Why It Showed Up Without Warning
Amazon Kids devices ship with either a six-month or twelve-month Amazon Kids+ subscription included in the purchase price. When that period ends, Amazon automatically begins charging the default payment method on your account unless you canceled first. The company’s terms state that your subscription “will automatically continue” and that Amazon is authorized “to collect the then-applicable fee and any applicable taxes, using any payment method we have on record for you.”
The statement descriptor is part of the confusion. You won’t see “FreeTime” or “Kids+” spelled out. Most banks display the charge as “Amazon Digital Svcs” with a URL, which looks generic enough that people don’t connect it to a children’s content subscription they may not remember signing up for.
What You’re Being Billed
Amazon Kids+ pricing depends on whether you have Prime and whether you chose monthly or annual billing:
- Monthly with Prime: $5.99
- Monthly without Prime: $7.99
- Annual with Prime: $48 (roughly $4 per month)
- Annual without Prime: $79 (roughly $6.58 per month)
Sales tax may be added based on your billing address, so the figure on your statement can run slightly higher than the base price. Amazon’s terms note that “membership fees may be subject to tax.”
Finding the Subscription in Your Account
Sign in to Amazon and open the “Your Memberships and Subscriptions” page in your account settings. It lists active, canceled, and expired subscriptions along with each one’s renewal date and price.
If nothing shows up there but the charges keep coming, two things are worth checking. First, you may have a second Amazon account on a different email address, and the subscription lives on that one. Second, someone else in your household may have set up the subscription on their own Amazon account using a payment card you share. In that case, the subscription won’t appear under your login at all, and you’ll need to cancel it from their account.
Canceling Amazon Kids+
From “Your Memberships and Subscriptions,” find the Amazon Kids+ entry and select the cancel option. Amazon will ask why you’re leaving, then show a confirmation screen. Once you click through, you’ll get an email confirming the cancellation date.
Your children keep access to the content library through the end of the current billing period, and the card won’t be charged again after that. Amazon’s help page confirms this directly: “disabling auto-renewal means you will continue to have access through the end of the current billing period, and your payment method will not be charged again.”
Getting a Refund From Amazon
Amazon’s terms say subscription fees are “non-refundable except as expressly set forth” in those terms. If you cancel partway through a billing cycle, you generally won’t get money back for the unused portion; you’ll just keep access until the period ends. The one carve-out Amazon states: if Amazon itself terminates your access for a reason other than a terms violation, they’ll provide a prorated refund.
That said, if you never realized the trial had converted, contact Amazon customer service directly and ask. Amazon has historically been willing to refund one or two billing cycles for subscribers in that situation. It’s handled case by case and isn’t guaranteed, but it’s worth asking before you go any further.
Disputing the Charge With Your Card Issuer
If Amazon declines to refund and you believe the charge was unauthorized, you can dispute it with your credit card company. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you have 60 days from the date the charge appeared on your statement to submit a written dispute. The dispute needs to identify your account, state that you believe there’s a billing error, and explain why.
The 60-day window matters. If several months of charges have accumulated before you noticed, only the ones inside that window are disputable through your card issuer. Older charges you’d have to pursue with Amazon directly.
Stopping It From Happening Again
If the charge was triggered by a device trial, set a calendar reminder for about a week before the trial ends and cancel through your Memberships and Subscriptions page before the renewal date. The trial length, either six or twelve months depending on the device, is shown on the subscription page.
For the device itself, open the Amazon Appstore, go to Account, then Settings, then “Parental controls.” Enabling this requires your Amazon account password for any in-app purchase. It won’t block the built-in trial from converting, since that’s tied to your account rather than the device, but it stops kids from signing up for additional services or buying content on their own.