united-states contract-law terms-of-service breach-of-contract
Does Amazon prohibit a family of adults from sharing a single Amazon account?
<p>In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ref_=hp_left_v4_sib&amp;nodeId=GLSBYFE9MGKKQXXM" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Amazon's Conditions of Use</a>, the section &quot;License and Access&quot; says the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Subject to your compliance with these Conditions of Use and any Service Terms, and your payment of any applicable fees, Amazon or its content providers grant you a limited, non-exclusive, <strong>non-transferable</strong>, non-sublicensable license to access and make personal and non-commercial use of the Amazon Services.</p>
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<p>Also, the section &quot;Your Account&quot; says the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for <strong>restricting access to your account</strong>, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. Amazon does sell products for children, but it sells them to adults, who can purchase with a credit card or other permitted payment method. If you are under 18, you may use the Amazon Services only with involvement of a parent or guardian. <strong>Parents and guardians may create profiles for teenagers in their Amazon Household.</strong></p>
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<p>However, Amazon Household is limited in how many profiles can be created. For example, you can only have two adult (18+) profiles per household. If a family of more than two adults would like to share a single account instead of getting involved with Amazon Household, would they be in violation of Amazon's terms, whether in the section above or elsewhere?</p>
<p><strong>Update</strong></p>
<p>I have just noticed an additional statement of significance in the terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By using the Amazon Services, you agree, on behalf of yourself <strong>and all members of your household and others</strong> who use any Service under your account, to the following conditions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Might this suggest that the agreement <em>is</em> broad enough to apply not only to one individual but <em>also</em> to the individual's &quot;household&quot; (and maybe even to &quot;others who use any Service under your account&quot;)?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Does Amazon prohibit a family of adults from sharing a single Amazon account?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, or at least it seems unlikely. As outlined in <a href="https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1386/18505">my answer &amp; comments</a> on Law Meta, a domestic or family-oriented character is palpable in the clause. That weakens the notion that Amazon's intent is to preclude scenarios which are of a personal-domestic nature and short of commercial/sublicensed use.</p>
<p>The language &quot;<em>You are responsible for [...] restricting access to your account</em>&quot; seems more permissive than something akin to &quot;<em>only you are allowed to access your account</em>&quot;. The former language is consistent with the term &quot;<em>non-exclusive</em>&quot;, which otherwise seems to have no relevance or purpose in the clause.</p>
<p>Users' ability (if any) to enter multiple payment methods with different names (i.e., card holder name) could be an additional indication that the scenario you have in mind is acceptable to Amazon. It is easy for a company to implement a validation for the purpose of identifying significant discrepancies of holder names and/or to have the user confirm that all payment methods refer to one same owner. The latter approach is more conclusive for scenarios where a woman has changed names as a result of getting married or divorced. The fact (?) that Amazon declined to include that simple validation weakens the notion that the company is genuinely interested in sticking to a rule of one-person per account.</p>

<p>The original <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ref_=hp_left_v4_sib&amp;nodeId=GLSBYFE9MGKKQXXM" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link</a> in the question includes quotes from &quot;Your Account&quot; section but not the entire section.  Two sentences were selectively not included in your question which I've bolded.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>You may need your own Amazon account to use certain Amazon Services</strong>, and you may be required to be logged in to the account and have a valid payment method associated with it. If there is a problem charging your selected payment method, we may charge any other valid payment method associated with your account. Visit Your Payments to manage your payment options. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your account, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. Amazon does sell products for children, but it sells them to adults, who can purchase with a credit card or other permitted payment method. If you are under 18, you may use the Amazon Services only with involvement of a parent or guardian. Parents and guardians may create profiles for teenagers in their Amazon Household. Alcohol listings on Amazon are intended for adults. You must be at least 21 years of age to purchase alcohol, or use any site functionality related to alcohol. <strong>Amazon reserves the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, terminate your rights to use Amazon Services, remove or edit content, or cancel orders in its sole discretion</strong>.</p>
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<p>I read that and understand in some interactions, they may not care about a distinct account or allow sharing; in other interactions, they may care.  That's it, that's the answer.</p>
<p>In the last sentence, Amazon has retained the right to refuse service and terminate accounts at it's sole discretion, so whether some case actually violates the terms of the agreement is in one sense a meaningless question: they can cut you off for any reason, you don't need to give them one.</p>
<p>As a matter of revenue protection and cost control, maybe they have a business process to uncover cases where more than one adult is sharing an account against the stated terms of service for those interactions where they do care (or the free Prime shipping or streaming utilization is getting out of control).  Sometimes a stadium pays someone to check the cheap ticket holders from moving into empty seats in a better section (and send them back where their license entitles them to be, or kick them out), sometimes they don't.</p>

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<p>If a family of more than two adults would like to share a single account instead of getting involved with Amazon Household, would they be in violation of Amazon's terms, whether in the section above or elsewhere?</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>The terms are clear that each account can only be used by one person.</p>
