How to Opt Out of Free Amazon Samples
It’s always nice to receive free items in the mail, especially if they come as a surprise – whether it’s a gift from a friend or loved one, or a subtle call from Amazon that you should try a sponsored product.
At the very least, this is Amazon’s latest tactic to get you interested in “products you might like,” according to a recent report from Axios . If Amazon senses from your browsing or shopping history that you might find the product “ delicious and useful, ” and the advertiser has given Amazon a bunch of free samples to give away, you might find a gift on your doorstep without any ad. that it was in transit – unless you receive a UPS or FedEx alert for incoming shipments.
If you’d rather not be tempted by Amazon with free merchandise, which can include everything from peanut butter to pet food to Oxi Clean, you can opt out of the sampling program. While you should be able to do this through the standard Amazon account settings page, the only switch I found was for regular Amazon mails like catalogs, not free samples.
While disabling this toggle will result in you being disqualified from participating in the Amazon sample program, there is also a special way to disable only free sample submissions (if you are happy with the other mail sent by Amazon). Just visit this page and indicate that you “do not want to receive personalized samples from Amazon’s sampling program.”
Conversely, if you want to make sure you get free samples from Amazon, make sure you agree to it, and make sure you tell Amazon that you can send anything you want . You will need to set both permissions correctly in order to receive free content.