.Mac Renewal Requires Unnecessary Credit Card Entry

I just renewed my .Mac account with a copy of .Mac I purchased through Amazon.com for $74.99 (as opposed to the $99.95 that Apple charges for automatic renewal). However, the process wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. After I entered my activation key, I was prompted for my credit card information, perhaps because the old credit card I had on file had expired, or perhaps because Apple wants to try to sell everyone on the automatic renewal (which is an optional checkbox in the Credit Card Info screen. But since I had already purchased my activation key from Amazon, I didn’t want to enter a new credit card number and possibly be charged again
for the renewal. However, there was no way around it, so I did, gritting my teeth in anticipation of an annoying additional charge, and… nothing. The .Mac site figured out that I had a valid activation key and displayed the upgrade cost as $0.00 properly. But the process caused me stress and wasted 15 minutes of my time, which was simply unnecessary, though worth it for the $25 savings.