Yeah, I'm incredulous that anyone could argue that VIP membership is obvious. There's a box that gives you the breakdown of the charges, Subtotal, Shipping etc. that doesn't include the VIP membership... In fact the only indication on the entire page that you're joining the VIP scheme is the magenta link you mentioned. It's smuggled through at the bottom of an ad box(where everyone applies a degree of visual filtering automatically) and the copy isn't exactly obvious. "No thanks, I don't want to save up to 50%" is a long way from "No thanks, I don't want to be a VIP".
