Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#171

Post by dmonitor » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

Etherlord87 wrote: post #144

RGBCube wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the government can access your bank logs, so I don't think them seeing you have a TV and internet subscription is an issue. It's a great benefit of having an authoritarian government.

The government can access the bank logs, but it doesn't have an automatic channel to do so for everyone at once. Making it easier for the government to spy on its citizens definitely is an issue.

I wouldn't mind such a service being opt-in for citizens but mandatory for companies to support.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#172

Post by otikik » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:15 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #157

synetic wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Laws can be changed and definitions changed. Or use a different term. The essence of the point is clear. Why nitpick on whether or not “extortion” is the correct word?

> You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Extortion seems like hyperbole to me. Canceling on Disney+, Netflix, etc. is extremely easy. In fact I cancelled my D+ subscription juts the other day and even though they prompted me whether I’m sure I want to cancel, never did I feel they were trying to trick me with dark UX patterns or making it overly difficult. So on…

They are multinational companies. The fact that one of them behaved correctly in your country does not say anything about how it or the others behave in other countries.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#173

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

tuxychandru wrote: post #155

dghlsakjg wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you sign up, you are agreeing to the contract ("I agree to the terms and conditions"). Those terms and conditions legally dictate what you are agreeing to and how you will be charged, and what conditions are necessary to break that contract. They aren't allowed to charge you whenever they please, without customer control, they have to abide by the contract. Unfortunately, most people don't read the contract, and…

This is what Netflix's Terms of Use says, "If a payment is not successfully settled, due to expiration, insufficient funds, or otherwise, and you do not cancel your account, we may suspend your access to the service until we have successfully charged a valid Payment Method.". A customer will be well within the bounds of the contract if they cancel their mandate through the bank, as long as they also don't expect to h…

Re-read that closely. You still owe them the money, they aren't absolving you of the debt. Netflix seems content not to pursue customers for it, but there is nothing legally stopping them from coming after you for the amount you agreed to pay until you formally cancel. Thats the rub. Access suspension != account cancellation.

You can ask a US bank to stop future payments to a given merchant, but it doesn't actually absolve you of your contractual agreement to pay the merchant. Most internet based services have decided that it is bad business to pursue accounts where the payment was unsuccessful, but from a legal perspective, you are still on the hook.

I'm not saying I agree with the way the US system handles this, but to say that "the norm in the US to allow companies to charge their customers whenever they please, without the customers having any control" is inaccurate since customers have agreed to the terms of the contract which define when the customer is charged and what control they have.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#174

Post by andsoitis » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC

synetic wrote: post #164

andsoitis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Extortion seems like hyperbole to me. Canceling on Disney+, Netflix, etc. is extremely easy. In fact I cancelled my D+ subscription juts the other day and even though they prompted me whether I’m sure I want to cancel, never did I feel they were trying to trick me with dark UX patterns or making it overly difficult. So on…

The post you responded to was about situations in which companies make it hard to cancel. Clearly the person was expressing frustration that for many companies signing up is easy and canceling is hard. They want this situation to be rectified. No one cares that you had an easy time cancelling a service. You telling us that cancelling D+ was easy is only meaningful if you think this is the case in all situations for a…

> You telling us that cancelling D+ was easy is only meaningful if you think this is the case in all situations for all companies and you argue that this is so.

Look, I understand that not all companies are customer centric and I can see you and others feel that you’ve been extorted by some conapnies.

I argued in good faith given the article is literally about D+ and Netflix and the person I responded to said “The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them.”

Why would I think they’re not referring to the companies in the article?

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#175

Post by triceratops » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #97

One click to cancel would actually be too easy. I once had subscribed to encylcopedia brittanica. They also sent email messages. I replied to one and said “please ubsubscribe me”. They cancelled my brittanica and refunded me! I wanted the emails to stop. Now to sign up I’d need to enter my payment info again; I just stayed unsubscribed. I will sometimes check how cancellation works by looking at the cancel area. Woul…

If you stayed unsubscribed it obviously wasn't worth it to you to re-subscribe. Which means you saved money. You should be happy.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#176

Post by sonicshadow » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #148

sonicshadow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is HN and it's more important to launch definition critiques than to discuss substance ever. I think half of HN came from the horrible world of high school policy debate

Yeah like the thread yesterday about the teenager that was detained by the airlines -- only legally he was likely never "detained" but we have no good word for the not-legally-detained-but-taken-to-a-room-and-interrogated action that actually happened to him. Since we have no good word for that it becomes trivial for pedants to think they've won an argument while they piss everyone else off arguing over definitions.

I wasted too much of my time arguing that crap. This site is full of book-smart people that are not as smart as they think they are. They just happen to find a bunch of neckbeards who also haven't touched grass in the last week.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#177

Post by K0balt » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #90

atum47 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

Did customer support confirm that that is the feature they were talking about—watching something after renewal triggers the charge? Or is it possible you were talking past each other? The only documentation on Netflix for this doesn't mention this 'feature' [0], and I can't find any discussion of similar cases (which I would expect for something like this). Also, this kind of behavior would unambiguously violate seve…

I think maybe it depends on the country. I’ve had it both happen and not happen depending on which country the subscription is established in.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#178

Post by Sharlin » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

teeray wrote: post #99

Sharlin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does redeeming a service’s own gift card really tie the user to a perpetual rather than fixed-term agreement?

In the US, yes. If the letter of the contract says that you are responsible for a monthly payment, how that debt is settled every month does not change the terms of the contract. A gift card just allows you to settle the debt with a mutual debt owed.

I was mostly wondering if the contract is indeed the same or if the services have a separate fixed-term contract for gift cards. But I guess it’s par for the course (ie. really customer-hostile) if they indeed force even gift card paid subscriptions to be perpetual…

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#179

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #162

> The Internet & Television Association, which counts Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery as members, said in its public comment that the proposed reg is so vague, it would lead marketers to be excessive in their disclosures, leaving consumers "inundated" and "confused." I have a rule and that is, anytime somebody pushes back on something with the rationale, "doing X will confuse our users," it is ALWAYS be…

The hilarious part is that these companies have no problem whatsoever with their customer contracts and "Terms Of Use" documents that are 75 pages of 6 point font text full of one-sided terms, that they use to beat/rob their customers.

But when they simply are asked to disclose their bad behavior, it's "Oh, no! We can't show our users a complex document! They'll be inundated!!!"

They're not fooling anyone.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#180

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

sonicshadow wrote: post #143

synetic wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Laws can be changed and definitions changed. Or use a different term. The essence of the point is clear. Why nitpick on whether or not “extortion” is the correct word?

Because this is HN and it's more important to launch definition critiques than to discuss substance ever. I think half of HN came from the horrible world of high school policy debate

Remember, you're talking about a community composed largely of software developers, whose livelihoods are built on their ability to find a missing negative sign in 100,000 lines of code. When faced with a large paragraph of text full of complexity and nuance, they're naturally going to find that one word that's wrong and pedantically nit-pick it to death, ignoring the overall point and substance being conveyed.