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US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

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Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#111

Post by patrickk »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #70
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... EU laws?

What EU-wide law requires it to be as easy to cancel as to sign up? I’m sitting in Germany right now and I’m unaware of any such law - though it might very well be recent and not fully transposed into German law, or might be situational or not widely complied with. It’s a good idea though, absolutely.

It's horrendus in Germany trying to cancel a mobile phone subscription, internet service, gym membership or the likes. You have to jump through hoops like sending a registered physical letter, 3 months before the end of the service period for it to be considered a valid cancellation ("Kün­di­gung"). Without this, you're forced into paying for another year.

EU regulation is badly needed to cut out this anti-consumer nonsense.

Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#113

Post by tomschwiha »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #70
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... EU laws?

What EU-wide law requires it to be as easy to cancel as to sign up? I’m sitting in Germany right now and I’m unaware of any such law - though it might very well be recent and not fully transposed into German law, or might be situational or not widely complied with. It’s a good idea though, absolutely.

There is a law that requires that subscriptions can be cancelled online within "the click of a button" with automatic confirmation. (since 2022) If no such option to cancel is implemented by the provider the minimum contract duration is void and you can cancel immediately.

German reference: https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/vertraege-reklamation/kue...

Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#114

Post by mtmail »

didaway wrote: post #106

This is a great policy but I think we have seen that the actual implementations of privacy preserving sentiments seldom play out in the favor of the public. I think it's a better pattern to normalize decentralized identifiers (DID), wherein the process of unsubscribing is actually just the user revoking the unique identifier/alias that a company uses to communicate with them. Lots of other cool use cases and benefits…

There's no privacy aspect. The article is about unsubscribing from (paid) services, not communication. Usually when somebody subscribes to a service the user gives the company their full address and payment information.

Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#116

Post by kwanbix »

litenboll wrote: post #28

Disclosure: I only read up until it was revealed what the policy was. This was always my opinion on this. "As easy to cancel as it is to sign up". It's simple, and completely shuts down this malicious behaviour without making it harder to operate for the honest companies (or worse for customers in any way I can think of). Usually these policies have downsides but I can't really think of any. This kind of behaviour is…

This is how it works in Argentina. For at least 15 years IIRC.

Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#117

Post by tomschwiha »

patrickk wrote: post #111
jkaplowitz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What EU-wide law requires it to be as easy to cancel as to sign up? I’m sitting in Germany right now and I’m unaware of any such law - though it might very well be recent and not fully transposed into German law, or might be situational or not widely complied with. It’s a good idea though, absolutely.

It's horrendus in Germany trying to cancel a mobile phone subscription, internet service, gym membership or the likes. You have to jump through hoops like sending a registered physical letter, 3 months before the end of the service period for it to be considered a valid cancellation ("Kün­di­gung"). Without this, you're forced into paying for another year. EU regulation is badly needed to cut out this anti-consumer n…

This is no longer true, it is limited to a one month period (after a possible 2 year minimum contract to offer "special discounts") in advance and every contract can be cancelled online.

Re: US Government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button

#119

Post by dataflow »

eckesicle wrote: post #105
litenboll wrote: post #28

Disclosure: I only read up until it was revealed what the policy was. This was always my opinion on this. "As easy to cancel as it is to sign up". It's simple, and completely shuts down this malicious behaviour without making it harder to operate for the honest companies (or worse for customers in any way I can think of). Usually these policies have downsides but I can't really think of any. This kind of behaviour is…

Swedish legislation has it right here. You can unsubscribe by any means you prefer. Mail, email, phone call, a notice in your local newspaper, carrier pigeon. The choice is completely with the party who wishes to terminate the agreement. It incentivises companies to make it as simple as possible, because if they don’t the cost of manually handling requests coming in through all kinds of different channels quickly bec…

> Mail, email, phone call, a notice in your local newspaper, carrier pigeon.

How would that even... work? Doesn't this obligate every company to read every local newspaper in every customer's area? And a customer who feels like a company a hard time could just put a notice in the paper and then collect money because the company obviously won't read every newspaper? Also, what about companies wanting to give customers a hard time by canceling their subscriptions - now customers have to read every newspaper too? I must be missing something...

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