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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

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Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#241

Post by metabagel »

megiddo wrote: post #226
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #96

It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services shou…

Let me regale you with the story of my Adobe Subscription cancellation. I had been considering learning Illustrator and to align myself, I decided to get a little skin the game. I signed up for the "monthly" subscription. I downloaded Illustrator, and this screenshot was my entire experience: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev... Suffice it to say, this didn't meet my expectations. I thus de…

Great Story!

I think you could also dispute the charges via your credit card company. The credit card company should reverse the charges.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#242

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kibwen wrote: post #110
rachofsunshine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like one of those things that could be solved on the payment end with something like a unique payment ID for each subscription, rather than giving a CC number. Then you just enable or disable payment IDs (perhaps for a limited time, e.g., "create a payment ID that works for Netflix for the next three months but not after that"), rather than relying on vendors to decide whether they feel like charging you o…

A number of credit card companies offer virtual card numbers that you can generate to avoid giving out your real number. I agree that it should be more normalized, widespread, and automatic, but it is already possible to start doing this today.

A problem mentioned is that whilst this cuts off the payment, in law it may not remove the liability to pay, so the company could in future chase you for the payments.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#243

Post by alkonaut »

danaris wrote: post #218
the_svd_doctor wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For plane that's pretty unfair. If you don't get any ancillary fees, the price you see is almost exactly up to the cent what you pay. Now if you get any extra, sure. But that's a different problem from Airbnb hiding 100% of the cost in mandatory cleaning fees.

The trouble is, without some overriding authority defining what it means to "have a plane ticket", what counts as "included"? Because anything that doesn't can then be considered an "add-on". Carry-on luggage. Meal/snack and beverage service. A pillow and blanket. A seat that's not a middle seat. Even the ability to choose your seat at all. Airlines that want to tighten the screws on their passengers can, in theory,…

The comparison price for flights should be normalized. Like for example including either a carry on luggage or a checked in bag but not necessarily both, and no reserved seat.

If some even cheaper airline wants to sell tickets without carry on or whatever then they’ll have to list the higher price and offer a pleasant surprise of a lower-than-advertised price when the customer completed the booking.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#244

Post by battle-racket »

amatecha wrote: post #67

Nice. I canceled a service recently and I had to "continue to cancel" and click on other such "confirmations" such that I think I proceeded through 7-8 pages before my subscription was actually canceled. Truly manipulative and obtuse. That was Spotify btw. I should have recorded the process, as it was nearly comedic (if it weren't so hostile).

At least they didn't make you make a phone call and have a rep try to prevent you from doing so for an hour (looking at you NYT).

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#246

Post by philistine »

cheshire137 wrote: post #137
bilsbie wrote: post #101

I wonder how this would work for gyms? They should clean up their act anyway. If other customers are like me I’ve been putting off joining for over a year because they’re so scammy and I don’t want to get locked in. I even went to sign up and walked out because the price ended up being double what they advertised with weird fees and the base plan not being useable once they explain it.

That's why the only gyms I've signed up for have been YMCAs, because I know I can cancel my membership there without hassle.

How does that work: you just tell them you renounce Jesus Christ?

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#247

Post by testfoobar »

danaris wrote: post #218
the_svd_doctor wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For plane that's pretty unfair. If you don't get any ancillary fees, the price you see is almost exactly up to the cent what you pay. Now if you get any extra, sure. But that's a different problem from Airbnb hiding 100% of the cost in mandatory cleaning fees.

The trouble is, without some overriding authority defining what it means to "have a plane ticket", what counts as "included"? Because anything that doesn't can then be considered an "add-on". Carry-on luggage. Meal/snack and beverage service. A pillow and blanket. A seat that's not a middle seat. Even the ability to choose your seat at all. Airlines that want to tighten the screws on their passengers can, in theory,…

There are some completely new and wacky fee structures though. I recently flew Avelo airlines - baggage fees were a function of when I paid - rising as I got closer to the flight date.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#248

Post by Brybry »

astura wrote: post #149
rachofsunshine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like one of those things that could be solved on the payment end with something like a unique payment ID for each subscription, rather than giving a CC number. Then you just enable or disable payment IDs (perhaps for a limited time, e.g., "create a payment ID that works for Netflix for the next three months but not after that"), rather than relying on vendors to decide whether they feel like charging you o…

You can do this with PayPal, Google Play, and privacy.com. Probably others too, these are just the ones I've used. The thing is that sometimes you need to actually cancel the service, not just stop paying for it, to remove your financial obligations. Depending on the contract you signed.

PayPal is not great at it. I assume you mean the settings->payments->automatic payments (https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/autopay/) feature.

Last year I had a company (DomainsPricedRight/OwnMyDomain aka GoDaddy) that I last did business (a one time purchase) with 18 years prior (2005), bill me under a new "subscription" with no input on my part.

PayPal sort of allows you to prevent that but it seems only with companies you have recently done business with.

PayPal did do a good job of email notification of the automatic payment and cancelling the "subscription" but there is no easy way to reverse the fraudulent payment, so in the end the consumer still gets burned for profit (it was only $1 but how many people had $1 stolen?)

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#249

Post by rsynnott »

macinjosh wrote: post #41

meh, it is just an executive regulation that will go away the next time the party in power changes if it isn't shot down in court first. it doesn't help my skepticism that these sort of people/consumer first policies don't come out of these administrations until it is election time. They could have done this years ago but why if they couldn't benefit as well?

> meh, it is just an executive regulation that will go away the next time the party in power changes if it isn't shot down in court first.

As a general rule, it is _way harder_ to make things worse than to make things better, politically, especially where it is clear to the average person that you are making things worse, and this is something that most normal people will regard as making things better.

Now, you could argue that net neutrality was also one of these, but net neutrality is, to the layperson, fairly obscure, and easy for a government who wants to get rid of it to lie about. This rule isn't at all obscure, most people have personal experience of the problem it solves, and it would be virtually impossible to spin revoking it as a good thing.

> it doesn't help my skepticism that these sort of people/consumer first policies don't come out of these administrations until it is election time.

This is, more or less, just a problem with the American system of government; so much of the civil service is appointees that every four to eight years there is a period where everyone at the top of the organisation changes, causing everything to grind to a halt for a while.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#250

Post by digging »

Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

I'm super appreciative of what we have, but there's absolutely issues.

CAN-SPAM specifies that the link must be clearly marked and suggests using CSS to do so, but the link is still always going to be at the bottom of the email in the smallest font used. It only matters for those of us who know to look for it; many people just have to live with the spam because they don't know it's easy to unsubscribe.

Sometimes it's not even going to be underlined or distinguished at all (that may be a violation actually but I'm not going to take them to court over it).

There's other dark patterns too, like certain unsubscribe pages requiring you to type/paste your email in to actually complete the process. That is 100% intentional friction, like github making you type the name of a repo into the deletion form. It should also be illegal for unsubscribing.

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