Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 793 posts

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

#521

Post by ayberk »

ssharp wrote: post #50

My workaround to this has been to email the company telling them I want to cancel. Once I either don't get a reply, or get a reply saying "just call us and we'll cancel!", I dispute the next charge with American Express and have the email record of trying to cancel. I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature that cuts off future charges.

The best workaround (imho) is just using virtual cards. My Venture X allows me to create a virtual card on the spot restricted to that merchant where I can also enter an optional lock date. If I want to try something, I just create a new card and set the lock date to the next day. Even if I forget to cancel, good luck charging my card :)

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

#522

Post by AnthonyMouse »

immibis wrote: post #473
greycol wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately political parties have more of a free pass on this as Republicans sued providers for their emails getting caught up in spam filters around 2022 (Who would've thought continuosly emailing people who click unsubscribe on your emails who then start reporting as spam would get you put on spam lists). Now political parties (and some bulk providers) have special tools to bypass rejection with some providers a…

I'm actually amazed at this because it seems to be the first time he Democrats are actually taking advantage of all the loopholes the Republicans made, rather than trying to take the high road.

It's not the first time, you're just patronizing the news outlets that tell you when the Republicans do something untoward but not when the Democrats do instead of the ones that do the opposite.

Also, as a general rule politicians will carve themselves an exemption to any rules they put on everyone else. For example, CAN SPAM applies to commercial email.

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

#523

Post by xivzgrev »

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…

It’s amazing what penalties can do

Can spam provides for up to $50k PER EMAIL in civil penalties.

If you make 1 cent or $10 per email, doesn’t matter. It’s no where close to that level of penalty. So you make damn sure you don’t ruin yourself.

Now we just need that kind on text messaging - it’s a Wild West these days

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

#524

Post by halJordan »

digging wrote: post #250
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'…

We cant affirm illiteracy though. It might not be anyone's fault but those individuals have an obligation to themselves, their children and to society if they want to engage with society.

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

#525

Post by jacobgkau »

metabagel wrote: post #241
megiddo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought he was just going to say he did a chargeback, with how the first seven paragraphs went. What he described was not ideal for several reasons:

- Some websites won't accept prepaid cards (largely because they can be used to get around things like this).

- Who knows if a platform's going to save your previous card info to use as a fallback?

- As another reply stated, the company can send you to collections if they think you owe them money. They can also do that if you do a chargeback, theoretically. However, with a chargeback, your card company did some basic checking of the situation and agreed with you that something was wrong about the payment, so assuming you win the chargeback, you've at least had a second pair of eyes on the case, and you have that tiny bit of metaphorical "precedent" to use if you take the collections order to court-- both of which also mean they're less likely to take you to collections. If you just swap out your card number for one that doesn't work, that shifts some of the shadiness to your end, and it legally appears less like you have any grounds to stand on.

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

#527

Post by ok_coo »

justinpombrio wrote: post #265
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…

Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent. The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Ev…

LinkedIn does this and it’s gross.

I’ve unsubscribed from at least 3-4 different types of emails from them already.

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

#528

Post by monksy »

immibis wrote: post #473
greycol wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately political parties have more of a free pass on this as Republicans sued providers for their emails getting caught up in spam filters around 2022 (Who would've thought continuosly emailing people who click unsubscribe on your emails who then start reporting as spam would get you put on spam lists). Now political parties (and some bulk providers) have special tools to bypass rejection with some providers a…

I'm actually amazed at this because it seems to be the first time he Democrats are actually taking advantage of all the loopholes the Republicans made, rather than trying to take the high road.

ActBlue and WinRed both use these tactics and have been doing it for a while. They're at fraud/scammer levels at this point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/politics/recurring-don...

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

#529

Post by halJordan »

whatindaheck wrote: post #437
linsomniac wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use one of those banks that allows me to generate sub-accounts easily, each of which has an account number for e-checks and Debit card number. So I can use that for subscriptions, either fund it once, or fund it regularly via automated transfers from my main balance, or you can set it up to just automatically pull from your main account. Then when you're done with it, you can close that sub-account. It's worked ver…

Check out Privacy.com for card generation. You can set monthly/yearly/all-limits, pause and cancel cards, create single-use cards, etc. And their virtual cards accept any billing information. As a result I don’t bother unsubscribing directly anymore and instead just pause the card. Less hassle. More control. I’m also using Qube and looking to get away but I really like having the sub-accounts. What have you found? En…

Privacy.com has been increasing neutering their free tier and you cant fund with a credit card, their cards have reputation problems at merchants. They're one if the problems imho if we're talking about what's being sold if different than what's being bought.
Post reply on HN