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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

#701

Post by commandlinefan »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #686
osigurdson wrote: post #683

The problem is actually in the payment system itself. A credit card number + expiry + ccv + name is essentially like giving out a username + password to your money. We hand out the same username / password to everybody and everything works on the honor system after that. At any given time there are likely hundreds of companies that have your username/password and can charge whatever they want at any time. If anything…

I have paid for everything via credit card for 20+ years now, entering my credit card info online thousands of times, and have yet to have a fraudulent charge. And if I do, I just call the number on the back of the card and they give the money back to me. The system works 99% of the time, for billions and billions of transactions. Which is why it has stayed. Edit: obviously, ideally, there would be a federal governme…

> have yet to have a fraudulent charge

How carefully do you check? I check my statements line by line, and have found fraudulent charges twice in the past 30 or so years.

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

#702

Post by thirdsun »

james_marks wrote: post #622
malfist wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst for this is Shopify. If you've ever given your email to shopify, they will absolutely share it to a page you visit, even if you don't check out. Throw something in the cart at a random website? Now you're on their mailing list and get reminders to finish checking out. Doesn't matter that you never consented. I don't know how this isn't a violate of the CAN-SPAM act

I’ve looked into this a bit- I believe it’s related to the checkout page loading with a default of “Agrees to Marketing”. What happens- at scale and I have to believe deliberately- is the “checkout created” event with that flag set to true is considered as “opted-in” by the marketing automation platforms everyone uses, like Klayvio. Even if you immediately un-check it, un-checking doesn’t trigger an unsubscribe event…

It's up to the store owner to actually default to "agrees to marketing". I'm not sure if Shopify is to blame when it's the owner that used an illegitimate opt-out for that setting instead of an opt-in.

And of course, follow-up mails for abandoned carts are an optional setting too.

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

#703

Post by earthnail »

HighGoldstein wrote: post #674
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is illegal in Europe, since you can't add somebody to a list without their consent. As usual, I know it's trendy to say on HN the EU is killing innovation with all the regulations, and there is truth to that, but there is also great customer protection, which seems constantly violated in the US. So yes, in the US, companies can flourish, but it seems the consumers are second-class citizens compared to companies.…

If your "innovation" is at risk from consumer protection regulations I question whether it's a good innovation.

There are many examples of successful companies that fall into that category.

Sometimes an innovation needs critical mass to work - social networks for example. LinkedIn famously got big by being extremely aggressive on how they mined your contacts. You'd get sued to the moon and back in the EU for this behaviour.

LinkedIn is big now, it has established itself and no longer needs to be that aggressive. Any European player that tried to enter the market with a less aggressive stance had no chance - they never reached that critical mass.

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

#704

Post by tacocataco »

hgomersall wrote: post #458
ethbr1 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should be educated to never give their number or email to a political campaign of any sort.

How do you propose political engagement could work if nobody were willing to provide contact details?

Represent people in exchange for their vote instead of using First Past The Post voting to lock the competition out of the electoral process.

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

#705

Post by llamaimperative »

admissionsguy wrote: post #120
llamaimperative wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to an example that's close to what you're describing? Only thing that comes to mind is like de facto parts of Mexico, maybe Somalia?

The US is the closest, but not close and it is getting further away. The lawless parts of the world you mention do not take care of the existentially necessary bits.

> do not take care of the existentially necessary bits.

That can't be true... people exist there. Turns out your heuristic is no more defensible than anyone else's: I want the government to provide precisely the services I want.

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

#706

Post by dmix »

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…

Not being blacklisted as spam is a huge market based incentive to add unsub links.

A major reason for the mass adoption is that most companies use email services because running your own marketing email servers are extremely difficult. And those companies don't allow you to send emails without one to protect their own email servers in addition to following the various laws in different countries. It's easier to get compliance via these larger companies, particularly when it naturally aligns with market incentives.

Regulating a million niche SaaS sites each with an individual custom payments page may be quite a bit harder. But maybe stuff like Stripe will make it easier as a proxy for this regulation.

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

#707

Post by someothherguyy »

mrgaro wrote: post #644
photonthug wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works great except for the gas company, electric and water company, phone company, airlines, cloud provider, os provider, and everyone else that mixes the 5% of legit business that you can’t afford to ignore or miss with the 95% of marketing content that you want to get rid of. Since it’s usually opaque how “mark as spam” and “block” actually works, and since the origin of the mailing lists can be reconfigured any ti…

It does work, because the companies will realize that gmail no longer delivers their emails and that they need to change their behavior. Also for example AWS SES (Simple Email Service) will give you clear warnings if it detects that recipients mark their email as spam (it seems that for example gmail delivers this information somehow to SES).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_Reporting_Format

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

#708

Post by artursapek »

rootusrootus wrote: post #336
shepherdjerred wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try cancelling the New York Times, Bon Appetite, or Planet Fitness

The NYT was the worst. Had to call them on the phone. The guy I was talking to offered progressively better deals, until he basically offered me a year for next to nothing. I was angry at that point and determined to cancel, and said "No, JUST CANCEL" and he laughed out loud at me. Instant, permanent never-a-NYT-customer again. I often wonder how these companies predict the expected permanent loss of customers over t…

Between their reporting and these billing stories I'm never trusting NYT with anything again.

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

#709

Post by whoitwas »

HighGoldstein wrote: post #674
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is illegal in Europe, since you can't add somebody to a list without their consent. As usual, I know it's trendy to say on HN the EU is killing innovation with all the regulations, and there is truth to that, but there is also great customer protection, which seems constantly violated in the US. So yes, in the US, companies can flourish, but it seems the consumers are second-class citizens compared to companies.…

If your "innovation" is at risk from consumer protection regulations I question whether it's a good innovation.

No. Regulations are required so companies produce value rather than exploits. There's no stopping the exploits, especially in an environment where $$$ === speech, but regulation is required for companies to produce value for customers.

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

#710

Post by artursapek »

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 part is the chargeback costs the vendor something like $15
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