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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

#711

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.

A good example is the US "health care" system. It's a meat grinder that exploits everyone and sort of pretends to do what it's supposed to through regulation.

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

#712

Post by crazygringo »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #633
crazygringo wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You must be insane if you don't use virtual credit card numbers today. Virtual numbers protect against people stealing your number. They don't really do much against subscriptions. If you sign up for a service and stop paying, it gets sent to collections, and then impacts your credit score because of unpaid debt. Whether you used a virtual number or not is irrelevant. So it's not "insane" not to use virtual credit…

If you live in another country, you couldn't care less of your Orwellian "credit score" being affected. Using a virtual debit card really pays off in this case.

Many countries have credit scores. [1]

And in the ones that don't, banks still get information about your late payments and unpaid debts; they just make the same determinations privately. The only difference is that it's less transparent to you, so you can't even check whether their information is accurate.

There's nothing "Orwellian" about it. There's nothing totalitarian about checking whether somebody pays their bills or not before you decide to lend them money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score

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

#713

Post by megiddo »

llm_nerd wrote: post #368
megiddo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe technically. But the "its yearly with a cancellation fee" was not qualified in the sales information on the sign-up page. Maybe it was in the fine print. Given that customers are quite used to a monthly fee is a monthly subscription model, it was disingenuous at best. Putting significant terms in the fine print doesn't exactly engender trust.

https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf There is no fine print. It is extremely clear and obvious. If you see a term called "Annual paid monthly", 33% less expensive than a monthly option right above, what possible other interpretation can someone have?

This was ~8 years ago. I am fairly careful when signing up for services and subscriptions, having learned hard lessons when signing up for gym memberships in the 1900s.

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

#714

Post by tonylemesmer »

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…

Doesnt seem to apply to Experian

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

#715

Post by megiddo »

askafriend wrote: post #381
llm_nerd wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf There is no fine print. It is extremely clear and obvious. If you see a term called "Annual paid monthly", 33% less expensive than a monthly option right above, what possible other interpretation can someone have?

I'm glad you're bringing screenshots to the conversation because so often people just talk about what they feel without grounding it in anything. What the screenshot makes clear is that you'd have to be a single-celled organism to not understand what you're signing up for... The screen is extremely clear, upfront and even the supposed "fine print" is in huge font with any easy link to learn more.

This is not how it was presented when I signed up, 8 years ago. I am aware of the differences between monthly and yearly subscriptions with discounts.

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

#716

Post by megiddo »

jacobgkau wrote: post #525
metabagel wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

If I recall, the problem was that they were refusing to cancel the subscription unless I paid the cancellation fee.

My argument was that while I may have agreed to the cancellation fee in the fine print, they contract was not perfected because they never provided consideration.

The software would not work on my computer.

My grounds for cancelling the software wasn't that I wanted to cancel early, I was satisfied with a year-long subscription. My grounds for cancelling was that the software simply didn't work. It crashed when opening AI files are creating new files.

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

#717

Post by megiddo »

llm_nerd wrote: post #368
megiddo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe technically. But the "its yearly with a cancellation fee" was not qualified in the sales information on the sign-up page. Maybe it was in the fine print. Given that customers are quite used to a monthly fee is a monthly subscription model, it was disingenuous at best. Putting significant terms in the fine print doesn't exactly engender trust.

https://imgur.com/a/ldhiEtf There is no fine print. It is extremely clear and obvious. If you see a term called "Annual paid monthly", 33% less expensive than a monthly option right above, what possible other interpretation can someone have?

In either case, my grounds for cancelling early really had nothing to do with the year-long case.

My grounds for cancelling is that the software didn't work. And I don't mean in some qualitative sense. The software would just crash when opening files or creating new files.

Adobe never held up their end of the bargain - providing functioning software.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

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

#718

Post by hedvig23 »

kulahan wrote: post #413
rootusrootus wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are. Their return rate is still pretty terrible, IIRC. I bet they are tr…

I think it's more a matter of companies just having different focuses. If you're wondering how to grow your userbase, you're thinking fundamentally differently than if you have an established one and are wondering how to monetize them.

Or maybe it's all one cycle with different phases? Not saying you did this, but is this a technique one uses to distract or diffuse a critical attack - break a system into parts and claim the parts are unconnected? Anyways to the above, e.g. spider spins it's web, attracts the prey, mummifies, etc.

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

#719

Post by wildzzz »

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…

The Unsubscribe links are so good now because all of those newsletters use the same handful of email marketing services. It's pretty much impossible to run your own email marketing campaign without them, you'll get sent right to everyone's Gmail spam box. Because those services are so big, they'll follow the CAN-SPAM act. What legitimate marketer wants to pay money for a service that's going to send your emails to spam boxes and potentially get you in trouble with the FTC? Despite Google making it difficult to run your own email server and doing a bunch of other fucked up shit, the centralization of email has produced a few good outcomes.

Now if we could only have the same level of control over the junk mail in our physical mail boxes.

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