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

ftc.gov

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

#731

Post by wildzzz »

gspencley wrote: post #426
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…

> where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm currently in the process of de-Adboe'ing my life because of the subscription model. It's not htat you get charged an exorbitant cancellation fee, per se. It's that, from Adobe's point of view, you entered into a year-long contract. And so if you want to cancel after 3 months, the only option they give you is to pay for the rest o…

Companies are less shy about paying for recurring licenses because it's easier for them. No need to worry about keeping track of a perpetual license that a former employee purchased or having too many unused seats for a network license. Once a year, the license admin pays the bill (and potentially updates the network licenses) and it's all good until next year. License payments can be billed to individual departments. Perpetual licenses could be considered capital assets that depreciate where as a recurring license is an expense. This could make a huge difference on the company books. Additionally you can't sell a perpetual license when you don't need it anymore but you can just stop paying for a recurring license.

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

#732

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #655
dccoolgai wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have misread "first and worst". Democrats eventually follow suit, but the cherry picked example of CA doesn't account for the partisan overrepresention of Republicans in gerrymandrered congressional districts. It's not even close on a national level. For Super PACs: again this is from Citizens United which was pushed by Republicans and confirmed by an activist Republican Supreme Court. They own that 100 perce…

> the cherry picked example of CA California by itself accounts for more than 10% of the electorate and it's not a cherry picked example, it's what generally happens when a state is under one-party control. I provided links for California and New York because they're the two largest blue states by population. > overrepresention of Republicans That is what tends to happen in ungerrymandered districts because of the po…

[deleted]

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

#733

Post by Vegenoid »

earthnail wrote: post #703
HighGoldstein wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

And we are all so grateful that LinkedIn's aggressive innovation was allowed to flourish.

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

#734

Post by rietta »

Is there a chance that this reinterpretation runs afoul of the administrative procedures act like some of the recent ATF actions (reinterpreting the Gun Control Act of 1968 without a new act from Congress) have been found? The act is similarly very old and mature.

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

#735

Post by wnolens »

pc86 wrote: post #170
wnolens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In these cases, can we not issue a chargeback via our credit card? Or put some sort of block on transactions from a particular source? Seems silly to just accept virtually un-cancellable terms.

The answer is not to do a chargeback, the answer is to not sign contracts you have no intention of fulfilling.

A contract is only as good as both parties participate in good faith, or as it is enforceable.

I'm comfortable with taking on the risk of not fulfilling my end of something like a gym contract, provided the mechanism to remove third parties like payment processors.

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

#736

Post by kalleboo »

0_____0 wrote: post #684
lazide wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utility companies are unfortunately exactly that kind of stupid though.

My utility doesn't seem to market to me. What the heck are they sending email to you for? "Use more electricity!" "Build a new house!" "Get a hot tub?"

My gas company has the equivalent of a mileage program. You earn points per cubic meter of gas you consume, that can then be redeemed for expensive meals at restaurants and stuff.

Yes it's very stupid.

My telco does as well, and I got a free Nintendo Switch from them for just having fiber internet that I would need anyway (the telco just owns the fiber, the ISP then goes over that open fiber, so I pay two different companies, it's the former that has the point program despite being the definition of a dumb pipe)

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

#737

Post by Vegenoid »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #655
dccoolgai wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have misread "first and worst". Democrats eventually follow suit, but the cherry picked example of CA doesn't account for the partisan overrepresention of Republicans in gerrymandrered congressional districts. It's not even close on a national level. For Super PACs: again this is from Citizens United which was pushed by Republicans and confirmed by an activist Republican Supreme Court. They own that 100 perce…

> the cherry picked example of CA California by itself accounts for more than 10% of the electorate and it's not a cherry picked example, it's what generally happens when a state is under one-party control. I provided links for California and New York because they're the two largest blue states by population. > overrepresention of Republicans That is what tends to happen in ungerrymandered districts because of the po…

> [Citizens United] was pretty clearly correctly decided. The alternative is the government can prohibit you from distributing political speech because it costs money to do it, which would imply that they could ban all private mass media under the argument that there are some people who can't afford a printing press or a radio tower.

Presenting this controversial view that many knowledgeable and intelligent people would disagree with as "pretty clearly correct" and stating an alternative as if it is the only alternative, that is not what many people think the alternative would be, is only going to raise hackles. It's not going to spur any new thought or interesting dicussion.

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

#738

Post by MiddleEndian »

1shooner wrote: post #537
inetknght wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I immediately mark them as "spam". Ahh yes, the feel-good response that Google gives you without doing anything substantial to prevent spam from reaching you in the future.

User-reported spam in gmail is actually very efficacious. Aside from the logic gmail applies to your inbox specifically, Google's current violation threshold for those reports is .03%. Beyond that, those reports start to pull down sender IP and domain reputation, which impacts overall deliverablity to anyone's gmail inbox.

This is why I am quick to report spam, even if they are a "legitimate" business. Utility company / paypal / whoever wants to send me spam? I sincerely hope they are impeded from sending email to anybody.

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

#739

Post by amatecha »

whakim wrote: post #538
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).

It wasn’t clear to me that this sort of thing is explicitly forbidden under this regulation?

Oh wow lol, is it not? That would be pretty disappointing. It was really frustrating how many pages of crap I had to navigate my way through, basically deciphering all possible permutations of "cancel", "continue to cancel" "yes I'm sure", all surrounded by extraneous crap I'm not interested in. How difficult the cancellation process is gives me even more motivation to refine my alternatives to their service, so I never have to subject myself to that crap again.

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

#740

Post by InDubioProRubio »

earthnail wrote: post #703
HighGoldstein wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Bayer would have never invented heroin, if there had not been a market for that and there is a market for that because its a great product. The greatest actually, surpassing all other products, including human society and its the purest form of capitalism. All other products and businesses are just pre-cursors for this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#History

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