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New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

theguardian.com

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Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#131

Post by IncreasePosts »

nadermx wrote: post #44

The irony with all this, is if a company makes it difficult to cancel their subscription, it's probably not a good product. Antidotically, I've found that making it easy for users to not only cancel, but refund, has given me eye opening things to fix in some products that made it so less people cancelled or refunded. So I try to always err on best user experience.

NYT made it difficult, and they are a pretty good product. If you didn't live in california and wanted to cancel your subscription, you were required to talk to a service rep who would try to get you stay by giving you some free period before normal subscription billing resumed

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#132

Post by IncreasePosts »

gruez wrote: post #4
bell-cot wrote: post #2

No mention of the New York Times, or its practices?

Why should it be mentioned? The article doesn't call out any other specific company by name. Is the Times really that egregious of a offender compared to the other businesses? Does new york city have a history of selectively enforcing laws to favor local businesses?

NYT is the biggest brand that I know of that pulls these "easy to subscribe, hard to unsubscribe" antics. Especially galling because if you live in california, you can cancel with just a click, so obviously it is possible, but if you live in 49 other states you are forced to listen to a sales pitch from a human before being allowed to unsubscribe

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#134

Post by lifeisstillgood »

This is really a banking / credit card thing. CC suppliers put a lot of effort into packaging recurring subscriptions for their businesses because … people forget to cancel. So the real leverage here is not go to each individual website to one click cancel, but just cancel the direct debit / subscription from in your banking or credit card app.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#135

Post by expedition32 »

Razengan wrote: post #15

Did a politician's kid rack up hundreds of dollars on some stupid game? I still don't know why Apple, oft parading as the people's champion, automatically converts trials to subscriptions. So many scummy apps exploit this by offering a 1 week trial and saying like "only $4/month!" but charging a 1 year's sub after the trial period ends.

Don't link a card or bank account to your play store account. They can't take money that isn't there.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#136

Post by FireBeyond »

mmmattt wrote: post #97
seattle_spring wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "and" is very important here. Places like Seattle now mandate servers get a real wage. It inexplicably hasn't changed tip culture at all, so now they get regular wages and still complain when someone doesn't tip 20%+ for a takeout order.

The mandate stipulates that they can get minimum wage, I wouldn’t call that a “regular” wage, and certainly not a livable one.

I mean it's still rough if you want to live close to downtown, but it's also $21.30/hr and going to go up in 2027.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#137

Post by tc43 »

summarybot wrote: post #54
cyberax wrote: post #21

Nice. Now just force stores to display actual prices with tax.

In Australia they call this price the price-"sorted." "7 dollars sorted." for example.

Australian here, never heard "sorted". It does sound very Australian though, probably a Queensland thing.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#138

Post by SkipperCat »

This is what legitimate government looks like. Leaders actually advocating for the people who are being deceived by those in power instead of helping those in power.

While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#140

Post by lokar »

jzer0cool wrote: post #25

Nintendo (subscription I have for my switch to access some older a classic games btw) is very good reminding me I have a subscription and whether I want to cancel (or renew). I don't have the email at hand but what I remember is thinking they really desire you to reflect to cancel (rather than a push to renew) if not wanting continued service. Sentiment of politeness and I find a good example what to do. Also, not a…

GeForce NOW as well. Very straight forward and clear email every month.
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