Earlier quoted context omitted.
Source?
IIRC it's a law that is just a few months old.
That's not really a source.
“Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
101–110 of 890 posts
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up. So if you can signup online then you must be able to cancel online.
It sure as hell doesn't work like this for the newspaper Le Monde (in France). Sure you can sign/resign with Apple/Google but if you sign with e-mail, you have to mail a physical letter to resign (8Euros one with proof of delivery and all)
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#103Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
It’s why they hate people that sign up via IAP - literally one click and the subscription is gone.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#104Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
Had a similar issue with a US publication recently. They emailed to say "Your subscription of $120 has automatically been renewed, please check your card details or contact us to alter it."
Fortunately the card they have expired last December.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a token, but similar: Europe has Direct Debit mandates, which you give to the biller and they can be revoked. https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/mandates/
That's better, agreed. But can I e.g. limit payment amounts on these? On Direct Debits in the UK, the merchant just charges me whatever. This is for things like utilities and phone bills, so I don't have major trust issues, but still it irks me.
In a way, it's even better than credit card: You can not set a limit - except contractually, but you can enforce it. You can do the charge-back yourself (via the Bank's website) within like 6 or 9 months of the transaction.
This will cost the vendor a lot (relatively speaking) money and is pretty easy to do. However, if there is any doubt about who is right, an action like that will lead them to invoice you all associated costs, send it to collections and then a legal fight begins.
Which I guess why many businesses prefer Klarna or other payment processors. You login with your bank account and then wire the money to them, instead of them pulling the money. Then, no chargebacks are possible.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is ironic from what I understand to be a mobile phone operator. Clearly they don’t trust their own network
No, they just want it to be as hard as possible. Although I was surprised how relatively big faxes are in Germany. I never had sent a fax before I was in Germany.
Faxes aren't that big either. I never liked them, never owned one, and I remember sending two faxes in my life. Maybe a few I don't remember. The last one was... to cancel a mobile phone contract.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be picky, at least here in Italy, not "send a letter", but rather "send a registered letter with delivery receipt", which plainly means that you have a non-trivial cost (several Euro, I believe in Italy it is now 10 or 12 Euro) and you have to physically go to the post office to send it. Recently many companies are (finally) allowing to use the PEC (which is a form of Certified Electronic Mail) which has the same…
Shouldn’t the company bear the burden of that cost, not the consumer? That’s kinda silly. Oh you require it by certified air pigeon? Great, happy to; pay for it.
The recommendation for using a certified letter is that you (as customer) have an independent paper trail to make your case should it go to court. At least in NL, a certified letter should not be required by the company itself.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or, amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.
Was cancelling my cell provider and was required to send a fax - hello Vodafone.de
Cancellation by mail is always fine, no company can opt out of it in a legal way. You don't even need to get the address right, you can mail it to any subsidiary of the company - it is the companys responsibility to correctly route it internally. You can even directly address it to the CEO and at "persönlich" to it. My favorite.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a token, but similar: Europe has Direct Debit mandates, which you give to the biller and they can be revoked. https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/mandates/
That's better, agreed. But can I e.g. limit payment amounts on these? On Direct Debits in the UK, the merchant just charges me whatever. This is for things like utilities and phone bills, so I don't have major trust issues, but still it irks me.
I haven't seen an option to set a payment limit, but all banks give you the ability to cancel a direct debit authorisation at any time. For that reason alone I'd say it's always better to use direct debit than give a merchant your credit/debit card for subscription services.
In any case, the banks seem to be very good at refunding direct debits in cases where the merchants appear to be abusing them. My ex once noticed after several months that her gym was still charging her even after she'd cancelled - the bank made it very quick and easy to claim back all the extra payments!
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#110Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
A few times I found it was easier to cancel a card than to cancel a subscription. I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods and services is to pass full details of your payment card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it. It thankfully is now more of a thing…
I had to resort to cancelling a card once too, but it didn’t fix the problem. My Credit Card Provider (Barclaycard) implemented the Visa Account Updater service with no way to turn it off so my new card details went straight to the merchant.
Ended up cancelling the account I was so frustrated, lost a customer of 10 years.