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“Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

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Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#191

Post by ratww »

sokoloff wrote: post #19
adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

If they do something like this, it shows such complete lack of confidence in their product. "The only reason why people would continue to use this product is... if we make it sufficiently difficult to cancel". When signing up for a product, if it uses tactics like this, I assume the product is no good, and even the producers of the product know it...

I also dislike this business practice, but I don’t think the only way it comes about is from lack of confidence in product/service. Let’s say you were building a startup and had to prioritize limited resources on everything that sucked about it. You’re talking to users, tracking various metrics, trying to get people to use it, and your backlog of things you wished you could do is 3+ years long. You’d build easy sign…

You don't have to "build" anything. Just have a button "cancel subscription" with a mailto: link... or even some text saying "email us at @ from your account and it will be cancelled within N hours/days".

Currently what most companies (including startups) do is burying the cancellation instructions in some Knowledge Base, or forcing some back and forth via email or phone.

You can rationalise bad behaviour all day, but we all know very well the reason people don't make it easy to cancel.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#193

Post by i_like_waiting »

lagadu wrote: post #29

In Portugal the law makes it so you can cancel any service using the same means that you used to subscribe it, so if they support subscribing online, unsubscribing also has to be doable the same way; same goes for via phone, personal or whatnot. It makes sense, prevents service providers from making it too difficult to terminate a contract.

What in case that some company doesn't collect your email e.g. they try to sell you only over the phone?

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#194

Post by john37386 »

I subscribed to a weekly meal kit. It was very easy to onboard and I liked the service for many months. My situation changed and I no longer needed their service. I wanted to cancel my subscription and it's impossible to do online. It's written in super small to call their happy representative. I didn't like this situation so what I'm doing is skipping the meal kit for the next 4 weeks. Every month I log on their website and skip the next 4 weeks... I'll do this until my credit card expired. Just for this, I won't recommend them to anyone. It's sad because I kind of liked it when it was useful to me.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#195

Post by llampx »

t0mas88 wrote: post #72
nivenkos wrote: post #34

Earlier 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.

Europe is big. This is most definitely not illegal in Germany, in fact it is the preferred practice by anti-consumer companies.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#196

Post by Nextgrid »

rich_sasha wrote: post #74
KennyBlanken wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hand that info to the merchant because your credit card company can issue chargebacks against them and that costs them a pretty penny with their payment processor, especially if it happens often. Credit card disputes almost always slant in favor of the customer. Folks just don't seem to realize: you make a reasonable effort with the vendor, and then go straight to your credit card company. I caught a restaurant "…

I believe this doesn't work with debit cards, which are the norm in Europe. Still though, it's a weird system. Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it, with some other party reimbursing me if that goes awry (and I notice).

Disputes are enforced by Visa and Mastercard rules and apply to debit & credit cards equally. Some countries may have some extra legal protections for credit cards, but for clear examples of merchant bad faith the card network's dispute resolution process should be enough.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#197

Post by llampx »

jfk13 wrote: post #136
School-Cotton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to Der Spiegel (German weekly news magazine) and as far as I can tell it can’t be cancelled without e-mailing them. This is unfortunate because although I can read German, I can’t write or speak it, so figuring out how to write that e-mail would be a headache. Edit: Thanks to aboalarm.de, which I learned about from this thread, I have learned the correct formula to use: > Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, >…

You could email them in English. Der Spiegel is large and international enough that it's reasonable to expect them to cope with that.

It probably depends on which country is handling your subscription. With a German address, they don't have to consider any request in any language other than German.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#198

Post by xg15 »

john37386 wrote: post #194

I subscribed to a weekly meal kit. It was very easy to onboard and I liked the service for many months. My situation changed and I no longer needed their service. I wanted to cancel my subscription and it's impossible to do online. It's written in super small to call their happy representative. I didn't like this situation so what I'm doing is skipping the meal kit for the next 4 weeks. Every month I log on their web…

Question from a non-American. Is it actually legal to "cancel" a service by having your credit card expire?

At least here, if there is a subscription with recurring fees active, you're liable for those fees, whether or not the provider is able to collect them at this moment.

This sounds like you risk building up a lot of debt and eventually having a collections agency come after you.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#199

Post by soco »

viknesh wrote: post #56
rich_sasha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 once had a paper/digital subscription, and at some point I had cancelled the card linked to it. Unbeknownst to me (my parents were receiving the subscription), they had kept sending the paper despite the card being cancelled. When NYT eventually realized the card had been cancelled, they claimed that I owed them for the ~year or so that I had been receiving the paper after the card was cancelled, and attempted to s…

I'm not sure why is this outrageous. You had a contract with NYT so they deliver you the newspaper for a payment, contract which you didn't even try to cancel. This is how contracts work.

Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says

#200

Post by john37386 »

xg15 wrote: post #198
john37386 wrote: post #194

I subscribed to a weekly meal kit. It was very easy to onboard and I liked the service for many months. My situation changed and I no longer needed their service. I wanted to cancel my subscription and it's impossible to do online. It's written in super small to call their happy representative. I didn't like this situation so what I'm doing is skipping the meal kit for the next 4 weeks. Every month I log on their web…

Question from a non-American. Is it actually legal to "cancel" a service by having your credit card expire? At least here, if there is a subscription with recurring fees active, you're liable for those fees, whether or not the provider is able to collect them at this moment. This sounds like you risk building up a lot of debt and eventually having a collections agency come after you.

I might change my strategy and finally call them at some point. It's just frustrating to be stuck in this situation. Thanks for the tip.
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