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The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

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Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#211

Post by accrual »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #163
arwhatever wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the letter alone would be adequate. But frustratingly, the AT&T website appeared to allow you to replace your current (auto-pay) billing method with some other billing method, but I didn't see any way to remove all current billing methods, which makes just stopping paying nigh impossible. :-(

Genuine question. Why country with so much freedoms tolerates this particular injustice so much. Freedom to pay is very fundamental for free speech, I think courts and legislatures made this very very clear multiple times. There are whole countries where you don't need Apple as intermediary to cancel any subscription without notice. In these countries it is up to companies to sue you if they think you are in wrong, a…

> Why country with so much freedoms tolerates this particular injustice so much.

My naive take - it's because we give corporations just as much freedom if not more than the average person.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#212

Post by thomastjeffery »

sillystu04 wrote: post #5

Visa/Mastercard have enough power to enforce this on their own. Although obviously regulation would've been better. If a bunch of elected officials wrote letters to execs and a couple of NYT articles were written about the issue, Visa/Mastercard might be motivated to help.

They do have that power, and have abused it in the past. For example, refusing to do business with cannabis distributors or porn creators.

If you take that past into account, and consider the fact that they aren't using that power the way you want, it becomes immediately clear that they never will.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#213

Post by thomastjeffery »

fastball wrote: post #37
SoftTalker wrote: post #28

"If you can sign up online, you must be able to cancel online, too." That leaves a lot of room for the "Cancel" option to be buried in an obscure hard to find part of the website. I'd have hoped there was a requirement for it to be as prominent and as easy to find as the "Subscribe" option (and maybe there is, just not mentioned in this piece?)

Do you actually want there to be a big "Cancel" button in the top right corner of every subscribed service? I personally don't want that. Click to cancel? Sure. But perfectly symmetrical is not something I need and in many cases not something I want.

I would like that, as would many here, but let's consider an alternative:

What if the subscription was just as difficult as your ideal cancellation UX flow? I would like that, too. Let the homepage just describe your product, and maybe some pricing.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#215

Post by margalabargala »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #193
tacon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because without any form of regulation, the ISP has no requirement to honor that letter? Is this your personal exerience, or are you making assumptions? I would love to hear how this process possibly fails to unsubscribe anyone: 1. Go to your state's corporate website and get/buy the name and address of the corporate registered agent for your ISP or whatever. In Texas that costs $1. 2. Write or ask ChatGPT to write…

Why should it be so difficult to cancel a service?

It shouldn't be, but it is, and until someone else heads the FTC, so it shall remain.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#216

Post by reverendsteveii »

bilsbie wrote: post #72

I wish businesses would realize this actually hurts their sales. I’ve put off joining a gym for years because I don’t want the hassle of I want to cancel. Also I never do free trials assuming they’ll be hard to cancel.

I picked my gym based on their cancellation procedure. 200 pounds is 200 pounds, customer service is pretty much where gyms differentiate themselves afaic

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#217

Post by reverendsteveii »

const_cast wrote: post #182
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you A/B test your company's reputation as being difficult to cancel? You can't exactly serve up different word-of-mouth to different users.

This is the danger of data-driven decision making. You can only gather a very, very small subset of all data. So now you're basing your decisions off of a tiny picture, so you end up with sometimes strange conclusions. Conclusions that, intuitively, make no sense. But the data says so, so I guess that's what we do.

I mean, doing it wrong is a danger in any process. Data driven decision making should do every meaningful thing it can to ensure that its small subset of data is representative of the whole picture. If you're careful about being random you can do that pretty accurately with a shockingly small subset of data.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#218

Post by autoexec »

nrclark wrote: post #87
Angostura wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost as if the previous administration was focussed more on the former, and the current administration more on the latter. I guess you get the government you vote for.

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch.

Are king wolves any better?

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#219

Post by 1123581321 »

bilsbie wrote: post #72

I wish businesses would realize this actually hurts their sales. I’ve put off joining a gym for years because I don’t want the hassle of I want to cancel. Also I never do free trials assuming they’ll be hard to cancel.

Don’t shut yourself in with a less healthy body because you’re worried about one of the Internet’s meme topics. It would take less than an hour to google/call/visit a few local gyms to learn which have better customer service. I recommend the local YMCA if you’re in the US. Your membership is reciprocal nationwide now, too.

Re: The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule

#220

Post by autoexec »

tacon wrote: post #174
mrguyorama wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because without any form of regulation, the ISP has no requirement to honor that letter? The whole point of "click to cancel" was to deal with the fact that a business, by contract law, can make it almost entirely impossible to stop owing them money through entirely legal means. The courts do not consider being on hold for 18 hours onerous enough to void a contract, so it's perfectly legal to require you to follow th…

>Because without any form of regulation, the ISP has no requirement to honor that letter? Is this your personal exerience, or are you making assumptions? I would love to hear how this process possibly fails to unsubscribe anyone: 1. Go to your state's corporate website and get/buy the name and address of the corporate registered agent for your ISP or whatever. In Texas that costs $1. 2. Write or ask ChatGPT to write…

You'd spend far longer in the post office and the courts than you would on the phone.

All the company has to do in that court room is show that you mailed the form to someone whose job has nothing to do with account services, or who doesn't even have access or authorization to access people's private account information, or that they tried and failed to reach you in order to verify your identify since they sure as hell won't cancel the account of someone and shut off their service all because an anonymous letter showed up somewhere nobody was expecting to get it. What a great way to DoS an enemy or competitor if that worked. Just mail off some letters to a few store's webhosts right before Christmas or black friday.

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