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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

#231

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

acnops wrote: post #186
bodono wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this strategy could impact your credit rating though?

Does it? I'm having the same issue

Years ago I did credit investigations related to mortgages as a job. My info is perhaps a bit out of date but I'm not aware of any significant changes related to this. If you simply ignore an account that has a balance due accumulating on it, they'll likely charge it off to a debt collector as part of a routine batch process. The threshold where this happens varies but 90 to 120 days overdue is the common range. You could argue with the collection agency that the service provider voided the contract by their behavior, but honestly, arguing with a collection agency isn't gonna be easier than jumping through the hoops to cancel with these scummy service providers.

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

#232

Post by Nextgrid »

hnarn wrote: post #225
Nextgrid wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense if the contract indeed has a minimum commitment that hasn't been reached. But if the contract has no minimum term (or it has since passed) and you've made a reasonable effort to attempt to cancel with no success, it'll now be on them to recover the money through legal means which would require them to explain to the court why your cancellation attempt was ignored, demonstrating their bad faith in the…

The point of my comment was "this is not good general advice". The point of your comment seems to be "it can be good advice in some cases", which makes no sense to me. Obviously it can be good advice in that exact case where it makes sense, but it's not good general advice.

I'd argue it's good enough general advice and would apply to most online subscriptions as they typically have no minimum commitment. The ones with a minimum commitment would be the outliers and would require special treatment.

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

#233

Post by blago »

mercy_dude wrote: post #173

Good. The worst experience I ever had was with NY Times when I wanted to unsubscribe I had to go through multiple call/chats with a person and it was almost impossible since it was hard to get in touch with one. I am glad FTC is doing something others are afraid to do.

I called their BS and told my credit card company that this subscription was no longer authorized. They were happy to cancel it on my behalf and refunded the last charge.

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

#234

Post by weswpg »

john37386 wrote: post #200
xg15 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many banks will automatically transfer recurring subscriptions to your new card as a "helpful" measure.

> Updater services allow merchants to know when your credit card information changes, and to alter their records accordingly. If you don’t want to continue the subscription, you’ll need to cancel it directly.

https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/recurring-charg...

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

#235

Post by ChrisRR »

Reason077 wrote: post #157
kieloo wrote: post #18

Same thing with The Guardian. Subscribed online and was then told I can’t cancel via email and have to endure a pushy sales call if I want to cancel. Similar experience with The Economist except it was via live chat instead. These experiences honestly make me want to never subscribe to a newspaper again.

Same with the UK subscription craft beer service, beer52.com [1]. Subscribe easily with a few clicks, but they make you call during office hours and endure 10+ minutes on hold to cancel. Sadly in the UK I guess we won't get the benefit of any new EU legislation to address this. [1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F

I thought of beer52 too, but not because I was thinking of cancelling (I quite like beer52)

But because they offered a free month to wine52. Easy to sign up, phone up to cancel

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

#236

Post by jcgoette »

88913527 wrote: post #209
mercy_dude wrote: post #173

Good. The worst experience I ever had was with NY Times when I wanted to unsubscribe I had to go through multiple call/chats with a person and it was almost impossible since it was hard to get in touch with one. I am glad FTC is doing something others are afraid to do.

Anyone with access to a public library (photo ID will get you a free library card) can access eLibrary services that get updated daily. No need to pay for NYT, for WSJ, or any major national newspaper. By paying taxes, you're already paying for digital access to this media. I applaud the FTC's decision but I wish people realized there's more practical means for accessing media that is more frequently locked behind pa…

>photo ID will get you a free library card

Results may vary.

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

#237

Post by kuschku »

bodge5000 wrote: post #215
Reason077 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the UK subscription craft beer service, beer52.com [1]. Subscribe easily with a few clicks, but they make you call during office hours and endure 10+ minutes on hold to cancel. Sadly in the UK I guess we won't get the benefit of any new EU legislation to address this. [1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F

This is the FTC, not the EU (as far as I'm aware theres no EU legislation planned or in place for this). Of course you could argue that the EU might do it one day, but you could say the same about the UK. That being said I thought it already was against UK law. Maybe I got that wrong, or there are loopholes around it, or its just not heavily enforced. Who knows

The EU regulation on this was already passed several years ago, and is already enforced in some countries, it should be universally enforced by the end of the year.

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

#238

Post by heliodor »

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.

It depends on whether you have a contact that binds you to pay until you cancel. Gyms force such a contact. Most SaaS websites don't. They'll cancel your service if they can't collect and move on with their lives.

Some day, someone will offer contract enforcement as a service that makes it really easy for a SaaS to come after you for payment and collect. Or maybe the friction of the legal system makes it untenable and the legal process has to become easier as a prerequisite.

And to nitpick on vocabulary, it is legal to break a contract. It is illegal to break a law.

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

#239

Post by cute_boi »

cheggisguilty wrote: post #170

Chegg Study for university students does not link to a cancel subscription on their website, you have to search google "how to remove sub from chegg" and then you can find a "Cancel Sub" help article on the Chegg website. You can not get directly to the cancel article from their base website. They should be fined for the dark pattern.

Many website I have encountered has similar dark patterns. Its not just chegg but other too like facebook. Most people don't know meaning of deactivate vs delete (and delete even takes like 30 days ridiculous). And many website like Adobe will make you follow series of steps like 7-8 pages. And they try to convince you shouldn't cancel via examples like "Your following services are active you no longer can access them". At last page it was like this "Right now we are offering 30% discount you can grab this easily etc.".

Till its coded to law I don't think we can expect anything from corporation.

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

#240

Post by rexreed »

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...

So much of the current economy derives benefit from captive customers who are charged ridiculous fees because they have no other place to go (think drinks at a movie theater or baggage fees on an airline, but there are many versions of the captive-customer squeeze), use extortion-type tactics to retain customers (you lose functionality of the product you've "bought" if you leave or otherwise lock you into their product making it painful to leave), or otherwise strong-arm their customers from leaving once they have them on board (high termination fees, impossible cancellation methods, threatening collections if you do a chargeback).

Many SaaS compaines even do this -- luring their customers in with low or even free offerings and then turning off those free or low priced offerings to force their users into higher paying brackets without providing any additional functionality. Pipedrive just announced that they are sunsetting their popular Esssentials plan for no really good reason than to squeeze their customers into a higher plan. I have had other companies decide to arbitrarily double or even quadruple the price of their offering for the same features because they can't find any other way to generate more revenues and probably didn't have the right price to begin with if it can't sustain their business.

Are these products good? Yeah they're decent enough. But these tactics say more about trying to squeeze every nickel not only out of those who would otherwise want to leave, but even those who would like to stay.

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