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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

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Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#421

Post by Beijinger »

crazygringo wrote: post #400
Beijinger wrote: post #396

I want this "click-to-cancel" rule for any form of subscription. Everybody tries to bill you into oblivion. You must be insane if you don't use virtual credit card numbers today. I am apartment hunting right now. Most apartments don't exist and some Nigerian scammers try to make you request a "credit report" that is basically a subscription service and really difficult to cancel.

> You must be insane if you don't use virtual credit card numbers today. Virtual numbers protect against people stealing your number. They don't really do much against subscriptions. If you sign up for a service and stop paying, it gets sent to collections, and then impacts your credit score because of unpaid debt. Whether you used a virtual number or not is irrelevant. So it's not "insane" not to use virtual credit…

"and then impacts your credit score because of unpaid debt."

All these companies operate, if not rouge, at least gray and would never bother reporting it to a credit agency. By the way, credit agencies: Many scammers make a living out of advertising apartment that do not exit. They try to make you sign up for an affiliate, subscription based, "credit check".

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#422

Post by Pigo »

bluGill wrote: post #307
Pigo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting on anything to be done about rent to own businesses. The businesses that rely solely on exploiting the people in a bad position bother me so much, they should at least have some kind of limits on their usury.

Unfortunately the people they "serve" would get nothing as nobody can afford to lend to a bad credit risk at reasonable rates. Of course a lot of what they are selling are luxuries that people with bad credit shouldn't have, but then we have to ask what the alternative is. (most places have terrible public transit so you have to get such people in a car. You don't need a TV for movies but you can't really live life w…

It's hard to argue against that. I suppose it's not that they even exist, it's just the unreasonable amount they profit on the items. If it's purely because they cannot attain items another way, they markup should be more apparent maybe? It just hurts seeing young and disadvantaged people being taken advantage of.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#423

Post by thayne »

ksd482 wrote: post #324
justinpombrio wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent. The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Ev…

What I have noticed companies do is resume emails after a year or so. They probably think people would forget about unsubscribing them after a year, and for the most part they are right. If I catch any of these email lists not respecting my unsubscribing, I immediately mark them as "spam". Gmail then doesn't send them to my inbox anymore. I don't think just one person marking them as spam hurts them, but at least I f…

Or they interpret any kind of interaction after a while of inactivity as "yes please sign me up for all your newsletters, even though I previously explicitly told you to unsubscribe me"

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#424

Post by kelnos »

Bjartr wrote: post #356
inetknght wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. The sheer number of comments that think the state of "unsubscribe" is good is... saddening. I should not have to click a link to "unsubscribe" from something that I did not subscribe to. There's no recourse for me against these thieves.

The state of Unsubscribe is good. Imagine how much worse things would be if legit businesses had no reason to make it easy to unsubscribe in such a consistent way like we do today. That other problems also exist doesn't mean this solution for this thing isn't good.

Sure, but imagine how much better it would be if any business (legit or not) could not send marketing emails to us at all without our prior, affirmative, non-coerced consent.

The state of Unsubscribe is better than what it was before the laws around it went into effect, but it doesn't go far enough.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#425

Post by bradleyankrom »

justinpombrio wrote: post #265
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent. The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Ev…

That sounds like how LinkedIn constantly finds new ways categorize notifications that I don't want but continue to receive.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#426

Post by gspencley »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #96

It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services shou…

> where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee.

I'm currently in the process of de-Adboe'ing my life because of the subscription model.

It's not htat you get charged an exorbitant cancellation fee, per se. It's that, from Adobe's point of view, you entered into a year-long contract. And so if you want to cancel after 3 months, the only option they give you is to pay for the rest of the entire year upfront.

This has a lot of artists really pissed off and many are saying they're finally done with Adobe.

Fortunately, I think we're finally in an era where Adobe doesn't actually offer the best products anyway.

For Photoshop I'm playing with Affinity Photo. It has a six month free trial and after playing with it for a couple of months I think I'm going to pay for it when the trial is up. And it's a flat fee / perpetual license.

I've been playing around with Inkscape as a FOSS alternative to Illustrator and it's OK. I might give the Affinity Designer trial a go since I'm enjoying Affinity Photo.

For video editing Davinci Resolve is so far ahead of Premiere that it makes me wonder why Premiere is still used by anyone regardless of other considerations. What's bonkers is that BlackMagic gives the standard version of Resolve away for free... and I have yet to find myself needing features that are in the paid Studio version.

It has its own FX tool called Fusion built-in, so After Effects also gets replaced by Resolve.

I never used Adobe Animate but am starting to get into 2D animation and really like Moho Pro. It's not free but it has a perpetual license and apparently the first version of this software was created for BeOS 30 years ago, and then got ported to Windows and Mac as AnimeStudio... so it's been around forever, has a cool history and is starting to get used by a lot of pro studios since it gives you 3D style rigging for 2D / "cutout" animation which was its killer feature for me.

Anyway Adobe is one of the largest companies in the world but I suspect big changes are coming in a few years because I can't think of any reason to buy into Creative Cloud in current year ... like not a single reason. Maybe if you've got some PSD files laying around that can't be opened in alternatives like Affinity Photo because they take advantage of very specialized features or something then you might be screwed but I haven't ran into any issues opening my old PSD files in Affinity.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#427

Post by kelnos »

vel0city wrote: post #361
inetknght wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. The sheer number of comments that think the state of "unsubscribe" is good is... saddening. I should not have to click a link to "unsubscribe" from something that I did not subscribe to. There's no recourse for me against these thieves.

So what, people should only be able to email you if you've previously emailed them? How am I supposed to know who I'm allowed to email?

If you're attempting to send marketing emails, then yes, absolutely, that's exactly how it should work.

If someone, say, signs up for an account on your website and opts-in to marketing emails, then sure, you can send them marketing emails.

If you have no relationship with someone, or they haven't opted in, no, you should never send them even a single marketing email.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#428

Post by thayne »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #410
justinpombrio wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent. The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Ev…

You know a startup is floundering when they have to invent new email lists to "accidentally" subscribe you to despite telling them in the past you want to be unsubscribed from everything.

It isn't just startups. Huge tech giants do it too.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#429

Post by kelnos »

rootusrootus wrote: post #326
cortesoft wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I remember when Amazon Prime first started, I signed up for the free trial to get free shipping on something. Of course, I forgot about it and didn’t cancel, but then I got an email from Amazon saying, “hey, you didn’t cancel your prime subscription but you also haven’t used it at all, so we are going to not charge you and cancel it for now. Here is how you easily restart your subscription if you end up needing…

Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are. Their return rate is still pretty terrible, IIRC. I bet they are tr…

> Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten.

I think this is why I'm still such a loyal customer, and use Amazon for so many purchases. Intellectually I know that Amazon does super crappy things, both to their workers and around their website and sales. But I've been a Prime member since it was first offered, nearly 20 years now, and I still fondly remember when Amazon's customer service was pretty much better than anyone else's out there. It was actually delightful to interact with their customer service, which was (and is) so rare.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#430

Post by mwest217 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #406
xracy wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We gotta stop giving SCOTUS credit for bad decisions when they make unpopular opinions. SCOTUS is not supposed to make legislation, and if they are going to try and override Chevron from the bench without legislation, then we have to ignore them. SCOTUS' power/respect only goes as far as they're actually listening to the will of Americans. This is not representing Americans if they override. Same for abortion (just l…

This is insane and wrong. The Supreme Court is explicitly not supposed to represent the will of the people. You’re advocating nothing less than a type of coup. And against my best judgement, I’ll add that in it was roe v wade itself that was essentially judges creating law (shoehorning abortion rights into a right to privacy is a stretch).

I don't disagree that disregarding the Supreme Court is essentially a type of coup. However, the power which is being contested here is a power that the Supreme Court invented for itself out of whole cloth: judicial review was born in 1803 when Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that an act of congress was unconstitutional. That's honestly a bigger coup than what is being suggested here, and is only perceived as legitimate because a) it's been around for a long time, and b) the Supreme Court has mostly backed down from its most unpopular opinions.
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