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Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

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541–546 of 546 posts

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#541
post #156

Germany enforced this a couple of years ago: if you can contract with someone electronically, cancelling this needs to be as simple as agreeing to that contract. Annoyingly, a lot of companies try to work around this - I tried to cancel a newspaper subscription a while back and they didn't offer that. So I simply wrote a quick email. Then they requested to call me to discuss this and I had to answer via email quoting…

A smilar law should be implemented at EU level. Our DSL provider in Czechia makes it very difficult to cancel a service. You can easily sign up online. But they say you have to call somewhere no earlier than two months and no later than one month prior to expiration which renews yearly. Then they mail you a code, which you must provide to them by calling them again. This is an excellent illustration of how badly everything would be (for example food standards or local laws) if we weren't a part of the EU. Yet some stupid people (mostly old) are complaining about the EU all the time that it is a Brussels' dictate. But the EU creates at least some order here!

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#542
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if companies don’t follow that? For example it’s really easy to signup for sfchronicle but they make you jump through a lot of hoops to cancel.

If you reside in California and its an online subscription, there is a law related to that. https://www.polsinelli.com/publications/subscription-service... .

Yeah there is but places like SFChronicle doesn’t care. What do you do then?

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#543
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only stuff I’ve ever had trouble cancelling were newspaper subscriptions. Definitely support making that easier. I can’t read the article due to the paywall. Precisely how easy and instant is the cancellation process required to be under this proposal: a button that says cancel, you click it, and you are cancelled? I suspect that would surprise a lot of people and make them frustrated. Cancelling shouldn’t be eas…

So i should be require to entire my payment information and verify an email to cancel a service? Are you mad? I click the red cancel button, it says "Are you sure" and boom I'm cancelled. That's how everyone else on the planet wants it.

I’ve never had to do that for a subscription service.

Simple cancellation is a good idea. Banning complicated cancellation is a good idea.

I’m just wary of too minutely regulation how cancellation happens. It is possible to make it too seamless.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#544
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So i should be require to entire my payment information and verify an email to cancel a service? Are you mad? I click the red cancel button, it says "Are you sure" and boom I'm cancelled. That's how everyone else on the planet wants it.

I’ve never had to do that for a subscription service. Simple cancellation is a good idea. Banning complicated cancellation is a good idea. I’m just wary of too minutely regulation how cancellation happens. It is possible to make it too seamless.

I'm gonna let you have the last word here.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#545
post #81
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. Hard, because the government has authority, a random company does not. I'd still trust my government more than a random non profit company, if my trust decreases, I'd vote for different people to manage the country - which is not possible with companies.

Does the government really need to know every subscription that every person in the county has? This seems like massive overreach/invasion of privacy.

Even if that was the case: compared to the subscribing companies themselves selling not only that information, but also your personal data to the highest (and lowest) bidder?

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#546
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the government can access your bank logs, so I don't think them seeing you have a TV and internet subscription is an issue. It's a great benefit of having an authoritarian government.

Surely, in theory at least, they require a subpoena/warrant. Perhaps I am hopelessly naive.

They don't need a subpoena/warrant for data that the company chooses to sell the government. It's not your data, but data about you owned by the company. The government can ask a bank or netflix for all their customers data or even for an online portal that gives them unlimited access to whatever they need in exchange for cash and plenty of companies welcome the new revenue stream. (see for example https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-dat...) This isn't limited to the government buying up data either. Things like access to real-time GPS location has been for sale from every major mobile carrier
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