Consequently, our children's children will never appreciate this humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM
“Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
551–560 of 890 posts
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure where you are, but if that’s in fact the case, your city would be violating the law in at least California, and likely several other states.
Which law?
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Unless the road is determined to be a local road, posted speed limits are only enforcable if set by an engineering survey, or if it's at least X, which I think is 60 or 65. But I'm not sure it's illegal to post an unenforcable speed limit, or to ticket against it, it's just that those contesting the ticket will win.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is unacceptable behavior, and I entirely understand you not wanting to condone it. For people who find themselves in that situation, one practical workaround I've found is using a service like Privacy.com which lets you generate dedicated Visa cards that you can pause or limit charges on
Unfortunately Privacy.com requires the generated cards to be paid by a bank account (rather than a credit card). So you have to be okay with them having your banking info.
If you complain to them about that they will allow you to use an ACH number instead of account credentials.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#554Meanwhile in Scandinavia: You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in any way that is most comfortable to you. [0] For example, you can: * send them a letter * send them an email * call them and tell anyone who picks up the phone * write it on a napkin and hand it to an employee All are equally legit and legally binding. Companies obviously do not want to deal with the manual overhead, so services ty…
This seems really annoying. You can unsubscribe to most things in writing as well in the US. The issue is that it takes only a misclick to subscribe, whereas writing and mailing a letter or getting a napkin and travelling to the company's HQ takes considerably more effort (few companies have humans answer the phone). Seems that Scandinavia needs to change their laws if the goal is to make it easy for the consumer.
I feel like this is missing the point. The point is that it’s illegal to reject a cancellation no matter the medium it was delivered on. So in order to not deal with the overhead and legal trouble of managing napkins that people slip your employees, you’re incentivized to make it as easy as possible
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#555> including an option that’s “at least as easy” as the one to subscribe Weirdly enough this sounds like a loophole. I can already see some companies trying to bullshit their way through an investigation: "Oh sure, we don't provide online cancellation, because our way to cancel is even easier than online:" * presents a way to cancel that is in practice more difficult than online *. I think either mandating that cancel…
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Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one insanity I don't understand why companies can get away with. They can set up bureaucratic processes and even when you follow them, they "lose" your material, raise some weird objection or ignore it. Same happens with health insurances and hospitals. They ignore you whenever they feel like it but the payment and collections clock keeps ticking. I have heard it was the same in 2008 and later when people requ…
It amazes me how successful consumer hostile strategies are in recent times. It sort of flies in the face of most economic models that claim markets self-regulate. This includes businesses in industries which aren't massive and monopolistic and even have competitors. When all your competitors decide to indirectly collude with one business's successful consumer hostile strategies, it becomes the norm and another barri…
Mass market gyms are kind of unique.
They are selling aspirations and tend to have a local monopoly based on location. There are many gyms, but there aren’t many gyms in a particular locale convenient for whatever aspirational schedule exists.
Because of that, it’s really not in a cheap gyms interest to not be assholes.
Nicer gyms like the Y or a Country/Social club use things like childcare or social factors to increase the friction of leaving. More serious gyms use the trainer relationship and cost more or have fewer amenities.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#557In 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.
Not just Portugal, this is a European thing but apparently Germany hasn't implemented it yet and will do so starting next year. That's the weird thing with some European "laws", they give countries 1 or 2 years to implement it and some countries abuse that to go and implement it on the very last day.
> That's the weird thing with some European "laws", they give countries 1 or 2 years to implement it and some countries abuse that to go and implement it on the very last day.
If you give them to the last day and they do it on the last day, they have done what you asked, it's not abuse. Want it done sooner? Require it done sooner.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cancellation by mail is always fine, no company can opt out of it in a legal way. You don't even need to get the address right, you can mail it to any subsidiary of the company - it is the companys responsibility to correctly route it internally. You can even directly address it to the CEO and at "persönlich" to it. My favorite.
You would need proof of receipt and proof of content in case contract termination does not happen, though.
In theory yes, in practice I had multiple disputes over contract termination and in 100% of those cases the counterparty with happy with the photo. And also compare it to any "phone calls" where you basically have nothing as a proof (dunno about your jurisdiction, but in Germany it is illegal to record phone calls without prior consent and also would require technical means to do so).
Also, if you ever worked in a large corporation, they have a lot of means to track incoming mail ("Posteingangsbuch") and for an enterprise to try to pretend not to have received a letter would require maldoing by a lot of employees (who usually are not commited to giving false statements in court for their employer).
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
Portugal is logical on some stuff. Another example is prostitution is legal but you can only advertise yourself. I wonder what other countries have prostitution set up like this. Or the speed traps that just trigger a red light. Decriminalization of all drugs obviously too.
> speed traps that just trigger a red light Much better than what I've seen in my (US) city: speed limit 30 mph, but lights timed for 40-45 mph to get a continuous green light down the one-way street. Either you speed, opening you to tickets, or you stop needlessly on lights that are set for a faster speed than you are traveling.
My personal favorite was a poorly-timed stop light, with a red-light camera.
If you entered the intersection as the light turned yellow, and drove the speed limit, you would still be partially in the intersection when the light turned red. And promptly get a ticket in the mail.
Nobody realized what was happening (at least not those on the receiving end of the tickets) until my high school math teacher got one.
She went out there and measured the intersection, timed the lights, then showed up to contest the ticket with poster boards containing diagrams of the velocity/distance equations.
Re: “Click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal, FTC says
#560Meanwhile in Scandinavia: You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in any way that is most comfortable to you. [0] For example, you can: * send them a letter * send them an email * call them and tell anyone who picks up the phone * write it on a napkin and hand it to an employee All are equally legit and legally binding. Companies obviously do not want to deal with the manual overhead, so services ty…
How does this law translate to decentralized contracts/subscriptions? It may not be possible to support these analog mediums on an Ethereum smart contract for example.
Seems like smart contracts aren't so smart if they don't support easy cancelation mechanisms.