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

niemanlab.org

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

#571

Post by bjoli »

eckesicle wrote: post #502

Meanwhile 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…

Sixt (car rental) did not follow these rules. The procedure was something like "write a letter to out german head quarters".

I ended up making a GDPR request for them to first send me all data they had and then remove any data (including email addresses) they had on me. I will hopefully never have to use their services again.

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

#572

Post by aeternum »

ess3 wrote: post #554
aeternum wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because it does not solve the problem. Shady online subscription companies can simply put the office somewhere inaccessible and not accept e-mail/calls from customers.

The law should outline mediums that companies must accept. IE have a published webpage or e-mail address that allows unsubscribe.

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

#573

Post by Bluecobra »

RankingMember wrote: post #442
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This behavior is everywhere in the gym industry. It is so bad that the last time I joined a gym, I paid for a year up front with a physical check. I told them i don’t have credit or debit cards (lie) and can only pay by check. At the end of the year, I walked away and never got any letters about paying a renewal or anything.

This is the only way to do gym memberships with peace of mind right now. Gym membership cancellation practices are in desperate need of regulation.

> Gym membership cancellation practices are in desperate need of regulation.

Agreed, and I also hate being stuck in 12-month contracts as well. I will never join a gym that makes me sign a long term commitment like that. The last local gym I joined was pretty cool about this. They had higher month to month prices and discounted longer term memberships. Gives you a chance to see how you like it after a few months.

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

#574

Post by makecheck »

…and collectively billions of hours of wasted time are returned to consumers everywhere.

Generally though, we really need some efficient mechanism for saying “hell no” to new things that are clearly anti-consumer, instead of letting them be conceived, implemented, and insufferable for years before anything can be done.

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

#575

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

drstewart wrote: post #462
daenz wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so they sent my account to a collections agency Important clarification: they sold your account to a collections agency. They made more than what you actually owed them by doing that, which is probably why they did that.

> They made more than what you actually owed them by doing that This makes absolutely zero sense and does not happen. Why would the collections agency pay more for debt than it's worth? Why wouldn't they sell all their accounts then? Free increase in profits!

They 'owed' zero.

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

#576

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

999900000999 wrote: post #533

I think Match got sued for this, they go out of their way to stop you from canceling since as a business practice they'll show you bot messages before you sign up. Once you give them 40$ or whatever then you'll immediately see all your matches are fake. This alone is already a problem, but then canceling is deliberately made difficult. The problem is they've ( via their child brands like Tinder as well) made billions…

>The problem is they've ( via their child brands like Tinder as well) made billions doing this. If you can run a business, make 10 billion dollars and then pay a 10 million dollar fine, you'll just pay the fines.

Even worse, you'll choose to do it instead of doing something productive with your time. Why do something risky and expensive for less money?

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

#577

Post by slt2021 »

I keep a separate capitalone cc for all "subscriptions" and always keep it disabled, so that no charges will ever go through.

just enable it back for 10 seconds when signing up for service and disable it back.

so far it kept me safe from annoying services asking for cc and their unexpected charges

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

#578

Post by jihadjihad »

dqpb wrote: post #431
jihadjihad wrote: post #319

I went through the effort of canceling my NYT subscription this morning, and thankfully they have an option to cancel "using your account," which avoids a pointless phone call or virtual chat. It's the third option listed, of course, and there are a couple of guilt-trippy pages you have to slide past, but in all it took me 2 minutes to do.

Do you live in California?

I do not.

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

#579

Post by jolux »

eckesicle wrote: post #502

Meanwhile 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…

Reading the replies it seems like this law may have incentivized some companies to make themselves extremely difficult to contact in the first place. How does the law deal with this?

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

#580

Post by barbazoo »

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.

The difficulty cancelling Economist one time put me off from subscribing to a paper ever since. I don't get it, their content is good, let me cancel easily and I'll come back easily. How desperate are those services that they implement measures like that, counting on people to not follow through the cancellation process, forgetting to cancel altogether, etc. And then doing the absolute minimum necessary, e.g. offering the easy cancel button for California residents only because they have to. It'll be the same with this piece of legislation. Sure they'll do it for US residents but they'll continue to pull the same crap for us here in Canada and elsewhere. They deserve to go out of business in my opinion and I hope they do.
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