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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

#711

Post by tzs »

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…

If I write your name on a napkin along with a request to cancel service and hand it to random employee of some company you have a subscription with, how do they verify that it really came from you?

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

#712

Post by kelp »

kqr2 wrote: post #706
kelp wrote: post #704

California SB-313 ( https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... ) was passed in 2018 and has this requirement: "... a consumer who accepts an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall be allowed to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, which may include a termination email formatted and provided by the business that a consumer can send to the bu…

Does this also apply to gym memberships which are notoriously difficult to cancel?

It should apply to anything that you've signed up for online. They have to provide an online way of cancelling. Only applies to California residents.

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

#713

Post by vineyardmike »

antasvara wrote: post #600
marginalia_nu wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to delete my Spotify account (in Sweden). Not just cancel, but delete because they inexplicably put my profile on the Internet in full display and I was not even a little bit okay with that. I think 7 different "yes I'm really sure, yes despite the sad violin music and yes despite the images of sad puppies", a support ticket, several emails going back and forth confirming I'm really sure, and then a few more…

I think the general idea is that if they make it difficult enough, some people might just decide that it's not worth canceling. I'm sure there's some metric that says most people canceling a subscription are unlikely to resubscribe, so making it difficult to do so probably increases the likelihood of keeping you by some small percentage, offsetting your likelihood of coming back. The NY Times is a great and slimy exa…

> Canceling the subscription requires a phone call or online chatbot,

This is a reason I subscribe to thinks using Apple's IAP if I have a choice (eg. equal price). the app gui is great.

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

#714

Post by orangepurple »

bradstewart wrote: post #559
devilbunny wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 we…

Then gets sued for practicing engineering without a license.

In a display of civic engagement, Mats emailed the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying in the hopes that they could help him raise public awareness and asked for their “support and help to investigate and present the laws of physics related to transportation engineering.”

He got the opposite.

After curtly informing Mats that they do not regulate traffic lights, the Board warned him that without an engineering license from the state of Oregon, Mats would be breaking the law if he even referred to himself using the word “engineer.” Then, the Board launched an investigation into Mats, which lingered for nearly two years and culminated in a $500 fine. According to the Board, Mats engaged in the unlicensed “practice of engineering” when he spoke publicly about his “critique and calculations” for the yellow-light formula. Moreover, only Oregon-licensed professional engineers are allowed to use the word “engineer” to describe themselves.

Although Mats is not a licensed professional engineer (and never claimed to), he has a broad background in math and science. In his native Sweden, Mats earned a degree in electrical engineering, and worked for the Swedish Air Force and Luxor Electronics. Mats even presented his research on traffic-light timing at an Institute of Transportation Engineers conference, and he corresponded with one of the physicists who developed the original 1959 formula.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2017/04/28/...

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

#715

Post by ketralnis »

hwers wrote: post #251
xg15 wrote: post #167

> 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…

> mandating that cancelling must be possible using the same workflow as subscription I'd rather not put into the law that strict a requirement on our UI design.

What's your super innovative cancellation UI that's being held back by all of this overzealous regulation?

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

#716

Post by kvark »

capableweb wrote: post #96
sokoloff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also dislike this business practice, but I don’t think the only way it comes about is from lack of confidence in product/service. Let’s say you were building a startup and had to prioritize limited resources on everything that sucked about it. You’re talking to users, tracking various metrics, trying to get people to use it, and your backlog of things you wished you could do is 3+ years long. You’d build easy sign…

> You’d build easy sign up before you built easy canceling. Even if you were the least nefarious business owner in the history of the world, the ctime on your signup page would be older than that of the cancel page. Whether it would be 15 minutes, days, or months later is a question, but I doubt anyone has coded their cancel page first. I think many startups undervalue the value proposition of "It's easy to change aw…

Exactly this line of reasoning brought me to Obsidian tool, which manages files you already own. It could be a minority of users, but we love that attitude!

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

#717

Post by flyingfences »

0des wrote: post #324
0898 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: The Guardian's owner has £1 billion in assets.

That is not relevant. Perhaps on Reddit people are likely to find that to be a persuasive negation of the topic you're not addressing with this remark.

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

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

#718

Post by JJMcJ »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #683
napo wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I had the opposite experience. I'm French and I spent 2 years in the US. I had a T-mobile subscription, and it was too painful to cancel my subscription. With my accent I could barely pass the robot that was trying to understand why I was calling. Then when I had someone on the phone, the call just dropped, in the middle of conversations. I did that a few times and then gave up. I assume I'll also receive a no…

T-Mobile has stores all over and they can help you cancel in person (I did this in the US, and it's very common to change carriers). I suspect you can also cancel online. You can also pay with credit card, and in extreme cases you can have your credit card company decline/block charges (I had to do this when Hertz tried to defraud me out of hundreds of dollars). I also suspect banks will happily decline/block charges…

> I also suspect banks will happily decline/block charges as well

Yes, I had to do this on my debit card for an autoship that I signed up for.

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

#719

Post by eckesicle »

jolux wrote: post #579
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?

It doesn't. The legal framework leaves a lot of room for interpretation by the judge. They look at the law itself, and interpret the intent of the lawmaker.

Suppose I wanted to cancel a service from a firm that was hard to reach. I'd block the payments through my bank and if it ever went to court I'd just need to show I took reasonable steps to attempt to contact them before blocking any payments and then most likely win the case.

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