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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

#741

Post by lostgame »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #385
aristophenes wrote: post #316

I had to cancel my gym membership because I was moving, and it required me to send a physical letter. I did this, but found out later that somehow I owed like 2 dollars, so they didn’t count my cancellation request because my account wasn’t up to date (should be illegal). They continued to bill me the entire membership fee, but my credit card had changed, so they sent my account to a collections agency. Right when I…

LA Fitness? I had to print and send them a letter. Or talk to the manager. Who is only there a few days a week. And no one knows when. Obligatory: “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,”…

I laughed way too hard at this, having been a gym subscriber in the past, and also a fan of Douglas Adams.

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

#742

Post by MAGZine »

jonahhorowitz wrote: post #588
MAGZine wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canceling aside, I don't think the WSJ is particularly neutral, but perhaps it does appeal to your sensibilities (note, however, those are not the same). I find WSJ to take particularly corporatist/capitialist views on things. Which is fine for things business, I suppose, but I've read many articles from WSJ that are basically "hey government sucks, am i rite?" which is not neutral.

Not that HN is really the place for this discussion, but the _news_ section of the WSJ is pretty neutral and well written. The _opinion_ page is very slanted towards "corporatist/capitalist views".

That's an easy thing to say because it's more difficult to disprove. You could say that about the NYT, Al Jazeera, NPR, CNN, etc etc.

Of course the topics that an institution choose to talk about also biases it. If you spend all of your front page space complaining about unions and talking about business, that is a different bias than one who dedicates column inches to stories about the environment. Or different from once that dedicates column inches to ones about social issues.

But even if you go on wsj.com, I see "Biden EV Tax Credit Puts UAW Over Environment, Nonunion Auto Makers Say," -- which is such an interesting way to frame the topic, but certainly not what I would call neutral. The topic pits UAW versus Nonunion automakers.

If you want neutral news, in terms of content and in terms of story coverage, there are better options than the WSJ.

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

#743

Post by nonameiguess »

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…

This is a separate problem from that. It's really easy to cancel a Spotify subscription. It's nearly impossible to get your (free) account deleted, though. This is largely because early-stage Spotify delegated account management by allowing people to create accounts in Facebook and Google. Pokemon Go had this issue, too, with a bunch of people opting to create accounts through Google since it was the easiest way if you were using an Android device, but then it became literally impossible for the first two years of the game's existence to extricate the account from Google and make it native to Niantic's own databases or link it to a different Google account.

It's just something these startups don't even think about when rushing to market. What happens when someone changes or gets rid of their Facebook account?

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

#744

Post by nonameiguess »

bjoli wrote: post #571
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.

Are you renting a fleet? How do you even subscribe to car rentals? Is this a thing where if you rent frequently enough, you get a discount to just pay constantly instead of per car?

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

#745

Post by inetknght »

bredren wrote: post #645
tombert wrote: post #536

I remember about 15 years ago, I signed up for Real Rhapsody's unlimited music service. I tried it for about two months, didn't like it, and found that canceling required me call them on a weekday during business hours (ending at 4pm eastern). I was still in high school at the time, and this is pre-smartphone so it would have been hard for me to do this during lunch, so it was pretty hard for me to cancel. Eventually…

> How uncomfortable are you that users will like your service if you have to trick them into staying subscribed? It reeks of insecurity. The issue is that it may be an honest reflection that it fails to deliver actual value. I can think of many examples of organizations I’ve seen that have used / are a form of dark pattern opt-out/unsub now: - Wave Apps the accounting software with their payroll service. - burning ma…

> If internal docs show intent to mislead,

by the time a complaint is made then the internal docs have fallen out of the company's retention and backup policies...

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

#746

Post by dqv »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #633
_2d30 wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is bad, actually. Unnecessarily raises costs. The FTC's perspective is much improved over this.

Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that.

>Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”.

This seems like a very shiftable goalpost, so I would have to understand what situations you think aren’t almost always.

>Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that.

This doesn’t work in places like the US, in my experience. I stopped letting people cancel by phone (which a lot of people think is the most convenient way to cancel despite what is said here) after a few incidents in my first years of doing business: one person calling anonymously without identifying themselves saying “Hi I need to cancel my account, thanks bye” and two others who called to cancel and later said they never called to cancel after we terminated their accounts. Oh and the other 10 or so people who said they called to cancel and that we just didn’t cancel their account. It’s extremely hard to prove the negative that they didn’t call. So nah I don’t care about those kinds of customers. Tangible forms of cancellation only: a written notice with your account number and intent or the online cancellation form.

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

#747

Post by [deleted] »

powersnail wrote: post #735
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…

SiriusXM is the worst. My subscription came with the car, but luckily it wasn't auto-renewed. However, after my subscription expires, I got calls every single day from SiriusXM trying to get me to subscribe again. And each time, they used a different number. It was ridiculous. In the end, I just pick up the call, and put the phone in my pocket. They still insisted on calling for about half a year before giving up.

[deleted]

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

#748

Post by heartbreak »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #595
barbazoo wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. offerin…

As a WSJ subscriber I'm so used to their blunt "to the point" editorial style that I find Economist articles too long winded and short-storyish. I always get 5 paragraphs in and still can't figure out what the article is getting at. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Similar to OP, the WSJ was the newspaper whose cancellation process caused me to stop subscribing to newspapers.

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

#749

Post by dahfizz »

powersnail wrote: post #735
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…

SiriusXM is the worst. My subscription came with the car, but luckily it wasn't auto-renewed. However, after my subscription expires, I got calls every single day from SiriusXM trying to get me to subscribe again. And each time, they used a different number. It was ridiculous. In the end, I just pick up the call, and put the phone in my pocket. They still insisted on calling for about half a year before giving up.

I had a similar experience, but after picking up and telling them never to call me again, they stopped calling.

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

#750

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

We talk about UI dark patterns but the people who try to retain you are trained in conversational dark patterns.

If anything these are deadlier in retention then in the first sale. I'm awful at sales but I like to drink with salespeople in hotel bars and otherwise pick their brains and I have had news paper ad and radio commercial salespeople share their retention playbooks with me. (e.g. "Don't you know your customers will think you went out of business if you stop running ads?")

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