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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

#751

Post by heartbreak »

Spoom wrote: post #500
3guk wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was kinda shocked by The Guardian to be honest with you - I had a similar experience when I came to cancel my subscription to The Guardian Weekly, which is an excellent magazine. In the end I just told my bank to stop the direct debit - I had a few what seemed like automated payment emails from The Guardian telling me that my payments had failed and to update my payment choices - but other than that I considered my…

Careful; if you don't go through their unsubscribe process, they can consider the contract still valid, and collect on the legally-still-valid subscription through liens and paycheck garnishments.

I had to stop payment via Amex to cancel WSJ. I have copies (and a receipt) of me informing WSJ that I was cancelling my subscription. Now I’m intrigued though. I’d love to see them try to claim there’s documented debt and collect on it.

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

#752

Post by dinvlad »

Can we also make it illegal to send unsolicited marketing mail (not email, which can be easily filtered/unsubscribed from) please? It’s a pain to have to “opt out” from those annoying paper-wasting weekly Xfinity mails, when I clearly don’t want to use their service and never signed up for their ads using my new address anyways (I wonder how they learned about it, huh).

But no, I have to find a special link to unsubscribe, and they say it takes them another couple months (!) to actually do it.

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

#753

Post by zachlatta »

dinvlad wrote: post #752

Can we also make it illegal to send unsolicited marketing mail (not email, which can be easily filtered/unsubscribed from) please? It’s a pain to have to “opt out” from those annoying paper-wasting weekly Xfinity mails, when I clearly don’t want to use their service and never signed up for their ads using my new address anyways (I wonder how they learned about it, huh). But no, I have to find a special link to unsubs…

We get letters from Comcast almost every week asking us to switch to Comcast Business at our office, and we're on Comcast Business! (they are literally the only internet provider in our town and their max upload is 40mbps...)

So frustrating.

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

#754

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

tpxl wrote: post #477
jjnoakes wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this legal? I assume if they wanted to (which admittedly is unlikely) they could send you to collections for not paying for the renewal that you agreed to when you subscribed.

In short, no it's not legal. Just because they can't take the money from you doesn't mean you don't have to pay them.

The subscriptions are fixed terms. Not lifetime. Why should they be allowed to bill me beyond the subscription term?

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

#755

Post by Izkata »

dinvlad wrote: post #752

Can we also make it illegal to send unsolicited marketing mail (not email, which can be easily filtered/unsubscribed from) please? It’s a pain to have to “opt out” from those annoying paper-wasting weekly Xfinity mails, when I clearly don’t want to use their service and never signed up for their ads using my new address anyways (I wonder how they learned about it, huh). But no, I have to find a special link to unsubs…

> and never signed up for their ads using my new address anyways (I wonder how they learned about it, huh).

They target the address and then get the owner's name from public records.

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

#756

Post by idworks1 »

Anecdata (only because I don't have access to the data anymore). Customer satisfaction is so much higher when they get a one click unsubscribe. In fact, when the friction is so low, the customer is likely to start the subscription back.

I say this as someone who worked in customer service automation. The worst customer satisfaction score with lowest rate of re-subscription is from companies that make it hell to unsubscribe.

I've seen customers send messages like "Cancel and refund immediately!" Since our response was ai driven, we cancel and refund no questions asked in less then a minute (we do fraud check in the background). Many times you get a response back from the customer apologizing for their tone and praising the product. Some of them restart the subscription a cycle or two later.

When you make it hard to cancel, you lose customers on the long term. Make it easy, in fact make it friendly. Unless you are selling a shady product, there is no reason to believe customers won't come back.

Edit: typo

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

#757

Post by therealdrag0 »

MaXtreeM wrote: post #673
ghostpepper wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to this article? A lot of people consider it a serious newspaper still so there is an apparent disconnect here.

I think it's this one [1] and this is the text from it without WSJ paywall [2], but the main issue was with the video included in WSJ not in the article text itself. If I remember it correctly it is few clips from Pewdiepie's videos stitched together out of context to make him look bad. Note that I am not saying that he did not push his jokes too far but still a "serious newspaper" should not take short clips out of…

Sorta off topic but I read a “not that we’ll know old novel” recently and was surprised to find out that PDP read it as party of his book club (which I didn’t know existed). It changed my view of him a bit that he reads serious books and talks about them, whereas I thought he only fucked around to entertain children.

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

#759

Post by Joeri »

idworks1 wrote: post #756

Anecdata (only because I don't have access to the data anymore). Customer satisfaction is so much higher when they get a one click unsubscribe. In fact, when the friction is so low, the customer is likely to start the subscription back. I say this as someone who worked in customer service automation. The worst customer satisfaction score with lowest rate of re-subscription is from companies that make it hell to unsub…

There is this common perception of companies as if they are entirely rational organizations, and every policy that we don’t like exists because it is profitable and benefits the company at the expense of the customer. But sometimes bad policies are just bad, they benefit no one, and they exist for dumb reasons. Maybe call to unsubscribe is one of those policies.
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