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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

#791

Post by DangitBobby »

llIIllIIllIIl wrote: post #602
derbOac wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one reason I miss one-time credit card numbers. My main credit card used to allow you to generate one-time numbers. You could control the limit on the numbers, how long they would last, you could edit this, and so forth and so on. I loved it because you could give a different unique card number to each site, that would self-destruct after a specified amount of time. It was great for stuff like this because if…

privacy.com

I was about to make this same recommendation. Burner (one-time use) cards, Merchant locked cards, total/lifetime/transaction spending limits. It's a great way to make sure subscription services can't just keep stealing from you.

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

#793

Post by ncmncm »

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…

T-mobile stores are explicitly forbidden to help you cancel service. At the branch I visited, they insisted they were physically unable to cancel anything. It is possible they were lying, but equally possible that corporate did make it impossible for them.

We tried to cancel my mother-in-law's account. Even after they got a copy of the death certificate, they still refused to cancel.

About all you can do, usually, is cancel the credit card they are deducting from, or maybe to get your bank to reverse their charges and refuse any new ones. Do not ever give T-mobile rights to charge for your account, monthly.

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

#794

Post by ncmncm »

MisterTea wrote: post #685
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…

Thankfully living in a big city in the USA there are T mobile stores you can go to and speak to a human being face to face.

At the T-mobile branch I went into, they insisted they were physically unable to cancel service there, and refused to call their service center.

The only way I have discovered to cancel T-mobile service is to get your bank to stop honoring their charges.

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

#795

Post by butwhywhyoh »

Cederfjard wrote: post #774
somethingwitty1 wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An opposite statement can be said with the same amount of authority though: There is a common perception that companies only create policies we don't like through accidents and unforeseeable outcomes, not by specifically crafting policies to benefit the company. But sometimes bad policies are malicious and designed to maximize profits, even at the expense of long-term profits and customer retention. Maybe call to uns…

You’ve only really stated though that these policies are deliberate, which I think few people would have thought otherwise, not that they’re necessarily the best policies there can be. The question is if they’re actually better for the bottom line than the alternative (given the timeframe that the people who make and influence these decisions care about). Is ”squeezing out an extra pay cycle” or two possible missing…

The OP was directly countering the point made by the GP:

"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"

No one stated anything about it being the "best policy it can be".

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

#796

Post by reaperducer »

ncmncm wrote: post #793
throwaway894345 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

T-mobile stores are explicitly forbidden to help you cancel service. At the branch I visited, they insisted they were physically unable to cancel anything. It is possible they were lying, but equally possible that corporate did make it impossible for them. We tried to cancel my mother-in-law's account. Even after they got a copy of the death certificate, they still refused to cancel. About all you can do, usually, is…

So strange. Just before the pandemic, I went into a T-Mobile store and cancelled my hotspot service. No problems. Perhaps it's a regional thing? Or a performance issue for a particular store?

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

#797

Post by _2d30 »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #785
_2d30 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird straw man. No one said that there shouldn’t be customer service on offer. The statement I originally made was that a company shouldn’t be legally bound to provide customer service in every single possible channel of communication (eg handwritten napkins). I said that it’s actually good to be required to provide cancellation through the same channel that the service was initiated from. I’m pro customer service,…

Processing napkin cancellation requests requires just about as much work as any other form of "manual" request -- whether that's over email, phone, etc. There is nothing special about processing a "napkin cancellation" or whatever other form, the process is the same: find the account, do whatever verification needs to be done, and cancel it on the backend. In the end, you still have to have a manual cancellation pipe…

> Processing napkin cancellation requests requires just about as much work as any other form of "manual" request -- whether that's over email, phone, etc.

The costs of running phone support are absurd. You have literally no idea what you’re talking about. Even just spend like 5 seconds considering how you’re going to go through the process you laid out when someone hands you a napkin they wrote on LOL

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

#798

Post by Griffinsauce »

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…

One option supports customers who don't need your service/product _right now_ and the other doesn't.

It's incredibly naive to think that customers are one-and-done for any service. Value is related to context, they may move out of it and back in and your service will make sense again (unless you add costs through shitty unsub. friction that is...)

It's also the difference between an endorsement and a warning to potential referrals. You're not just burning off this one customer, you're hurting your chances with everyone they know.

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

#799

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

throwawaygh wrote: post #728
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…

Some car companies require you to sign you up for a "free" SiriusXM subscription with a new car purchase, which you then have to go through the effort to cancel. I told the dealership I'd never buy a car from their brand again because of this.

How can they require it? Your default answer is "do you want to lose the sale because of this?" If they do, well there are lots of other dealerships.

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

#800

Post by firefoxd »

derefr wrote: post #781
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…

> Customer satisfaction is so much higher when they get a one click unsubscribe. I mean, that's pretty tautological: unsatisfied customers who become not-customers, aren't part of your metric any more! The lower the barrier-to-exit is for your customers, the more survivorship bias there will be in any customer-satisfaction metrics you're trying to track. When there's zero friction to quitting (incl. a high availabili…

That's incorrect. A customer who unsubscribes is still a customer and is counted towards CSAT scores. Note, that for many services you can make purchases without being a subscriber.

Also, modern helpdesks are a lot like Mailchimp. As in they handle customer service from many different companies and can track customers across services and score them.

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