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Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

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Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#81

Post by hayd »

RGBCube wrote: post #60
ethbr0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a great solution -- allow a centralized party to control the front end (and create an audit log), then transmit the intent to the service to act on. I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. But the ceding of front end control to services themselves doesn't work. We already learned that with email / unsubscribe.

> I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. Hard, because the government has authority, a random company does not. I'd still trust my government more than a random non profit company, if my trust decreases, I'd vote for different people to manage the country - which is not possible with companies.

Does the government really need to know every subscription that every person in the county has? This seems like massive overreach/invasion of privacy.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#82

Post by atum47 »

lolinder wrote: post #79
atum47 wrote: post #69

Netflix is such a crook. I had cancelled my subscription a while ago. They gave me the rest of the month to watch (since i already paid that month). Well, I had cancelled because I don't watch anymore. Guess what? Since it was a family plan, my father end up watching on his house, in another city. So Netflix renew the subscription. Fun right? I get a message everytime my card gets charged, that's why I noticed I was…

Do you know the details of what happened here? Unless you know otherwise, it sounds like your father probably ended up clicking the "renew subscription now" button when prompted, not that simply logging in triggered the charge. I'm ready to believe that the renewal prompt was heavily geared towards making it easy to renew, and Netflix should be required to make it equally easy to cancel, but unless you know he didn't…

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal.

the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#83

Post by BiteCode_dev »

orangesquirrel wrote: post #75
RGBCube wrote: post #37

In Turkey, you can cancel any subscription you have through the governments app called "e-Devlet" which stands for "e-Government". It is an awesome system, a service making it hell to unsubscribe? Just cancel it through e-Devlet and if they don't cancel your subscription, you can sue them. Though I think it only works for Turkey based companies, sadly.

[flagged]

Your comment is weird.

OP comes up with an example of a possible solution, and you react like this is some kind of propaganda you have to fight.

It comes out as needinglessly harsh, and you can do this with any country.

I can make up a list of all the awful things about America. But that's just not the topic.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#84

Post by deepburner »

orangesquirrel wrote: post #75
RGBCube wrote: post #37

In Turkey, you can cancel any subscription you have through the governments app called "e-Devlet" which stands for "e-Government". It is an awesome system, a service making it hell to unsubscribe? Just cancel it through e-Devlet and if they don't cancel your subscription, you can sue them. Though I think it only works for Turkey based companies, sadly.

[flagged]

What is the point of this comment?

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#85

Post by superq »

ethbr0 wrote: post #54
RGBCube wrote: post #37

In Turkey, you can cancel any subscription you have through the governments app called "e-Devlet" which stands for "e-Government". It is an awesome system, a service making it hell to unsubscribe? Just cancel it through e-Devlet and if they don't cancel your subscription, you can sue them. Though I think it only works for Turkey based companies, sadly.

This seems like a great solution -- allow a centralized party to control the front end (and create an audit log), then transmit the intent to the service to act on. I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. But the ceding of front end control to services themselves doesn't work. We already learned that with email / unsubscribe.

This service already exists (not not-for-profit). It's called PayPal. It has its own problems, but it does make it easy to cancel recurring subscriptions (if you can find where to do so buried in its menus!)

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#86

Post by thinkmassive »

gizmo686 wrote: post #73
RGBCube wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. Hard, because the government has authority, a random company does not. I'd still trust my government more than a random non profit company, if my trust decreases, I'd vote for different people to manage the country - which is not possible with companies.

The legal framework for a private company doing it is already there. At least in the US, you can always cancel with a properly worded certified letter to the company. You would probably need to give the company limited power of attorney to send the letter on your behalf. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, its essentially the same thing as title companies. You give them power of attorney and they deal with the DMV for…

DoNotPay.com has existed for a while

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#87

Post by themitigating »

atum47 wrote: post #82
lolinder wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know the details of what happened here? Unless you know otherwise, it sounds like your father probably ended up clicking the "renew subscription now" button when prompted, not that simply logging in triggered the charge. I'm ready to believe that the renewal prompt was heavily geared towards making it easy to renew, and Netflix should be required to make it equally easy to cancel, but unless you know he didn't…

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

I would love to test this because I'm pretty sure that simply using netflix after you canceled will not start the subscription again without any prompt. What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#88

Post by superq »

RGBCube wrote: post #60
ethbr0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a great solution -- allow a centralized party to control the front end (and create an audit log), then transmit the intent to the service to act on. I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. But the ceding of front end control to services themselves doesn't work. We already learned that with email / unsubscribe.

> I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service. Hard, because the government has authority, a random company does not. I'd still trust my government more than a random non profit company, if my trust decreases, I'd vote for different people to manage the country - which is not possible with companies.

With companies, it's even easier: just cancel. Even if (as with Netflix) it takes until the end of the month, at least I can just ditch them. Even if elections are fair and regularly scheduled, you're essentially firing and re-hiring an entirely new company administration every n years. This is incredibly inefficient and probably why most govt websites (in every democratic country?) are pretty bad compared to their private counterparts.

And, there's no real incentive to improve, while with private companies, if you don't like them, you just stop paying for them. That profit motive (and threat of its loss) is very powerful - much more powerful than the "I'm helping my fellow citizen by engaging in civil service" (or, perhaps more likely, "I'm accruing power by running for public office").

That's why this "click to cancel" proposal is so important: it keeps companies from becoming embedded, like the incumbent govt that gets lazy and complacent, knowing that they'll never get voted out.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#89

Post by atum47 »

themitigating wrote: post #87
atum47 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

I would love to test this because I'm pretty sure that simply using netflix after you canceled will not start the subscription again without any prompt. What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?

> What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?

Shouldn't matter, right?! Once I cancelled was not supposed to be charged again unless I agree to it.

If my father wanted to renew the subscription, he should use his card, right?

the renewal process should function as a new subscription, if not done by the same person that subscribed in the first place.

Re: Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal

#90

Post by lolinder »

atum47 wrote: post #82
lolinder wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know the details of what happened here? Unless you know otherwise, it sounds like your father probably ended up clicking the "renew subscription now" button when prompted, not that simply logging in triggered the charge. I'm ready to believe that the renewal prompt was heavily geared towards making it easy to renew, and Netflix should be required to make it equally easy to cancel, but unless you know he didn't…

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

Did customer support confirm that that is the feature they were talking about—watching something after renewal triggers the charge? Or is it possible you were talking past each other? The only documentation on Netflix for this doesn't mention this 'feature' [0], and I can't find any discussion of similar cases (which I would expect for something like this). Also, this kind of behavior would unambiguously violate several existing laws, while most dark patterns are arguably legal (though they shouldn't be).

I'm not saying your dad was lying—it's very possible for someone to click on a button like that (or even two—renew and confirm) and not remember it at all. My dad had a freaky call with what he believed to be Paypal customer support about a scam email, in which they wanted him to give them remote access to his computer. He swore up and down that he didn't call the number in the sketchy email, that he'd looked up the number, but on further investigation he definitely did call the scam number. My dad is a perfectly healthy middle-aged adult, but still misremembered what happened.

[0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124418

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