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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

#871

Post by asddubs »

onionisafruit wrote: post #223
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…

“What’s easier than making a quick phone call? It’s certainly easier than getting internet access, typing a url into a browser address bar, validating a ssl certificate, establishing an http session, authenticating with your credentials then finding and clicking the cancel button.”

that's not even mentioning seperately fetching, parsing and evaluating the html, css and javascript code, decoding the image formats, often multiple different ones, to render any images on the page and still having to also render the page itself. god help you if it's an SPA and you have to asynchronously make further requests, only to then have to parse those resources also

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

#873

Post by Johnythree »

onionisafruit wrote: post #223
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…

“What’s easier than making a quick phone call? It’s certainly easier than getting internet access, typing a url into a browser address bar, validating a ssl certificate, establishing an http session, authenticating with your credentials then finding and clicking the cancel button.”

Perhaps you are being cynical, but..

I absolutely detest having to make phone calls, especially when a simple email (or web page click) will do the job.

My main hate is companies that make a big fuss about their availability on the web, right up to when you need to contact them, when suddenly they are absolutely uncontactable, unless you are prepared to hang in a phone queue for hours.

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

#874

Post by Johnythree »

Am currently extremely pissed of with Expedia.

They have been sending me a long list of unwanted emails "Because I had dealings with the company". Which I most definitely have not.

And of course there is no way to "unsubscribe" unless I firstly log on. But the trick is that I don't actually have an account. So to unsubscribe from Expedia mailings, I firstly have to create an account.

Needless to say, I will never, ever, be doing any business with Expedia.

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

#875

Post by KennyBlanken »

rich_sasha wrote: post #74
KennyBlanken wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hand that info to the merchant because your credit card company can issue chargebacks against them and that costs them a pretty penny with their payment processor, especially if it happens often. Credit card disputes almost always slant in favor of the customer. Folks just don't seem to realize: you make a reasonable effort with the vendor, and then go straight to your credit card company. I caught a restaurant "…

I believe this doesn't work with debit cards, which are the norm in Europe. Still though, it's a weird system. Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it, with some other party reimbursing me if that goes awry (and I notice).

Living in the US, with some of the worst banking infrastructure in the world, my debit card has an app that allows me to instantly lock/unlock the card, set spending limits, category limits, and even to deny a transaction if my phone isn't geolocated close to the transaction point.

I get a nearly instant alert, sometimes before the payment terminal has displayed "accepted", that there's been a charge on my card.

Also, at least in the US, debit cards have similar fraud rules to credit cards (ie you can chargeback) but the time period is much, much smaller. A week, I think.

I strongly urge you to not use your debit card and use a credit card wherever possible. Aside from better protection, any fraud or mistakes are not involving real money, but credit.

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

#876

Post by mitchdoogle »

hirsin wrote: post #790
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…

Speaking to this myself - I was blown away by Masterclass letting me do this, after I forgot it would renew. I responded to their "hey you've been charged" email with something like "I forgot about this and didn't mean to renew". In perhaps ten minutes I had a cancelation notice and refund. Way more likely to get their stuff again. Bonus points for not sending the bill from some faceless "no reply" address.

Email is a two-way medium. No reply addresses are a terrible dark pattern

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

#877

Post by tpxl »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #754
tpxl wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That depends, if the subscription is until canceled, then yes, it's a lifetime term.

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

#878

Post by myaccount80 »

TheTrotters wrote: post #826
hirsin wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking to this myself - I was blown away by Masterclass letting me do this, after I forgot it would renew. I responded to their "hey you've been charged" email with something like "I forgot about this and didn't mean to renew". In perhaps ten minutes I had a cancelation notice and refund. Way more likely to get their stuff again. Bonus points for not sending the bill from some faceless "no reply" address.

I had a great experience with Audible. I switched from Audible UK to Audible US but forgot to cancel the former. After six months I noticed I had 6 credits I didn't want. I sent one short e-mail explaining what happened and within 15-30 minutes I got a response that said they'll refund everything.

Once I unsubscribed from Audible I started receiving email every 1-2 weeks with 60-70% discounts for couple of months. So I’ve been subscribing/unsubscribing to keep getting nice discount

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

#879

Post by aurumpotest »

barbazoo wrote: post #580
kieloo wrote: post #18

Same thing with The Guardian. Subscribed online and was then told I can’t cancel via email and have to endure a pushy sales call if I want to cancel. Similar experience with The Economist except it was via live chat instead. These experiences honestly make me want to never subscribe to a newspaper again.

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…

I had a different experience with the Economist. I forgot to cancel and was billed. I emailed saying I forgot to cancel, could I unsubscribe now? And got a quick reply saying they'd cancelled and also refunded me despite me not asking.

I recently cancelled again after getting the 1-month renewal warning, and immediately got a 50% off offer, so I'll probably subscribe again.

I had a similarly easy experience with the Guardian a few years ago, based in Europe.

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

#880

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

tootie wrote: post #803
histriosum wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are concerned that the only way to keep people subscribed is to offer them a one-off promotion when they've decided to cancel -- isn't that kind of a tacit acknowledgement that your product doesn't contain the value that you are charging for? To me, it seems a bit like you've actually reinforced the GP's point... On the non-profit point of view, that's hard for me to understand -- I run a small non-profit and…

Almost every subscription is priced to whatever the market will bear and not an actual unit cost plus fixed margin. Our services are digital. It costs us $XX million to operate all the services we do and next to nothing to serve that a single user. In fact we give 99% of our services away for free and only ask for donations of whatever they care to give. Most donors don't actually get anything in return for their mon…

Thank you for that, it's good we have smart people working our nonprofits.

On the unrelated topic of subscription cancelation, what do you believe leads your donors to accept "call to cancel" as an ethical option, compared to the apparent overwhelming majority of people who believe it unethical for the reasons stated?

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