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

niemanlab.org

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

#91

Post by Reason077 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #72
nivenkos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.

That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up. So if you can signup online then you must be able to cancel online.

> "That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up."

Unfortunately I don't think that's true. I'm looking at you, beer52.com! [1]

(And yes, they were doing this long before the UK left the EU, and are still at it today)

[1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F

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

#92

Post by danuker »

alex_h wrote: post #49

How would one go about trying to get this law enforced on a company? I live in California where this tactic has supposedly been illegal for 3 years already, but when I go to cancel my AT&T internet subscription, I still can not do it online and am forced to call.

Perhaps "small claims court" would fit the bill. Maybe there are lawyers specialized in that.

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

#93

Post by mdp2021 »

mikevm wrote: post #9

I’m also annoyed by having to return or mail back routers when disconnecting from ISPs. When you sign up they are glad to deliver and install at no cost, but now you have to waste time or money sending them the equipment back.

It is really not the same thing: they lent you equipment. That «no cost» is not really such, but if it were, you cannot demand further "favours" on the basis of former or other favours. (Or, they could go along the lines of that "fake" «no cost» and charge you for both equipment deployment and full equipment costs incorporating them in the general fees, increasing them.)

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

#94

Post by whazor »

wheels wrote: post #21
_Donny wrote: post #5

Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...

At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or, amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.

In The Netherlands there are companies that will fill in, print, and send cancellation letters for you as a service. They rank very high in Google search.

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

#95

Post by ahartmetz »

hnarn wrote: post #78
t0mas88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's illegal in Europe. You have to be able to cancel via the same means as you signed up. So if you can signup online then you must be able to cancel online.

Source?

IIRC it's a law that is just a few months old.

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

#96

Post by capableweb »

sokoloff wrote: post #19
adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

If they do something like this, it shows such complete lack of confidence in their product. "The only reason why people would continue to use this product is... if we make it sufficiently difficult to cancel". When signing up for a product, if it uses tactics like this, I assume the product is no good, and even the producers of the product know it...

I also dislike this business practice, but I don’t think the only way it comes about is from lack of confidence in product/service. Let’s say you were building a startup and had to prioritize limited resources on everything that sucked about it. You’re talking to users, tracking various metrics, trying to get people to use it, and your backlog of things you wished you could do is 3+ years long. You’d build easy sign…

> You’d build easy sign up before you built easy canceling. Even if you were the least nefarious business owner in the history of the world, the ctime on your signup page would be older than that of the cancel page. Whether it would be 15 minutes, days, or months later is a question, but I doubt anyone has coded their cancel page first.

I think many startups undervalue the value proposition of "It's easy to change away from us" or "It's easy to cancel if you're not happy".

I can't even count the number of times I've heard from users signing up to services I've built that one of the top reasons they signed up in the first place, was because it was easy to migrate away if they ever needed to. Preventing vendor lock-in has always been high up on my list of features for every service I build/am involved in.

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

#98

Post by Manozco »

_Donny wrote: post #5

Living in Europe, I couldn't believe that if I wanted to unsubscribe to New York Times, I would need to call one of their hotlines which operated in US time-zones. IIRC the open hours were after midnight in my timezone, and their local hotline was out of order. I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...

I got this issue with the newspaper "Le Monde" in France a couple of months ago. Had to send them a 8Euros letter to cancel the subscription.

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

#99

Post by revax »

hnarn wrote: post #68
nivenkos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.

This isn't "Europe", it's Germany. Germany is still well known for using fax for government and corporate communication, and there was heavy criticism for how the Covid pandemic was initially handled because faxing records was so common which meant they could not be easily digitized, collected and searched. In Sweden, sending a fax or physical letter to a government instance or private companies rather than an e-mail…

You have to call or send a letter to cancel your subscription of the French newspaper LeMonde.

It's not just Germany.

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

#100

Post by mdp2021 »

Zanfa wrote: post #7

A reasonable legal requirement should be that customers are able to unsubscribe using the same method used to subscribe and the process should not require more time and effort than the initial subscription.

Member lagadu nearby (root post) states it is the case of Portugal.

Edit: according to member t0mas88, it is not just Portugal, or the Netherlands as mentioned nearby: it should be a European directive, not yet implemented by all Members. I guess that this should push heavily on the service providers for general compliance (as opposed to changing the options according to geolocation, as another member here revealed mentioning California).

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