[HN Gopher] "Click to subscribe, call to cancel" is illegal, FTC...
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"Click to subscribe, call to cancel" is illegal, FTC says
Author : spzx
Score : 2630 points
Date : 2021-11-17 07:22 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niemanlab.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niemanlab.org)
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Publishers tend to think of this as "retention."_
|
| My understanding was that "retention" used to be simply a measure
| of how many unique users/customers kept using your product. With
| some implicit (maybe too optimistic) understanding that they
| stayed because they _wanted_ to.
|
| In classic "if your measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a
| measure" tradition, "retention" today seems to be about keeping
| as many recurring visitors as possible, no matter how and no
| matter the reason why they are staying.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I don't think this concept is new. I mean look at the
| gym/fitness market. It is largely defined by gyms looking to
| onboard members with special discounted entry rates and then
| largely leaving them be and milking the monthly payments.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Maybe they confused it with detention.
| travisporter wrote:
| I once had to reset my password for Comcast via web chat. "while
| I'm resetting this, can I interest you in a TV service? Only
| 60/mo no additional fees." Wasted 10 mins of his time getting TV
| service priced out (of course - set to box wasn't included!) and
| said no thanks. Of course as a student my time was essentially
| worthless
| flerovium wrote:
| Does this apply to ISPs? If so, this headline is much bigger than
| it appears. In the US, it can often take a full day to cancel
| Comcast, Verizon, Spectrum...
|
| There are horror stories that require follow up over multiple
| days.
|
| If only laws could fight the administrative burden of insurance
| companies, healthcare providers, credit bureaus...
| omarhaneef wrote:
| And phone service like AT&T. Also my question.
|
| Maybe if they can not force you to take a modem, and then they
| only cancel it with a physical return. Another dark pattern.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Ha, Spectrum very helpfully canceled my home Internet service
| without me even needing to ask when an incoming neighbor fat-
| fingered their new account signup and accidentally claimed to
| be moving into my house.
|
| On the other hand, it _did_ take a full day to get my service
| restored.
| jurassic wrote:
| I vowed never to pay the NYT another dime after the hassle they
| gave me about unsubscribing from their crossword subscription a
| few years ago. It was such a pain, I told to actually cancel my
| news subscription too. Never looked back. These days I mostly
| read the WSJ and it meets my needs.
| kabdib wrote:
| Took me nearly an hour on hold with the WSJ to cancel my
| account. The longer I had to wait, the stronger my resolve got.
| josefresco wrote:
| I wonder if this will apply to Network Solutions, which requires
| you call to cancel services.
| boringg wrote:
| Thank Effing God ... I don't care if your churn metrics go to
| isht please enforce this decision.
| 4monthsaway wrote:
| Finally. Now let's see how often it goes unenforced, just like
| affiliate link disclosure.
| yosito wrote:
| What would the consequences be of subscribing to something with a
| disposable card, then deactivating that card instead of formally
| unsubscribing? Can companies send your information to a debt
| collector or somehow force you to pay since you didn't cancel?
| Can it affect your credit score?
| dejj wrote:
| German law knows "Dauerschuldverhaltnis" (permanent
| indebtedness). If you don't cancel the contract and just cease
| payment, the other party can obtain title against you, and
| eventually impound you.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| True, but easy way to get around this is to just revoke the
| SEPA mandate - which you are always allowed to. You still owe
| the money, but after revocation they will have to send you an
| invoice and wait for your payment. Larger companies will not
| do this as they have no process for this, and rather allow
| termination.
| danuker wrote:
| I would suppose you'd have to actually have a choice in the
| matter. If you have to spend 30+ minutes to unsubscribe,
| surely it's not the only law that applies.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If there's a minimum term/commitment it can be considered
| morally wrong (as you're depriving them of revenue you've
| agreed to pay in advance) and there might be more incentive to
| collect that amount.
|
| If there's no minimum commitment (or it's expired already)
| there's basically no problem. Yes, they _can_ in theory send
| that debt to collections and litigate. Both of these are
| expensive and are unlikely.
|
| If you've made reasonable efforts to cancel you can indeed
| block future payments and let them sort it out. If they want to
| litigate they'd have to explain why those reasonable efforts
| were ignored (and have the court rule in their favour).
| xmorse wrote:
| The best thing the FTC did in the last 2 years
| izzydata wrote:
| I should have waited to cancel my Spectrum so I could sue them
| for the ridiculous phone call I had to have.
| mrfusion wrote:
| This would be amazing for gyms! I've paid for six months now for
| my old gym because I've been too lazy to go there in person fill
| out a form or whatever is required.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Some ask you to mail them a letter.
| kieloo wrote:
| 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.
| dspillett wrote:
| Similar with New Scientist, needed to phone during office hours
| and was on hold a while, which would put me off subscribing
| again in future1 though in fairness they were very quick to
| follow my cancel request, not hard sell on staying, etc, once I
| got through.
|
| [1] of course that is now a moot point as they've been bought
| by DMGT and I refuse to give any money at all to those in any
| way responsible for, or benefiting from, the Daily Fail.
| ghaff wrote:
| The Economist I just didn't renew. Nothing beyond that.
|
| What is true is that, with a lot of magazines, to get the best
| rate you have to select an autorenew option and then they make
| it difficult to cancel. (That may be the case with The
| Economist; don't know.) In general, you're better off just
| paying a bit more and passing on autorenew unless you're sure
| you want to keep on subscribing.
| belval wrote:
| Can confirm that The Economist requires you to chat with a
| human to cancel. The representative will basically try to get
| you a "new" deal to prevent cancellation and the whole
| process took about 5 minutes (with me just saying no to
| everything).
|
| Still better than the Globe and Mail though, had to call and
| talk with them for 10 minutes while they tried to sell me a
| different subscription.
| 3guk wrote:
| 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
| subscription over.
| Spoom wrote:
| 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.
| heartbreak wrote:
| 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.
| emdowling wrote:
| Having dealt with The Guardian and others like them to cancel,
| I say "I will not explain why I wish to cancel nor will I
| reconsider my decision. Please cancel my account. My account
| number is x, my email is y and my address is z."
|
| I usually have to repeat it 3-4 times before they finally give
| in and do it.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Very prisoner-of-war-esque. I might try that if I ever get
| into such a subscription trap. I am just not sure if I could
| maintain my composure enough to keep saying "please".
| criddell wrote:
| In the past when I've had to deal with a retention person and
| they ask why I'm leaving, I usually just say _personal
| reasons_. I 've had pretty good luck with that.
| LanceH wrote:
| In the good old days of paper delivery I used, "I'm moving
| to Zimbabwe." They never had a checkbox for Zimbabwe and
| the call ended there. Now, I guess they'll just pitch the
| online edition.
|
| Maybe I'll try, "I'm about to winter over in Antarctica and
| won't have the internet bandwidth for your paper. Do you
| guys deliver there?"
| smilespray wrote:
| Tough luck, they've got decent semi-decent bandwidth down
| there these days.
|
| Perhaps Mars?
| aliher1911 wrote:
| When I had to deal with "customer retention dept" as a part of
| cancellation I was saying that I'm moving to another country
| and that immediately killed their interest.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Same with the UK subscription craft beer service, beer52.com
| [1]. Subscribe easily with a few clicks, but they make you call
| during office hours and endure 10+ minutes on hold to cancel.
|
| Sadly in the UK I guess we won't get the benefit of any new EU
| legislation to address this.
|
| [1] https://ibb.co/r4LfK5F
| ookware wrote:
| When I had an account with Beer52 I them and said,
| effectively, "This is my notice to cancel and the main
| motivation to cancel is because of anti-consumer behaviour
| like having to call to cancel. I do not authorise any further
| payments and any payments you do take will be subject to a
| dispute with my credit card company".
|
| To their credit they did send me a reply saying my account
| had been cancelled and I never spoke to anyone on the phone.
| mrmattyboy wrote:
| Hah, literally saw the title of the post and came to comments
| to find beer52 (after dealing with them over a year ago)...
| must say something about a company.
|
| But I immediately cancelled with card after I tried to cancel
| the subscription. I misread that and thought I'd cancelled,
| then got stung with a bill, but they didn't send as they
| couldn't take payment. So I retried to cancel and realised
| what had happened... I think the most annoying bit that that
| you can _try_ to cancel on their site and then, after
| answering several questions (are you sure if we offer X or
| Y), several pages later, they tell you that you need to call
| them (IIRC the wording if you skim read it almost makes it
| sound like you _have_ unsubscribed.
|
| For a 'hip' beer company, I was surprised at how baroque it
| seemed.. I refuse to recommend them to _ANYONE_ , even though
| I actually quite liked the beer.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I thought of beer52 too, but not because I was thinking of
| cancelling (I quite like beer52)
|
| But because they offered a free month to wine52. Easy to sign
| up, phone up to cancel
| sodality2 wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder what little things differ between
| countries. But this is new to me. Is it true that you find
| that hold time to be annoying/out of place in the UK? I once
| was on hold with an insurance company for ten hours... I
| began to wonder if 1. something happened that got me stuck in
| the queue, or 2. if they even had a single person working the
| lines.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| This is the FTC, not the EU (as far as I'm aware theres no EU
| legislation planned or in place for this).
|
| Of course you could argue that the EU might do it one day,
| but you could say the same about the UK.
|
| That being said I thought it already was against UK law.
| Maybe I got that wrong, or there are loopholes around it, or
| its just not heavily enforced. Who knows
| kuschku wrote:
| The EU regulation on this was already passed several years
| ago, and is already enforced in some countries, it should
| be universally enforced by the end of the year.
| rlpb wrote:
| Any chance of a reference here please? I've been unable
| to find the law (in my case the UK, but an EU regulation
| reference would help) which enacts this, and I'm dealing
| with a dispute at the moment where this would be helpful.
| abainbridge wrote:
| I can't find anything about the EU implementing this.
| Here is a UK document from July 2021 discussing why the
| UK might want to do it, and thus implying that it hadn't
| yet - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government
| /uploads/...
| 0898 wrote:
| Fun fact: The Guardian's owner has PS1 billion in assets.
| 0des wrote:
| That is not relevant. Perhaps on Reddit people are likely to
| find that to be a persuasive negation of the topic you're not
| addressing with this remark.
| flyingfences wrote:
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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. offering
| the easy cancel button for California residents only because
| they have to. It'll be the same with this piece of legislation.
| Sure they'll do it for US residents but they'll continue to
| pull the same crap for us here in Canada and elsewhere. They
| deserve to go out of business in my opinion and I hope they do.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| As a WSJ subscriber I'm so used to their blunt "to the point"
| editorial style that I find Economist articles too long
| winded and short-storyish. I always get 5 paragraphs in and
| still can't figure out what the article is getting at. Ain't
| nobody got time for that.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Similar to OP, the WSJ was the newspaper whose cancellation
| process caused me to stop subscribing to newspapers.
| algesten wrote:
| I'm subscribed digitally using apple app subscription. That
| means I can just end it whenever and The Guardian wouldn't be
| involved.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| But can also only read your newspaper subscription using
| Apple's walled garden rather than a web browser.
| csee wrote:
| Don't subscribe again. You can read all these articles for free
| via archive. If they're going to be doing abusive things to you
| like that, you have a duty to pirate their content.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| I agree. And we should also apply this ethic to even more
| important things society withholds from people as an act of
| violence: housing, food, etc.
| dudul wrote:
| I see a lot of comments about hellish phone calls to cancel
| subscriptions.
|
| Every time I have to make such unpleasant call (usually an ISP or
| phone carrier) I always start the conversation by telling the
| representative that I'm recording the call on my end. After that
| it's usually pretty smooth.
| watchdogtimer wrote:
| This is one of the biggest benefits of using a virtual credit
| card from services like privacy.com or Capital One's Eno. Just
| create a card online specific to the service to pay for it, then
| cancel the card when you want to unsubscribe.
|
| Capital One lets you create an unlimited number of cards at no
| charge.
| petilon wrote:
| Not quite. Now the business can send you to collections.
| 0des wrote:
| Which company sent you to collections?
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| If you provided a pseudonym, how would they associate it with
| you?
| 1shooner wrote:
| Have you done this before successfully? I wouldn't just stop
| paying for a service to without following the agreed-upon
| termination process, it sounds like a great way to get referred
| to a collection agency.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Use a prepaid gift card, give a pseudonym.
| [deleted]
| torsday wrote:
| Looking at you Economist .
| bilalq wrote:
| Which regulatory body can make "sign up for gym membership in
| person, send registered mail to cancel" illegal? Unethical
| subscription processes happen even outside of tech.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| The link won't load for me, but based on a quote from the full
| FTC ruling someone else posted, I'm pretty sure it's the FTC
| and this rule would do just that. The ruling seem to be much
| broader than the headline implies.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| AOL's revenue would have been much lower if this had been the
| policy back at their peak.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| I signed up for an introductory rate subscription to an online
| publication, then when the introductory rate was running out, I
| thoroughly intended to just let it continue at the higher rate.
|
| By chance, I noticed that if I DID want to cancel, I needed to
| call. The wrongness of the tactic made my decision for me. I
| called them right away to cancel and let them know that I would
| have continued with my subscription, but I wouldn't pay for a
| publication that used unethical retention practices.
| thayne wrote:
| This article is talking primarily about publishers. Does it also
| apply to other subscription services, like say, an ISP?
| eckesicle wrote:
| Meanwhile in Scandinavia:
|
| You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in any
| way that is most comfortable to you. [0]
|
| For example, you can:
|
| * send them a letter
|
| * send them an email
|
| * call them and tell anyone who picks up the phone
|
| * write it on a napkin and hand it to an employee
|
| All are equally legit and legally binding.
|
| Companies obviously do not want to deal with the manual overhead,
| so services typically have an easily accessible button for you to
| click.
|
| Furthermore, companies are required to notify you at least 1
| month before any contract is extended and offer you an easy way
| to cancel - and if they don't you can cancel at any point and get
| refunded. [1]
|
| [0] for example in Finland: https://www.kkv.fi/sv/information-
| och-anvisningar/kop-forsal...
|
| [1] for example in Sweden: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-
| lagar/dokument/svensk-f...
|
| EDIT: Just realised Finland isn't Scandinavian, but oh well :)
| tzs wrote:
| If I write your name on a napkin along with a request to cancel
| service and hand it to random employee of some company you have
| a subscription with, how do they verify that it really came
| from you?
| aeternum wrote:
| This seems really annoying. You can unsubscribe to most things
| in writing as well in the US.
|
| The issue is that it takes only a misclick to subscribe,
| whereas writing and mailing a letter or getting a napkin and
| travelling to the company's HQ takes considerably more effort
| (few companies have humans answer the phone).
|
| Seems that Scandinavia needs to change their laws if the goal
| is to make it easy for the consumer.
| ess3 wrote:
| I feel like this is missing the point. The point is that it's
| illegal to reject a cancellation no matter the medium it was
| delivered on. So in order to not deal with the overhead and
| legal trouble of managing napkins that people slip your
| employees, you're incentivized to make it as easy as possible
| aeternum wrote:
| Because it does not solve the problem. Shady online
| subscription companies can simply put the office somewhere
| inaccessible and not accept e-mail/calls from customers.
|
| The law should outline mediums that companies must accept.
| IE have a published webpage or e-mail address that allows
| unsubscribe.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I believe the point is that this isn't acceptable in the
| Nordic countries
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This seems really annoying.
|
| The most annoying part is that in any thread like this the
| top comment invariably ends up being some smug observation
| that <insert European country here> is clearly better than
| the US.
| kreeben wrote:
| What's the English word for when you're angry about
| something but you aim that anger towards a whole other
| thing?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Who is angry? I am tired of the divisive nature of this
| kind of rhetoric, and I am invested enough in the HN
| community that I want it to stop. I do not have a lot of
| spare emotional capacity for Internet drama, so if it
| graduates from annoyance to actual anger, I will simply
| abandon HN.
| chrsig wrote:
| The solution to this is to help the US rise to the
| occasion, not complain about it on the internet.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Many of us are trying to do exactly that. Can you explain
| how smugly proclaiming "see how we are better than you!?"
| furthers the conversation? It is not a constructive
| comment, it does not offer any meaningful insight to how
| we might improve the US. It's just divisive.
| chrsig wrote:
| Showcasing a better system that the US could emulate is a
| great way to offer insight into how the US could improve.
|
| Interpreting it as "See how we are better than you!?" --
| literally no one has said this. Interpreting it like that
| is just putting insecurity on display.
|
| Given the choice of two reactions:
|
| - "Geez, that system does sound better than what we've
| got going on here, we should consider adopting it"
|
| and
|
| - "I get it, you think you're better than us! stop being
| so divisive!"
|
| ...which do you think would lead to positive change?
| which do you think is a more fair interpretation of what
| the OP actually said?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Interpreting it like that is just putting insecurity on
| display.
|
| Of course, that's exactly it. Responding to every single
| thread about the US with "I don't understand why the US
| is this way, we do it better" isn't divisive at all. And
| anybody who suggests so is insecure.
|
| I prefer a constructive discussion. This ain't one.
| wussboy wrote:
| Is it? We reject this logic in other areas (sexual
| assault comes to mind). Why is it valid here?
| chrsig wrote:
| Can you expand? I don't understand what you're trying to
| communicate.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Comments like that though are really just a viable solution
| in disguise -- make the U.S. more like said country
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's impossible. Said country differs dramatically from
| the US on almost every meaningful measurement, from
| population size, density, style of government, cultural
| history, existing systems, etc.
|
| And it begs the question that said country's system is
| _actually_ better. In some metrics maybe it is, in others
| perhaps less so. And there 's no reason to believe that
| US citizens' priorities on that will be the same.
| jagrsw wrote:
| > Said country differs dramatically from the US on almost
| every meaningful measurement.
|
| Some differencies are relevant, some not. Population
| density has nothing to do with the regulation re ease or
| assymetries related to canceling contracts.
|
| I suspect the vast majority of US population would simply
| want to import the nordic ways of dealing with the
| discussed topics if there was a bigger discussion on it,
| as it'll save a lot of frustration/money, while it
| doesn't seem to unfairly disbenefit companies (for
| whatever definition of disbenefit). Nordic ISPs are
| probably doing fairly well (Telia et al).
|
| So, it's a question: why it's so hard or takes so long
| time to implement things in US, which have no obvious
| drawbacks and improve quality of people lifes? In the end
| it's also a representative democracy.
|
| This is HN, saying "we're having this process in country
| X, and it's clearly worse than in country Y, and the
| reason is 'culture and history'" might be a technical
| explanation here, but when it's used as a statement of
| support, it "does not follow".
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I tried to delete my Spotify account (in Sweden). Not just
| cancel, but delete because they inexplicably put my profile on
| the Internet in full display and I was not even a little bit
| okay with that.
|
| I think 7 different "yes I'm really sure, yes despite the sad
| violin music and yes despite the images of sad puppies", a
| support ticket, several emails going back and forth confirming
| I'm really sure, and then a few more forms assuring I'm
| absolutely sure I want to do this.
|
| I don't... know what they think they are accomplishing with
| this obstacle course. If anything this nonsense makes me want
| to remove the account even more. If it was just a button I
| might have come back later, but they can rest assured they will
| never see me again after that nonsense.
|
| If that means listening to gramophones for the rest of my life,
| so be it.
| antasvara wrote:
| I think the general idea is that if they make it difficult
| enough, some people might just decide that it's not worth
| canceling. I'm sure there's some metric that says most people
| canceling a subscription are unlikely to resubscribe, so
| making it difficult to do so probably increases the
| likelihood of keeping you by some small percentage,
| offsetting your likelihood of coming back.
|
| The NY Times is a great and slimy example of this. Canceling
| the subscription requires a phone call or online chatbot,
| which make a people less likely to cancel. When you do try to
| cancel, they offer you a deal to stay. You have to reject
| that deal to finally cancel your subscription. While this is
| clearly a bad customer experience, I can almost guarantee
| that it increases their retention rates.
|
| Ultimately, a business is hurt a lot less by giving a poor
| experience to someone already canceling their subscription.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I'm sure their metrics are right overall.
|
| In my case, however, they were wrong: I wanted to pause The
| Economist as we had a baby and I wasn't going to read a
| weekly newspaper for a bit... or anything but try to get an
| infant to survive and try to get some sleep :P
|
| They have a particularly dark pattern where it APPEARS they
| have an online one-click cancel; they make you go through
| the whole rigamarole of Yes I'm sure / No I don't want a
| deal; and only _then_ they send you to an agent, who tries
| to chat you up about your neighbourhood and build a bond
| suggest helpful tips to make time to read and generally
| talk about anything except cancelling your sub.
|
| As a result, my blood is filled with dark seeping hate for
| The Economist, and what was going to be a 3-month pause is
| now a life-long mission to dissuade everybody I can from
| sending them a penny - same as with Goodlife fitness :D.
| theK wrote:
| I hate so many companies just because of these "make it
| difficult" policies... it's just disgusting. NYT did it to
| me as well, they will never see a penny from me again.
| Economist? It was just clicking around in the site! I
| unsubscribed and resubed from them multiple times and am a
| happy subscriber right now as well!
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| I was fortunate enough to subscribe to the Times through
| the Apple Subscription platform. Only took me one click
| to unsubscribe.
| daedalus_f wrote:
| Thats changed then - several years ago they gave me a
| right dance involving phone calls and emails. Lost me as
| a customer for good.
| Semiapies wrote:
| The UK _Times_ did the same thing to me, except I had to
| call at 2am my time (no 24-hour service) in order to sit on
| hold and then get the "are you aware of all the
| features?/we can give you a special deal" pitch some poor
| woman with a cough had to read.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Canceling the subscription requires a phone call or
| online chatbot,
|
| This is a reason I subscribe to thinks using Apple's IAP if
| I have a choice (eg. equal price). the app gui is great.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think a lot of businesses greatly overvalue behavioral
| economics as a means to control people. Nudging doesn't
| seem to work nearly as well as it's "supposed" to when
| implemented in real world scenarios. Heck, even in a
| laboratory setting the effects are honestly pretty sketchy.
|
| And that doesn't even factor in disgruntled ex-customers
| going around telling everyone they meet about their
| experiences.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is a separate problem from that. It's really easy to
| cancel a Spotify subscription. It's nearly impossible to
| get your (free) account deleted, though. This is largely
| because early-stage Spotify delegated account management by
| allowing people to create accounts in Facebook and Google.
| Pokemon Go had this issue, too, with a bunch of people
| opting to create accounts through Google since it was the
| easiest way if you were using an Android device, but then
| it became literally impossible for the first two years of
| the game's existence to extricate the account from Google
| and make it native to Niantic's own databases or link it to
| a different Google account.
|
| It's just something these startups don't even think about
| when rushing to market. What happens when someone changes
| or gets rid of their Facebook account?
| Zanni wrote:
| I'm sure it improves retention, but it also negatively
| affects their subscription rate (probably not as much or
| they wouldn't do it). The _primary_ reason that I won 't
| subscribe to the NYT is their cancelation policy. Barriers
| to exit are barriers to entry.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >probably not as much or they wouldn't do it
|
| Bold of you to assume these companies are rational actors
| dgellow wrote:
| Send an email mentioning you want to delete your accounts and
| all your personal information from their system, according to
| GDPR. They have 30 days to comply.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| A non EU resident doing bussiness with a non EU company has
| no protections under GDPR. Even if you are an EU resident,
| the scope of GDPR's extra judicial reach is not entirely
| clear. Merely accessing a foreign site as an EU resident
| does not subject it to GDPR. The site needs be actively
| targeting the EU in some way.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Spotify is a Swedish company.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > they inexplicably put my profile on the Internet in full
| display
|
| Do you mean this page?
|
| https://open.spotify.com/user/daniel
|
| That data is also visible to anyone in the app, and you can
| mark playlists as private.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| See, if they hadn't had such an annoying deletion process,
| I might have come back after learning that. But I won't. I
| will never.
| tbabb wrote:
| I suspect from personal experience that companies
| underestimate how much business they are truly losing due
| to spite alone.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Man, I remember the ordeal that was trying to cancel a cell
| phone plan when I was a broke student studying abroad. Had to
| plead with them in arcane, formal French (a real pain
| considering I wasn't even fluent in everyday, conversational
| French--ended up needing help from a native French friend) on
| stationary and they _still_ rejected my cancellation and
| continued to charge my French bank account. I tried closing my
| French bank account, but they wouldn 't let me (IIRC because
| the cell phone provider was making ongoing withdrawals) so I
| just moved all of my money back to my US account and let the
| French account go into the red. The French bank continued
| sending me demands for money. After several years, they
| eventually notified me that they would be closing my account
| because I was delinquent.
| napo wrote:
| 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
| notification one day that I'm breaking the law and owe some
| crazy amount of money.
| dmurray wrote:
| This isn't really the opposite experience! You had the same
| experience, with banks headquartered in different
| countries. I still await the experience of your fellow ex-
| pat who spent their blood, sweat and tears to sign up for
| an expensive service but cancelled with the wave of a hand.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| 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 as well, but I'm less sure since I
| route most of my transactions through my credit card--at
| the very least it's quite a lot easier to close a bank
| account in the US.
|
| On the other hand, when I was in France just to open a cell
| phone account, I had to bring visa paperwork, proof of
| residence, and a bank account (no cell phone option) and it
| took 24 hours to open the account (compared with ~15
| minutes + a credit card in the US).
|
| I'm sure there are lots of things that are more difficult
| in the US, but France excels at bureaucracy in my
| experience. I should also note that I love France in
| general and its investment in nuclear power in particular.
| (:
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > I also suspect banks will happily decline/block charges
| as well
|
| Yes, I had to do this on my debit card for an autoship
| that I signed up for.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Former Tmobile customer here. I ended up with an account
| on my credit report because tmobile never actually closed
| the account and kept right on billing me.
|
| Twice. Once back in the late 90's when they were called
| something else, I think...and again a few years ago.
| MisterTea wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I don't think you even need to be in a particularly big
| city. I think most cities of at least 50k population have
| one even if it's just a kiosk in a mall.
| dmurray wrote:
| > I tried closing my French bank account, but they wouldn't
| let me (IIRC because the cell phone provider was making
| ongoing withdrawals)...The French bank continued sending me
| demands for money.
|
| This is the worst level of fraud. The bank is pretending to
| be providing you a service here! But instead they funnel your
| money to someone else.
|
| I had another variation of this, with AIB in Ireland, in case
| anyone ever thinks of doing business with them. Vodafone
| started billing me for a defunct account, due to (I
| charitably believe) an operational error. AIB refused to
| revoke Vodafone's unlimited access to withdraw funds from my
| account.
|
| I'd guess the scope of this fraud is in the billions to
| hundreds of billions EU-wide, but it doesn't seem to have
| come to the attention of regulators yet.
| elwell wrote:
| How does this law translate to decentralized
| contracts/subscriptions? It may not be possible to support
| these analog mediums on an Ethereum smart contract for example.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Why? Can't a company make it so that there's a "cancel
| contract" method? I am not an Ethereum expert, I just don't
| understand, to be clear.
|
| I'm sure this is far more basic than what you know how to do,
| but this seems pretty simple to add a "cancel contract"
| method that seems like it'd meet the requirement to be as
| easy to cancel as it was to set up. The account status seems
| like they can at any time just read it off the smart
| contract, they already do for balance monitoring each month
| in this example.
|
| https://www.sitepen.com/blog/smart-contracts-a-tutorial
|
| Is the issue that there will be a bunch of extraneous data on
| the chain or something when, say, Verizon puts their entire
| customer database onto Ethereum?
| elwell wrote:
| I was more so referring to having to support the handing of
| a napkin to an employee.
| Spivak wrote:
| You'll probably have to make it so that either party can
| cancel contracts.
| antihero wrote:
| I don't think the law really cares about this sort of thing.
| ferdowsi wrote:
| Seems like smart contracts aren't so smart if they don't
| support easy cancelation mechanisms.
| elwell wrote:
| Our future digital overlords might choose to integrate
| humans into the hivemind to support these analog
| cancellation requests, but gas costs would certainly spike.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I'm a bit ignorant of smart contracts and I'm not a lawyer,
| but presumably the service provider would have to take
| whatever action would invalidate the subscription.
|
| It gets weird with escrow though, because it's possible the
| law could treat money in escrow (like in a contract account)
| as already prepaid- if you wrote a contract to be paid every
| month for 12 months provided that a given key to a service
| stated valid and funded the escrow for the 12 months, it's
| possible the court would rule that you bought 12 months of a
| product, not a subscription.
|
| I'm not aware if this has been litigated.
| bjoli wrote:
| Sixt (car rental) did not follow these rules. The procedure was
| something like "write a letter to out german head quarters".
|
| I ended up making a GDPR request for them to first send me all
| data they had and then remove any data (including email
| addresses) they had on me. I will hopefully never have to use
| their services again.
| kazinator wrote:
| Avis sends me a monthly statement for $0 dollars, even though
| I have not rented a car in years. :)
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Are you renting a fleet? How do you even subscribe to car
| rentals? Is this a thing where if you rent frequently enough,
| you get a discount to just pay constantly instead of per car?
| jpttsn wrote:
| [1] decrees that (but not how) consumers can cancel auto-
| renewing contracts immediately iff the business hasn't informed
| the consumer about auto-renewal in writing.
| euroderf wrote:
| Wellll, Finland IS Scandinavian, in social system if not in
| language.
| [deleted]
| wpietri wrote:
| One other thing I'd like: For digital subscriptions, I'd like
| not using the service for, say, 30 days to automatically pause
| billing. So if I don't use Netflix or read the NYT for a whole
| billable month, they don't bill me for the month. If there's no
| cost to the producer and no value to the (non-)user, there
| shouldn't be a charge.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| It's nice. I m French living in Hong Kong, and in both I
| sometimes have to cancel my credit card to get rid of newspaper
| subscription.
|
| And often, the more the newspaper whines about freedom of the
| press the harder it is to get rid of their legal warning that I
| must pay !!! And there was no contract limit during the 1-click
| 5 minutes sub !!! Mediapart in France was so borderline writing
| me every week after I had to cancel my second credit card,
| being unable to send french snail mail from France, the only
| way they accept ! The first card was for LeMonde.
|
| Totally made me hate the militant press, and in BOTH places,
| it's really insane. Like they treat their readers way worse
| than the government treat them, and yes, even in Hong Kong :(
|
| At least NYT didnt threaten me legally and took a simple email.
| I was so stressed when I cancelled, there was again no frigging
| button. I will never again sub to newspaper it's just too much
| worry you ll have a forever parasitic CC bill until you force
| cancel the CC :(
| napo wrote:
| I also had a terrible experience trying to cancel my
| subscription to Le Monde. In the end I paid a service
| something like 6euros so that they would send the proper
| letter. There's 0 chance I will ever subscribe to a newspaper
| ever again.
| jolux wrote:
| Reading the replies it seems like this law may have
| incentivized some companies to make themselves extremely
| difficult to contact in the first place. How does the law deal
| with this?
| eckesicle wrote:
| It doesn't. The legal framework leaves a lot of room for
| interpretation by the judge. They look at the law itself, and
| interpret the intent of the lawmaker.
|
| Suppose I wanted to cancel a service from a firm that was
| hard to reach. I'd block the payments through my bank and if
| it ever went to court I'd just need to show I took reasonable
| steps to attempt to contact them before blocking any payments
| and then most likely win the case.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I'm interested to know:
|
| * Does this apply to all of Scandinavia, or only specifically
| Finland and Sweden?
|
| * How do they avoid abuse of the system? I.e. I unsubscribe you
| on your behalf by pretending to be you. Surely at least one
| person must be doing this maliciously on a constant basis.
|
| * How many subscription companies are there in countries where
| this applies compared to countries where there are no such
| laws? Given the burden, it seems logical to completely ignore
| and actively avoid the countries where this applies.
| creddit wrote:
| > You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in
| > any way that is most comfortable to you. [0] > For example,
| you can: > * send them a letter > * send them an email > * call
| them and tell anyone who picks up the phone > * write it on a
| napkin and hand it to an employee
|
| This is bad, actually. Unnecessarily raises costs.
|
| The FTC's perspective is much improved over this.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Customer choice and experience should almost always trump
| "increased costs".
|
| Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of
| their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness
| just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they
| explicitly don't have to deal with all that.
| creddit wrote:
| > Customer choice and experience should almost always trump
| "increased costs".
|
| No it shouldn't and that should be obvious.
|
| > Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest
| of their comment, where they explain that the extreme
| openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to
| do so they explicitly don't have to deal with all that.
|
| Yes, this is good, but the FTC's ruling does this as well
| so it's better. Only way a company could get around
| offering click to cancel would be to not offer online
| signup. Best of luck to those companies succeeding!
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > No it shouldn't and that should be obvious.
|
| Explain why that should be obvious. If you're building a
| service for a customer, said customer _should_ be your
| top priority.
| [deleted]
| creddit wrote:
| The number of things that could increase the costs of
| providing a service beyond willingness to pay for the
| service is essentially unbounded.
| another-dave wrote:
| I imagine though that you'll still have companies trying
| to stretch the definition of "at least as easy as sign-
| up" to breaking point.
|
| You didn't just "click to sign up", you probably filled
| in a sign-up form to create an account, clicked on a link
| in your email to validate your account, then filled in
| another form to add payment info.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to see companies saying we can
| have multiple, multi-page 'exit' forms and an "Are you
| sure?" email and still be FTC compliant.
| dqv wrote:
| >Customer choice and experience should almost always trump
| "increased costs".
|
| This seems like a very shiftable goalpost, so I would have
| to understand what situations you think _aren't_ almost
| always.
|
| >Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of
| their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness
| just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so
| they explicitly don't have to deal with all that.
|
| This doesn't work in places like the US, in my experience.
| I stopped letting people cancel by phone (which a lot of
| people think is the most convenient way to cancel despite
| what is said here) after a few incidents in my first years
| of doing business: one person calling anonymously without
| identifying themselves saying "Hi I need to cancel my
| account, thanks bye" and two others who called to cancel
| and later said they never called to cancel after we
| terminated their accounts. Oh and the other 10 or so people
| who said they called to cancel and that we just didn't
| cancel their account. It's extremely hard to prove the
| negative that they didn't call. So nah I don't care about
| those kinds of customers. Tangible forms of cancellation
| only: a written notice with your account number and intent
| or the online cancellation form.
| detuur wrote:
| It provides regulatory pressure to make unsubscribing as easy
| as possible. Those costs are entirely absent if customers can
| click a button. Otherwise, if the regulation merely
| prescribes that there has to be a button, there is little
| consequence if the button doesn't work, or you have to jump
| through 50 hoops to find it like in cookie banners. The
| Swedish model ensures that if your button is unsatisfactory,
| you'll be legally obliged to pay heed to any random letter,
| phone call, email, or indeed even napkin that comes in.
|
| It's a simple incentive.
| creddit wrote:
| > Otherwise, if the regulation merely prescribes that there
| has to be a button, there is little consequence if the
| button doesn't work,
|
| This is a ridiculous strawman.
|
| The Swedish model also makes it such that sufficiently
| motivated ass holes can make a company's life very
| difficult. Much better to have sensible legislation like
| the FTC's where your mode of unsubbing is equivalent to
| your mode of subbing. Really, shockingly good stuff from
| the FTC here. Unsurprisingly crappy stuff from Sweden.
|
| Also, looks like the Swedish outcomes are pretty shit!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255702
|
| Will be interesting to see how it goes in the US.
| dguest wrote:
| I don't think most companies are maliciously breaking
| unsubscribe buttons, but there are a lot of websites that
| don't work on some browsers, are badly maintained to the
| point of being unusable, are confusing, or simply don't
| work because the people that maintain them aren't
| professional web designers.
|
| When your website is broken and you continue to charge me
| money, I don't think the onus on me to report the broken
| website, help your (maybe non-existent) IT division to
| find the bug, wait around for them to come up with a fix,
| and then help them beta test it. I should be able to file
| a ticket and say "I don't want your services please stop
| taking my money".
| creddit wrote:
| And how would this case work against you in the FTC's
| legislation? Seems pretty clear that if it doesn't work
| to unsubscribe but it would work to subscribe then it's
| against the ruling.
|
| If the website can't actually add subscriptions then good
| luck to that company surviving!
| lostgame wrote:
| Related to HN: this is part of the reason I always disliked the
| allowing of paywalled links on HN.
|
| I've had several journalism publications that have pulled this
| bullshit, and; frankly - at this point it seems to be part of
| their core profit plan. Probably always was.
|
| It's about goddamn time this was a law.
| chriskanan wrote:
| It would be great to have this universally, especially with gyms,
| where one can click to join but must write a letter and mail it
| via the postal service to cancel.
| illuminati1911 wrote:
| Or even better. Send a fax. :D
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I had the issue with the WSJ. I couldn't believe it was so hard
| to cancel. My solution was to update my card with an incorrect
| number, they canceled the subscription after the payment was
| declined.
| bodono wrote:
| I wonder if this strategy could impact your credit rating
| though?
| acnops wrote:
| Does it? I'm having the same issue
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Years ago I did credit investigations related to mortgages
| as a job. My info is perhaps a bit out of date but I'm not
| aware of any significant changes related to this. If you
| simply ignore an account that has a balance due
| accumulating on it, they'll likely charge it off to a debt
| collector as part of a routine batch process. The threshold
| where this happens varies but 90 to 120 days overdue is the
| common range. You could argue with the collection agency
| that the service provider voided the contract by their
| behavior, but honestly, arguing with a collection agency
| isn't gonna be easier than jumping through the hoops to
| cancel with these scummy service providers.
| ds wrote:
| No. You cant do anything to someones credit unless you have
| their SSN. Damn good thing thats the case also, if you
| happen to be named Jane Doe or Bob Smith.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| This is incorrect, see my other reply to you in the
| sibling thread.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Yup, the local city library dinged my credit report for
| late library fines ($18) and I had to clear it up to get
| a new mortgage. The library did not have my SSN.
| lexapro wrote:
| You still owe them the money technically.
| ajb wrote:
| The problem with that is that you still have a valid contract,
| some companies will ding your credit rating and still pursue
| you for the money.
| ds wrote:
| You cant ding a credit rating unless you have a users SSN,
| which the NYT almost certainly does not.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Nope. To put something on a credit report you need only
| match 2 out of Name, Address, DoB, and SSN. This is one of
| the big reasons why the reports are so inaccurate. It's
| absolutely hellish for people with a very common name.
| Source: when I was young my job was to investigate adverse
| items on credit reports and find legal pretexts to get them
| removed.
| ilikepi wrote:
| > To put something on a credit report you need only match
| 2 out of Name, Address, DoB, and SSN.
|
| So any third-party vendor on Amazon has enough?
| Fantastic.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, the whole industry is insane and scummy. It's
| designed to give creditors as much gossip as possible,
| and congress has only taken rather tepid steps to reign
| it in. At the time I thought I was on the side of
| goodness, as my job was to find legal reasons to dispute
| these negative items on credit reports, submit the report
| back to the bureaus for a rescore, and ultimately get
| people their mortgage. But with the benefit of hindsight
| I can plainly see how I was a cog in creating the 2008
| crash, and how the whole system was ultimately
| constructed to look the other way vs fraud if it meant
| the mortgage went through.
|
| We badly need much stricter privacy rights surrounding
| personal information, but I don't see a viable political
| path to making it happen sadly :(.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Maybe change your name and/or billing address, and _then_
| change your card info?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I cancelled my wsj subscription the other day, I had to call to
| cancel which is insulting but it only took 5 minutes. Wonder if
| someone sued them in between our cancellations. I actually
| cancelled because I found out call to cancel was their policy.
| Wont do business with companies that have this process.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > but it only took 5 minutes
|
| I live in a different country / time zone, wasn't unsure how
| long it was going to take and if my phone would be charged.
| Also English isn't my native language and it adds to the
| burden of having to call them.
| kelp wrote:
| 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 business without
| additional information."
|
| But I have one recent anecdote that suggests this language is not
| specific enough to lead to a very good outcome.
|
| I had a SiriusXM subscription for my car, and paid $52.21 for the
| past 12 months of service. And they wanted to renew me for
| something in the ballpark of $20/month ($240/year). I absolutely
| hate that business practice and having to go talk to them to
| negotiate a better rate, otherwise they auto-renew you for a much
| worse rate than you were already on.
|
| So I went to cancel. There is no click to cancel option. You have
| to call or do online chat. I think the online chat is how they
| can say they follow California law.
|
| It still took me about 30+ minutes to actually cancel the
| service, because the person responding to the chat has to run
| through a script to try to retain you. First they want to know if
| you are enjoying the service. Then they want to know what
| stations you like. Then it's "I'll switch you to this new plan
| that's only $12/month, can I go ahead and do that?"
|
| All the while I'm telling them that the reason I'm cancelling is
| that they tried to auto-renew me to a much higher rate, and now
| they are making it super hard to cancel, which makes me want to
| cancel more.
|
| So I had to go round and round insisting I wanted to cancel.
| Never did they offer me anything close to the previous rate I was
| paying. Though I see now that if I re-enabled my subscription I'd
| get close to that rate again for 6 months. But for a service that
| I only use when I don't have good cell phone coverage, and the
| annual time waste they put me through to avoid over paying...
| It's not worth it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| We talk about UI dark patterns but the people who try to retain
| you are trained in conversational dark patterns.
|
| If anything these are deadlier in retention then in the first
| sale. I'm awful at sales but I like to drink with salespeople
| in hotel bars and otherwise pick their brains and I have had
| news paper ad and radio commercial salespeople share their
| retention playbooks with me. (e.g. "Don't you know your
| customers will think you went out of business if you stop
| running ads?")
| smilespray wrote:
| "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM..."
| powersnail wrote:
| SiriusXM is the worst. My subscription came with the car, but
| luckily it wasn't auto-renewed. However, after my subscription
| expires, I got calls every single day from SiriusXM trying to
| get me to subscribe again. And each time, they used a
| _different_ number. It was ridiculous.
|
| In the end, I just pick up the call, and put the phone in my
| pocket. They still insisted on calling for about half a year
| before giving up.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I had a similar experience, but after picking up and telling
| them never to call me again, they stopped calling.
| [deleted]
| kqr2 wrote:
| Does this also apply to gym memberships which are notoriously
| difficult to cancel?
| kelp wrote:
| It should apply to anything that you've signed up for online.
| They have to provide an online way of cancelling. Only
| applies to California residents.
| cwp wrote:
| Damn, I had that exact same experience. Eventually, in
| exasperation I said something like "I don't want you to respect
| my wishes, I want you to act on them." And somehow that did the
| trick and the CSR cancelled immediately. Of course, I then got
| increasingly insistent spam from them for the next year.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This really ought to be considered an illegal "tying
| arrangement" but since our antitrust laws are so poorly
| enforced and overly-emphasize price (ignoring things like
| quality and customer service) I doubt it's even on anyone's
| radar. The Chicago School strikes again, I suppose.
| neya wrote:
| Fuck New York Times, I had to go through this chaos once and
| promised to never ever use any of their services ever again. I
| even went to the pain of making sure all my ad blockers were in
| full force when visiting the NYT. I developed a strong sense of
| hatred after realize what kind of slimy tactics they used to stop
| you from cancelling a subscription.
|
| One day, I found a loophole. I would email them requesting a
| cancellation for my record and initiated a chargeback against
| them via my credit card company. I had no hopes of getting the
| money back, but then I also had evidence that I tried to reach
| out to them via calls and emails to make them cancel my
| subscription and the chargeback went through and I got a full
| refund. I really enjoyed that feeling knowing that the NYT lost
| more than they made from me as for every chargeback, the credit
| card company would penalize the merchant with a fixed fee -
| usually anywhere from $20 to $50 per chargeback if I'm not wrong.
|
| I wish all those who had been scammed by NYT raises a chargeback
| and burn them to the ground. God, I never realized how
| passionately I could hate a company like this.
| jgb1984 wrote:
| Why would I want to read their woke hysteria anyway...
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| Because it's some of the most accurate and highly detailed
| journalism in the world.
| op00to wrote:
| Reading about opposing viewpoints broaden your horizons, and
| surrounding yourself with media that reinforces your own
| world view does nothing to make your life better.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| Sure -- and I don't read Bolshevik, Nazi, or Cultural
| Revolution literature.
|
| I don't really want to understand how their contemporaries
| propagandize, either.
|
| That your life is better with culture (broadly) doesn't
| mean that any culture improves your life.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| I subscribed to NYT via apple pay (through their website not
| the app) to avoid these shenanigans but the subscription won't
| show up in Apple pay. Does anyone know why?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Apple Pay is just a one-time payment authorization mechanism;
| it does not keep track of subscriptions and doesn't have a
| way to cancel them. You may have been confused with App Store
| subscriptions which are mediated by Apple (and they take a
| cut) and do allow you to cancel there.
| bedobi wrote:
| > God, I never realized how passionately I could hate a company
| like this.
|
| May it burn in hell huh xD sorry but this is so relatable and
| cracks me up badddd
| treyfitty wrote:
| Just to play devils advocate, can't they just send it to
| collections if they really wanted to?
|
| I did the same thing for a gym membership (NYSC) and they
| threatened collections 3 months later. Fortunately, they went
| bankrupt.
| csomar wrote:
| He tried to reach them to cancel his subscription. In that
| case, he could challenge collection and then go to court to
| prove his case?
|
| For the gym, it depends on your contract. Maybe you had a 1
| year commitment but you paid monthly?
| Puts wrote:
| There's been a lot of talk about how newspapers are dying
| because nobody wants to pay for digital subscriptions. I think
| this industry seriously gets to blame themselves for this. I've
| tried subscribing to a couple of magazines back in the days and
| with every one of them it was a living nightmare to get out of
| the subscriptions. Once ending the subscription one even
| started sending what looked like regular invoices with due date
| in red and everything, but if you read the fine print at the
| bottom of the page it just said that "this is to start a
| subscription, if you are not interested ignore this mail".
|
| Generally I don't have a problem paying for culture, and I also
| like reading both news papers and magazines but now days I
| always buy them at the local news stand. I've got enough proof
| that newspapers and magazines can't handle the trust with
| personal information and payment details.
|
| I've also always admired journalists and the craft of good
| investigative journalism. It's sad that these creatives are
| stuck with the most hostile sales people in probably any
| industry (except maybe phone companies).
| thedougd wrote:
| Subscribing through something like Amazon also makes it easy
| to cancel.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| This. To give you an example I signed up for a local Gannett
| newspaper subscription for $17 per month delivered. I have
| since learned...
|
| -twice a moth they claim they send premium content newspapers
| charged at $7 each extra. This content is trivial mass
| produced garbage. -there is no billing statement detailing
| monthly charges. You can pay $5 a month to get an detailed
| billing statement. -if you go on vacation there is no credit
| since they claim all the content is online. -the newspaper
| shows up at my house some days at 12:15 am, so it is devoid
| of most news from the previous day.
|
| I only get this for an elderly family member who reads it
| cover to cover everyday or I would be long gone.
| tvhahn wrote:
| New York Times, I'm looking at you...
| alixanderwang wrote:
| "Email to cancel" isn't as insidious, but should also be illegal.
|
| Superhuman does this. They responded promptly and cancelled my
| subscription, but nonetheless, that friction to not provide a
| synchronous button is always a deliberate choice, and often one
| that's telling of company values.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Dark patterns aren't just for cancellations.
|
| A couple years back, a friend bought me a one year gift
| subscription for Britbox[0].
|
| When I tried to activate the _gift_ subscription, the site
| refused to allow me to do so unless I provided them with a credit
| card number.
|
| Which, from a practical standpoint, makes no sense as it was a
| _gift_.
|
| I wasn't going to provide these wankers with my credit card
| number[0], so I then had to have an awkward conversation with my
| friend as I didn't want her to pay for something I couldn't use.
|
| To their (very minor) credit, Britbox did refund the cost to my
| friend.
|
| [0] AFAICT, much of the subscription industry relies on having
| your credit card details so they can continue to bill you.
| Especially with annual subscriptions, as most folks will forget
| about it until they see the charge on their credit card
| statement. Then the subscription service has another year for you
| to forget about it again. Rinse and repeat.
| slipheen wrote:
| That is unacceptable behavior, and I entirely understand you
| not wanting to condone it.
|
| For people who find themselves in that situation, one practical
| workaround I've found is using a service like Privacy.com which
| lets you generate dedicated Visa cards that you can pause or
| limit charges on
| smoe wrote:
| I would love to use privacy.com but I couldn't find any
| alternatives outside the US. Any suggestions?
| b3morales wrote:
| Unfortunately Privacy.com requires the generated cards to be
| paid by a bank account (rather than a credit card). So you
| have to be okay with them having your banking info.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| If you complain to them about that they will allow you to
| use an ACH number instead of account credentials.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I got very interested in that service but it's ridiculously
| difficult to figure out how one's account get funded. I did
| find it at the very bottom of [0]. Also restricted to US
| customers only. They're not that much better when it comes
| to dark patterns if the "How it works" section completely
| neglects the part where and how you pay THEM.
|
| [0] https://privacy.com/virtual-card
| derbOac wrote:
| 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 they pulled this
| kind of nonsense, you could just walk away and they were left
| with a unique card number that didn't matter worth anything.
| Most of the time, you might only have the number active for a
| few weeks, so if they tried to charge that number say, a year
| later, it was obvious they were trying to use a number you had
| intentionally made limited in time.
|
| This service was discontinued and I really miss it a lot.
|
| I still don't know that I'd go into a contract with any company
| that behaves this way (newspapers included) but it provided a
| layer of insurance in case you missed something.
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| privacy.com
| ww520 wrote:
| Citi and Capitol One have the virtual credit card feature.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| While I'm super glad that Citi added the Virtual Account
| Number feature back to their credit cards, I'm puzzled by
| the fact that the virtual credit card numbers can no longer
| have an associated total spending limit. Now it's a daily
| spending limit which is fairly useless.
| mwest217 wrote:
| As of a few months ago they could have an aggregate
| spending limit, I used it in June.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Not trying to do an advert here, but privacy.com does offer
| this as a service. I've never used them myself, but if you
| don't mind paying a bit of money (subscription fee, I think?)
| this is a good option.
|
| Personally, I think all banks should offer this type of
| service! It sounds wonderful.
| syspec wrote:
| With Apple Card you can generate a new CC number at will, any
| time.
|
| I use this when giving my CC number over the phone when
| dealing with contractors.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > This is one reason I miss one-time credit card numbers.
|
| I don't remember those. It sounds awesome.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| My bank also had (and then killed off) this feature, which I
| used a lot for exactly the same reason (or ordering stuff
| from Aliexpress etc.) I have been looking at privacy.com
| which seems like it may be an acceptable replacement, though
| it has some strange sign-up hoops of its own.
| edge17 wrote:
| This seems to be a common design pattern on iOS App Store as
| well. Download a 'free' app and don't let the user use the app
| in trial mode unless they click a button that gets them to sign
| up, subscribe, or buy some in app purchase.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| I'm here to vent/rant about this. I bought vsco filters packs
| ages ago. I haven't used vsco in a while and I downloaded it
| again recently. Turns out they've moved to subscription based
| method. Fine, I'm sure I can still restore my old
| purchases...false. To even use the app to get to the restore
| button to check this, they made me sign up for an account.
| After much hesitation I finally did only to realize my old
| purchases aren't available anymore.
|
| To top it all off, I tried to delete my account...the app
| won't let you!! You have to go to their website and delete
| it. But wait! First you have to verify your email before
| deletion. No, not verify email before accessing the account,
| verify before deletion.
|
| What a trash of a company. Please don't do this developers.
| baby wrote:
| I really really hate this pattern on iOS. This and the app
| that is completely filled with ads.
| handrous wrote:
| Apple-mediated subscriptions are at least easy to list &
| cancel.
|
| I do wish they'd 1) allow explicit demo versions of apps--
| using IAP to have a de-facto demo that requires IAP to
| upgrade just isn't as good, IMO, because I want to be able
| to distinguish demo-to-paid from nickel-and-diming IAP
| garbage, and 2) have an actually-free filter for apps that
| don't have ads, IAP, a paid upgrade, or heavy reliance on a
| paid account of some kind.
| ratww wrote:
| I agree. The lack of distinction between Demo and IAP
| apps manages to hurt apps with demos, free apps and
| users. I really fail to see Apple's angle on this. Maybe
| they're trying to educate customers to accept IAPs.
| ghaff wrote:
| If anything, I'd expect Apple to favor "fairly priced"
| apps you pay for upfront as was mostly the norm at the
| beginning.
|
| The situation is probably more that free-to-play in
| various degrees of obnoxiousness that don't require an
| initial purchase to use the app--possibly with a separate
| demo version--is mostly what consumers expect these days.
| baby wrote:
| Or that money is where subscriptions are at, not single-
| time payments.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| www.privacy.com www.revolut.com
| dehrmann wrote:
| One or two of my credit cards offers an unmaintained way to get
| virtual card numbers with dollar and month limits. I'd just use
| that. Save the awkwardness with the friend.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I am sometimes uncomfortable developing features which I feel
| arent 100% kosher. For most users they understand what they are
| buying, but there is a certain segment (lets say 1 in 5) who
| dont. As the company needs to grow at all costs u can imagine
| they won't be quick to rectify the situation. Kinda sucks that
| this is prevalent in our industry.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _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 cancelling must be possible using
| the _same_ workflow as subscription or more clearly defining what
| "easy" means would be important.
| IanSanders wrote:
| There's also a "genuinely super easy way to unsubscribe, except
| it unfortunately is experiencing technical problems"
| Humdeee wrote:
| I'm sorry sir, but the Cancel button is only available on the
| Advanced plans. Please upgrade to cancel (and allow 30 days
| for changes to occur).
| [deleted]
| rolandog wrote:
| It should have been stipulated that unsubscribing should be
| offered immediately after the option to subscribe.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| I think "unsubscribe" should only be offered after a customer
| has been charged. Before that, it should be "cancel" or
| "annul".
|
| For instance, if there is a "free trial" period, wait until
| after that expires, and the customer has been charged, before
| offering an "unsubscribe".
|
| But aside from the hair-splitting, yes, you are absolutely
| correct. If I have instant buyer's remorse, I should be able
| to click it away just as instantly.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| "Canceling" a free trial means the trial ends immediately.
|
| "Unsubscribing" during a free trial means the trial
| continues, but you are no longer subscribed so when the
| free part of your subscription runs out it won't
| automatically renew.
| suifbwish wrote:
| What about GYMS that make you show up in person to cancel your
| subscription but make it so you have to talk with someone who
| doesn't work very often.
| hwers wrote:
| > _mandating that cancelling must be possible using the same
| workflow as subscription_
|
| I'd rather not put into the law that strict a requirement on
| our UI design.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > I'd rather not put into the law that strict a requirement
| on our UI design.
|
| But you all had it your way and it is a net negative for the
| actual humans who have to deal with not having that UI
| element available. If it wasn't common practice to skip that
| UI 'option' in the first place, the regulation wouldn't be
| needed now.
| lrem wrote:
| In the meantime I'm sitting here and reading how the way out
| of one service includes registered mail. Probably multiple,
| couldn't figure that out. Fun, eh?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| It's not really a strict requirement. If you want to make
| your cancellation workflow opaque, your signup workflow
| should be similarly opaque. There's no mandate for a specific
| UI, just that you can't fuck over your users more on
| cancellation than on signup.
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| I would like to see 1 reason you would find that this UI
| restriction would be a bad thing.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Let's say you subscribe to something as part of a 3rd party
| bundle, like say you sign up for newsletter A and there's a
| whole bunch of other options and you leave newsletter B
| selected to also subscribe to that. Then the workflow for
| unsubscribing from B would be going through the
| subscription workflow for A. This would be bad for all
| parties: it may be difficult or even impossible for the B
| group to change A's subscription workflow, group A likely
| suffers increased churn as pissed off consumers have its
| subscription manager open anyways, but most importantly
| it's incredibly unintuitive for the consumer to go through
| A to change B, especially if they are only loosely related.
|
| While maybe rare for spam email, it's a pretty common
| scenario for downloaded software. But more generally, there
| are lots of workflows that are substantially easier in one
| direction than the reverse. You'd either need to ban all
| such UIs that are directional, or you open up a huge
| loophole for bad actors.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm gonna need one concrete example of this because I
| cannot for the life of me think of a single instance
| where bundled subscriptions, "buying Showtime through
| your cable provider" shouldn't be required to allow
| cancellation through the place you bought it.
|
| Sure, it sucks day one that 3rd party sellers don't have
| cancellation flows but it's not an intractable problem.
| jjk166 wrote:
| You misunderstand, having the option to cancel through
| the place you bought it is perfectly reasonable, the
| problem is when you can _only_ cancel showtime via your
| cable provider because that 's how you happened to
| purchase it.
|
| For example, I recently purchased a new car. I had to go
| there in person and do a whole bunch of paperwork. While
| I was there, I registered my new vehicle, got an
| insurance plan for it, and financing for the auto loan.
| Imagine if to change insurance providers, I had to go
| back to the dealership and spend 3 hours doing paperwork
| because that was the workflow by which I just happened to
| get my last provider. It would be absurd, and I'd
| probably never go through the trouble even if my
| insurance provider was more expensive than competitors.
| handrous wrote:
| Does... the rule prohibit other methods of cancellation?
| jjk166 wrote:
| It requires just the one specific method of cancellation.
| Good actors will have multiple methods to make things
| easier for people, but the rules aren't for them. The
| rules are for the bad actors who don't want to make it
| easy, and who will do the absolute minimum required. As I
| said before, the issue is the creation of the loophole:
| by specifying that the same workflow must be used, by
| making your workflow highly directional, you can comply
| with the rule while still screwing people over.
|
| Instead by focusing on how easy the workflow is, you
| regulate what people actually care about. If
| unsubscribing via the third party actually is as easy as
| subscribing, that's good enough; but if it isn't they
| have to implement better options.
| xg15 wrote:
| I can understand that. I think the reasoning for tight
| restrictions is mostly to minimize the opportunity for
| dark patterns.
|
| So instead of saying "cancelling must be possible through
| the same workflow as subscribing", regulators could also
| mandate something like the following:
|
| Option A: Design a web unsubscribe workflow once as part
| of the regulation process, consult with UX expert to
| ensure it's accessible and low-friction, then mandate
| that providers must provide an unsubscribe flow that very
| closely resembles the designed workflow (using the same
| steps, same visual assets, etc).
|
| Option B: Design a web API for unsubscribing, mandate
| that providers implement it and leave the UI to browser
| vendors or other third parties that have no interest in
| adding friction to the process. (This unfortunately risks
| a conflict of interest if browser vendors themselves
| offer subscriptions)
|
| I'd honestly have wished that the EU had used one of
| those approaches for GDPR consent management - then we
| wouldn't have the current mess of intentionally tedious
| consent dialogs.
| ketralnis wrote:
| What's your super innovative cancellation UI that's being
| held back by all of this overzealous regulation?
| eropple wrote:
| Other countries do, and it works fine. Why not?
| xg15 wrote:
| Why not?
|
| This is exactly the kind of UI that a company would want to
| sabotage with dark patterns - so I think if any UI had
| reasons to have strict legal requirements, it would be this
| one.
| chadash wrote:
| That's just what's in the summary. The actual policy [1] spells
| this out in more detail with examples:
|
| > _ROSCA requires negative option sellers to provide a simple,
| reasonable means for consumers to cancel their contracts. To
| meet this standard, negative option sellers should provide
| cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the
| method the consumer used to initiate the negative option
| feature. For example, to ensure compliance with this simple
| cancellation mechanism requirement, negative option sellers
| should not subject consumers to new offers or similar attempts
| to save the negative option arrangement that impose
| unreasonable delays on consumers' cancellation efforts. In
| addition, negative option sellers should provide their
| cancellation mechanisms at least through the same medium (such
| as website or mobile application) the consumer used to consent
| to the negative option feature. The negative option seller
| should provide, at a minimum, the simple mechanism over the
| same website or web-based application the consumer used to
| purchase the negative option feature. If the seller also
| provides for telephone cancellation, it should provide, at a
| minimum, a telephone number, and answer all calls to this
| number during normal business hours, within a short time frame,
| and ensure the calls are not lengthier or otherwise more
| burdensome than the telephone call the consumer used to consent
| to the negative option feature._
|
| [1]
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
| xg15 wrote:
| Ah, this sounds a lot better. Thanks for digging in!
| dhimes wrote:
| I would like it better if the word "shall" was used instead
| of "should."
| susiecambria wrote:
| Agree. As a policy wonk, I find it particularly odd since
| "shall" is the language of lawmakers and regulators.
| [deleted]
| apendleton wrote:
| Just responded to another comment to the same effect, but
| this is neither a law nor a regulation, but rather a
| policy statement, probably so they can get away with not
| having to go through APA-mandated notice-and-comment
| rulemaking, so it's deliberately framed as
| recommendations for how to comply with existing
| rules/statutes rather than creation of new ones.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Aren't that the same? I thought 'must' would be more
| appropriate.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Those words actually differ in these sorts of documents
| but are used as "terms of art". Shall is
| a mandatory requirement. Should implies a goal and
| is non-mandatory. Must is not often used, since it
| really doesn't seem different from Shall.
| garmaine wrote:
| Everyone is responding with quotes from IETF and ISO
| documents. But this is a legal context, and it is not
| necessarily the case that they have the same technical
| meaning. I too wonder what the answer to your question
| is.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| "Should" means that there are scenarios where doing
| something is not necessary, and therefore really does not
| constitute a hard requirement. "Shall" means that you are
| inherently required to do something; it is much closer
| (if not identical) in meaning to "must". "Should" is the
| subjunctive mood; there is an implied "if" somewhere in
| there: You _should_ do this if blah blah blah, I _would_
| do this if blah blah blah, etc.
|
| There are probably some subtle connotational differences
| between "shall" and "must" that the average reader would
| not care about (and which I don't feel like figuring out)
| meshaneian wrote:
| In general "should" is a recommendation, not a
| requirement. "shall" indicates a
| requirement "should" indicates a recommendation
| "may" is used to indicate that something is permitted
| "can" is used to indicate that something is possible, for
| example, that an organization or individual is able to do
| something
|
| https://www.iso.org/foreword-supplementary-
| information.html
|
| https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
|
| Additionally, your suggestion of "must" has valid reasons
| for being preferred in contracts over "shall":
|
| https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/conversational/s
| hal...
| DrammBA wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking, what's the point of
| "should"? Usually anything that is not a hard requirement
| is promptly ignored, so I'm not clear why is time devoted
| to create "should" statements.
| apendleton wrote:
| The way they've framed this is not that it's a new rule,
| but rather, a statement as to how they intend to enforce
| the existing rules that are already on the books, and a
| "recommendation" to regulated entities as to what actions
| they should/shouldn't take in order to not suffer
| negative enforcement consequences (in other words, it's
| not "the rule is now that you must do this," but rather
| "just FYI, our interpretation of current
| rules/statutes/whatever is that behavior X is already
| prohibited, so if you don't want to get in trouble with
| us for failing to comply, you really ought to do this").
|
| This is advantageous to the agency if they can get away
| with it because new rulemaking involves a bunch of extra,
| lengthy process under the Administrative Procedures Act
| (they have to publish a bunch of drafts and collect
| public comments on them, then address any substantive
| comments they receive, etc.).
| onionisafruit wrote:
| "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."
| [deleted]
| htek wrote:
| 2010's GoDaddy, is that you? They used to pull this, then you
| would stay on the phone seemingly forever until you got a
| (the?) CSR that would first try the carrot of more services
| for free if you just re-upped then tried to browbeat you into
| the deal if you still weren't convinced. Also, the New York
| times did this, I think you can cancel online now. There
| should be multiple ways people can sub/unsub, but if you sub
| in one manner, you should be able to unsub in the same manner
| without jumping through hoops.
| JTbane wrote:
| This is the most tone-deaf thing I have read today. Logging
| in to a website is miles easier than waiting hours in a phone
| queue.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Don't feel bad. I missed the subtext too.
| jhawk28 wrote:
| I think its pure sarcasm.
| psyc wrote:
| The quotes indicate this is the subscription service
| playing dumb.
| spiderice wrote:
| It's pretty obviously sarcasm, and an example of what some
| ill-intentioned company could try and argue. Thus the
| quotes.
| dfinninger wrote:
| Given the quotes around the parent commenter's text, I
| think they are mocking the absurd response of a fictitious
| company trying to argue that a phone call is easier than a
| button.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Bingo.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Some might try that but one call with the FTC legal team will
| make any company stop that shit immediately.
|
| You don't piss off gov't regulators
| user3939382 wrote:
| > You don't piss off gov't regulators
|
| Yep. If you deal with them you learn quickly that all that
| "splitting hairs" stuff you see in Hollywood dramas buys
| you nothing. For a lot of administrative compliance, with
| the state or Feds, they are judge jury and executioner and
| the rules are what they say they are. Unless you have a lot
| of money and influence don't play games with them.
| twothamendment wrote:
| Yup, the same rules apply to building inspectors. You
| better hope you get the good one because they can twist
| codes around on a whim and they are always right.
| repiret wrote:
| Depends on the inspector and the contractor. More than
| once I've had contractors successfully win arguments with
| building inspectors in the wrong.
| thayne wrote:
| > Unless you have a lot of money and influence don't play
| games with them.
|
| There are a fair number of companies that do these dark
| patterns that have a lot of money and influence though.
| mindslight wrote:
| You're certainly right for personal advice, but does the
| New York Times not have a lot of money? They've certainly
| got the influence bit covered. Once you can buy enough of
| your own bureaucrats to tie up their bureaucrats,
| regulators' power isn't so clear.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| More powerful than that though is that you don't want the
| regulators to have to do any work. Once they have work to
| do they are insanely efficient, at least when it involves
| punishing the person who made them do work.
| daariomj wrote:
| The Economist Magazine makes it extremely hard to unsubscribe. I
| had to change my credit card.
| aczerepinski wrote:
| I suspect for many sites you could change your address to
| California and then cancel online. Sites have had to support CA
| cancelations for years.
| uncomputation wrote:
| This will be great for insurance and gym customers. Both make it
| as difficult as possible to cancel.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| My guess is making it easy to unsubscribe to everything will make
| it more likely that people will experimentally subscribe to
| things in general.
|
| This is actually better for users and legitimate, useful
| services.
| Yizahi wrote:
| This exactly is why every year I think about subscribing to some
| expensive (for me) journal, then google horror stories about
| unsubscribing and abandon this idea.
|
| Some people above mentioned inconvenient work hours when calling
| to unsub, but it's not only that. International subscribers must
| also pay to simply call another country. If will be put on hold
| for tens of minutes or more, then the price of that call will
| easily be more than annual sub price.
|
| I suspect that even if FTC will change something in US,
| international subscribers will still be left out, because this is
| what usually happens in such cases.
| algesten wrote:
| I had this exact experience with New York Times. I subscribed,
| realized I didn't like their editorial style at all, and then
| had to call long international phone calls to get it to stop.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Now, do must click to renew. How many elderly are still paying
| for magic jack, AOL, or other vampiric services.
| daertommy wrote:
| Is this the most upvoted post on HN?
| msravi wrote:
| Meanwhile in India, The Reserve Bank rolled out a new policy
| (from Oct-1 this year) for recurring transactions on credit cards
| that requires the cardholder to provide an "e-mandate" for
| subscriptions with an additional factor of authentication (AFA).
| The e-mandate can be withdrawn at any time by the cardholder,
| giving them control of their subscriptions.
|
| https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=1166...
| rogual wrote:
| I just expect these tactics from periodicals these days. Last
| time I signed up to one (The Economist) I used a pre-paid debit
| card for this very reason.
|
| Sure enough, they eventually gave me a reason to cancel (popup
| modals over their online articles for paying customers) and I
| just emptied the card and sent an email to their customer service
| saying "I hereby cancel my subscription; you are no longer
| authorized to charge my card".
|
| Can't refuse to cancel me if I have no money _taps temple_
| jffry wrote:
| Making them unable to easily collect money from you doesn't
| magically erase your contractual relationship.
|
| They probably still just canceled your account since it's paid
| up front and it'd be more hassle to try and collect on your
| debt.
| rogual wrote:
| Yep, if you've signed an agreement to remain a paying
| customer for a set duration and you pull this, they can send
| collections after you. In this case, I hadn't.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Could they have sued you if they had wanted to?
|
| If, theoretically, there was an unsubscribe button in one's
| user settings that you hadn't seen, and you sent an email
| instead and blocked the payment card?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| No one would sue unless the balance was into thousands, or
| they're just an individual pursuing a vendetta. What would
| likely happen is they'd charge it off to a debt collection
| agency that would hassle you by whatever means of contact
| they have for a couple years until you paid or they gave up
| on it. And when they give up on it they usually just sell it
| downstream to an even more crappy company more willing to use
| aggressive tactics.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Oops sounds both scary and realistic
|
| Maybe the collector would do a credit check to find out how
| much money they could get from you
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Naw, they wouldn't want to pay for a credit check. They
| run boiler room style call centers where the folks
| hassling you work on commission. So they just push
| whatever leads they have to their staff and make it their
| problem to squeeze money out of it. The entire industry
| is really, really, scummy, and barely one step better
| than those fraudsters that pretend to be the IRS.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The email is evidence he's let them know of his intention to
| cancel. Unless there is some major clause in the contract
| that entitles them to more money such as a minimum
| commitment, I don't see a problem.
|
| Granted anyone can sue for anything anyway, but I can't see
| them having a strong case. They'd be paying a lot of money to
| try and litigate this and demonstrate their bad faith in the
| process.
| snakeboy wrote:
| Good thinking. When I cancelled it (No complaints, I just did
| one of the 12 week offers as it's too expensive for me in
| general) they made me go talk to a sales person in their chat
| room, and they actually put me on hold for ~20 minutes while
| waiting for the queue to clear. Then they try to sell you on a
| reduced rate before they'll _let_ you cancel. C 'est abuse.
| cheggisguilty wrote:
| Chegg Study for university students does not link to a cancel
| subscription on their website, you have to search google "how to
| remove sub from chegg" and then you can find a "Cancel Sub" help
| article on the Chegg website. You can not get directly to the
| cancel article from their base website. They should be fined for
| the dark pattern.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Many website I have encountered has similar dark patterns. Its
| not just chegg but other too like facebook. Most people don't
| know meaning of deactivate vs delete (and delete even takes
| like 30 days ridiculous). And many website like Adobe will make
| you follow series of steps like 7-8 pages. And they try to
| convince you shouldn't cancel via examples like "Your following
| services are active you no longer can access them". At last
| page it was like this "Right now we are offering 30% discount
| you can grab this easily etc.".
|
| Till its coded to law I don't think we can expect anything from
| corporation.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Several times, I've seen that the easiest way to cancel was to
| block the payment. Your subscription won't last long if you don't
| pay.
|
| I guess that in theory, they could sue, but not only it is a
| small sum, they also probaby don't want to expose their dark
| patterns to a court of law.
| elwell wrote:
| Consequently, our children's children will never appreciate this
| humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM
| idworks1 wrote:
| 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
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > The worst customer satisfaction score with least lowest rate
| of re-subscription is from companies that make it hell to
| unsubscribe.
|
| Does "least lowest" mean highest? Or did you mean
| "least/lowest"?
| idworks1 wrote:
| oops, that was a typo. Fixed it.
| Joeri wrote:
| 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.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| 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 unsubscribe is one of those policies.
|
| As someone that has worked (briefly) for a company that
| operated in this fashion (and being a partial owner of one
| that the CEO tried to shift to this model...we got the board
| together and fired him), it is not an accidentally bad
| policy. It is actively discussed as a way to squeeze out an
| extra pay cycle (and often more) of payments. In recorded
| meetings or audited channels (such as email) or even PR
| releases, you are guided to discuss it as a "personal touch
| with the customer" and to help "lost customers" resolve the
| issues rather than cancel. You even try to convince your
| employees/engineers that is the reason. But when it is face-
| to-face conversations, the discussions are around the dollars
| and squeezing out as many pay cycles as you can. I know I was
| being a bit cheeky with my first paragraph, but this is
| definitely not one of those "whoops, we didn't think this
| through" kind of policies. If it were, the policy would have
| changed without the FTC or laws being needed.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| There is a third option.
|
| 1. "Whoops, we didn't think this through."
|
| 2. This makes us more money in the end, that's why it's so
| pervasive.
|
| 3. It's difficult to correlate "making more money in the
| end" with our cancellation policy, so we make a measurement
| or otherwise tell ourselves a story consistent with (2),
| even though (2)'s conclusion doesn't truly follow.
|
| This reminds me of topics in government policy, psychology,
| etc.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| 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 forest for the trees, if
| customers who were happy with the cancellation process are
| more likely to return, proselytize for you and so on? Not
| saying that's the case, very open to being influenced
| either way if anyone has data to share.
| bojan wrote:
| A lot of charities in the Netherlands do the same thing, where
| you can't just give a one-time donation, but have to subscribe to
| a monthly contribution.
|
| That is horrible enough as it is.
|
| But then to unsubscribe, you have to call them (during their and
| your office hours) and endure another couple of pitches to keep
| you subscribed until you are finally allowed to cancel.
|
| And then some of them even have a cancellation term of one month.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| In my case it was trivial to unsubscribe, but they then started
| sending me all kinds of letters in regular intervals. And never
| stopped, I still get them years later. I'm certain by now they
| paid more for those stupid letters and pens than I donated in
| the first place. Which is yet another reason for me to never
| waste money there again, as I now know where it's used.
| Epskampie wrote:
| This is the reason i have a label next to my doorbell that
| says: "Donations only without subscription and to volunteers".
| Since then we've not have a lot of charities ring the bell, and
| the ones that do I actually want to give to.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| This kind of practice isn't only in the comms industry. I had a
| gym membership back when I lived in NYC. Called them up one day,
| got a membership within just a few minutes over the phone.
|
| A few years later when I moved, I called to tell them I'd have to
| cancel. I had forgotten to cancel before I moved, so I was
| already in another state (Florida). They told me I had to come
| into the gym physically to cancel, even when I told them I had
| already moved.
|
| I called several times, asking everyone including the manager to
| just let me cancel over the phone. I remember saying "ok so
| you're telling me I have to literally fly to NYC just to cancel
| my membership with you?" And they said "I'm sorry sir, that's our
| policy." After a week or so, I threatened them with a lawsuit,
| and then they complied.
| usrusr wrote:
| This is why consumers are so eager to use obscenely expensive (in
| terms of what the recipient actually gets) payment methods like
| Google/Apple in-app subscriptions.
| timwis wrote:
| Thank goodness! When trying to cancel NY Times, I had to cancel
| it in PayPal because I couldn't get through to NYT!
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| I would just add that services like privacy.com that allow you to
| create burner cards or cards with specific limits has really
| helped me with things like gym membership or other places that
| may make it hard to cancel.
| timwis wrote:
| This service is great. I wish they offered it in the UK.
| DarthNebo wrote:
| Stripe can be a good enforcer of this. A lot of banking accounts
| opened online refuse to close the same way too.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| I think the hypocrisy of allowing call to cancel and not doing
| anything about to stop it WHILE suing apple (which DOES make
| click to cancel a reality for subscriptions) was probably a bit
| too glaring.
|
| The reason people go for the walled gardens is because the govt,
| which would be the natural control point, has dropped the ball
| totally in terms of online scams and crap.
|
| And no, I'm not talking about going after google for the
| umpteenth time for some random thing - but the straight crap /
| lies / scams (impossible to cancel online subscriptions, bogus
| tech support installing back doors etc).
| timwis wrote:
| I hope they do something like this for gym memberships!
| swayvil wrote:
| Ran into this with Verizon.
| [deleted]
| wallzz wrote:
| in France, it's click to subscribe, send a physical hand written
| letter with signature using a tracking number, and you have to do
| this the right time( usually 2 months before the anniversary), if
| you miss it, you have to wait another year.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Good. The worst experience I ever had was with NY Times when I
| wanted to unsubscribe I had to go through multiple call/chats
| with a person and it was almost impossible since it was hard to
| get in touch with one.
|
| I am glad FTC is doing something others are afraid to do.
| cossatot wrote:
| I tried to cancel my NYT subscription a few weeks ago after my
| heavily discounted rate went up to normal, and the second web
| page in the process offered to cut the price by half, which was
| acceptable to me. Although it is still a pain to cancel, the
| no-haggle rate reductions are nice.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Stuff like this is why I'm a happy ad blocker and piracy user.
| Even if you want to play by the big corporations' games, they
| find a way to screw you over.
| kemitche wrote:
| I've successfully cancelled my NYT sub online before. It's a
| little tucked away but it exists. I remember when I first
| subscribed that wasn't possible - because a few months in they
| sent me an email basically talking about how awesome their new
| "online subscription self management system" is.
| linspace wrote:
| Ah, lucky you. I read your comment on my phone and came to my
| desktop to type comfortably my rant.
|
| Have you ever tried to cancel a loan? The following story may
| or not apply to you. It happened in a small country called
| Spain:
|
| Some time ago I bought a car. They offer you a very nice
| discount if you, instead of paying upfront, finance the
| purchase. Why? I asked the seller, it makes no sense. He gave
| me a list of more or less valid reasons, leaving the most
| important out: the draconian interest rate, which I inmediatly
| noticed. Noticing also the lack of integrity I decided to play
| along and took the loan with the intent of cancelling it ASAP.
| To summarize: it took something like 10 calls and saying on the
| last one that I was going to send a certified mail and
| forbidding my bank to pay a single EUR. I paid the loan and
| saved several thousand euros, even after paying "cancellation
| costs".
|
| The whole enterprise has changed my view about regulation. It
| was regulation that gave me the right to cancel the loan
| against their will, and capped the cancellation costs, which I
| find it amazing they are even allowed, to compensate "for lost
| earnings". After the 2008 crisis a lot of regulation has been
| put in place affecting the banks. It's incredible they are
| allowing still this kind of scam to buy a car.
| mbg721 wrote:
| In the US, financing is also a lucrative profit source for
| car sales, but I think prepayment penalties are less common.
| nickpp wrote:
| You took a loan and "the draconian interest rate" was a
| _surprise_?! I would 've thought that was the most important
| factor.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're missing the "car dealership game" that has to be
| played sometimes. Lots of places will offer you a cash
| discount and/or 0% interest if you finance with them. They
| get cash kickbacks and sometimes a cut of the interest.
|
| Now you, the savvy customer, see an opportunity here. You
| were going to buy the car in cash and so there's an obvious
| play; buy the car, take the financing, and then immediately
| pay off the loan (or when the 0% interest expires). It's a
| win-win right? Not for the bank unfortunately which is why
| nowadays there are early payoff fees and dealerships will
| try to make it annoying to pay them. Terrible terrible
| incentives but the discount can be worth the headache --
| the discount is almost always more than the early payoff
| fee.
| Humdeee wrote:
| > nice discount if you, instead of paying upfront, finance
| the purchase
|
| Save $3,000 today so you can spend $12,000 tomorrow!
| blago wrote:
| I called their BS and told my credit card company that this
| subscription was no longer authorized. They were happy to
| cancel it on my behalf and refunded the last charge.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| When they want you to call, tell them you're deaf. Works every
| time.
| havelhovel wrote:
| The Economist does this as well. Very frustrating to have to
| explain multiple times over chat that I just want to cancel and
| that no I don't want any deals and that yes I understand the
| terms of the offer being made and that no I still don't want
| the deal even though I understand you are telling me that this
| deal really is in my best interest.
|
| And yet I didn't need to talk to any employees at all before
| giving them my money.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Yep, I had this experience with The Economist as well.
|
| It was very difficult to cancel and it was by phone only.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The economist also does not have unsubscribe links in their
| marketing emails, the ones that you get after you're a
| subscriber.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| That's why I mercilessly hit the spam button on such
| emails. Any email which is slightly uncalled for is spam in
| my books.
| la6471 wrote:
| Not only news sites , but all kinds of business should adhere
| to this. Good job!
| analog31 wrote:
| My family just cancelled NY Times and our local paper, and
| switched to online-only for the NYT. It was quite a rigamarole.
| First, we had to call during business hours. Next, they went
| through a lengthy selling process before letting us cancel.
|
| We were simply filling the bin with too much paper every week,
| and the local paper raised its prices. I can get _Prince
| Valiant_ online.
| 88913527 wrote:
| Anyone with access to a public library (photo ID will get you a
| free library card) can access eLibrary services that get
| updated daily. No need to pay for NYT, for WSJ, or any major
| national newspaper. By paying taxes, you're already paying for
| digital access to this media.
|
| I applaud the FTC's decision but I wish people realized there's
| more practical means for accessing media that is more
| frequently locked behind paywalls these days. You fight it with
| a library card.
| jcgoette wrote:
| >photo ID will get you a free library card
|
| Results may vary.
| rootsudo wrote:
| No, Librarians are pretty liberal with this. Many in big
| cities, e.g. Chicago, Seattle, etc don't even need to see
| an ID, just a bill but if you show up and pester back and
| forth a few times they'll still give you one.
|
| No government identity needed. A bill helps.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| In large cities especially, libraries will have an
| "independent" charitable foundation attached to them. It
| is very prestigious in the local community to be on the
| board or to donate large sums to these foundations. Thus,
| large city libraries are typically excellent with plenty
| of funding and can afford to offer services to the poor
| and indigent which smaller libraries cannot.
|
| In the US, a lot of libraries are funded by property
| taxes, and the various laws that allow these taxes to be
| collected (for library purposes) will state that the
| library cannot offer services to people outside the
| geographic boundary for a lower cost than is charged to
| the people inside the boundary and are paying the taxes.
| That's why they need "proof" of where you live before
| giving you a card. But then you also have laws requiring
| services to be provided to the homeless regardless of
| proof of residence (how do you prove your residence when
| you are homeless?). How does the library resolve that
| legal conflict? It pretty much always comes down to money
| and local attitudes (see first paragraph).
| badwolf wrote:
| I always recommend folks get a library card, as they will
| generally provide free access to these as well as many other
| newspapers... However there's often 30-90 day embargo to
| access current issues/articles online.
| xattt wrote:
| This depends on your library system. I am under a provincial
| library system which is woefully underfunded. We get
| "flavours of the month" services that are likely trial
| versions offered to libraries before lock-in. Some of the
| choices over the years were Freegal Music, Ancestry.com and
| some sort of language training thing.
|
| Our Overdrive tier is probably the cheapest and I
| occasionally use my parents' library card for expanded
| Overdrive access, who live in a place with a much better
| funded library system.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Fully agree. My local library system is badly funded (as
| in, they let a building full of books rot rather than
| simply move them, and the main library has been closed for
| several years due to roof and sewage leaks) and we have no
| easy option to pay for a good one.
| datavirtue wrote:
| We should have funded libraries in the infrastructure
| bill. A rounding error would have been enough to
| supercharge them.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Governments have realized that an uneducated populace is
| easier to control. Or maybe that is too cynical a view
| for HN?
| koheripbal wrote:
| Not only is this not true everywhere, it can also be much
| more cumbersome to access.
|
| Not to mention that supporting quality journalism is probably
| one of the best things you can do today to make the world
| better.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| I agree, and thats why I donate to ProPublica, which is
| free and doesn't use it's reporting as reputation
| laundering for an Opinion section that promotes billionaire
| profits ahead of humanity.
|
| Also, using the library is supporting journalism. The
| library pays for a digital license
| chefandy wrote:
| ProPublica does such good work. If anyone reading this
| hasn't checked them out, I encourage them to, soon.
| smabie wrote:
| Honest question: where can I actually find quality
| journalism?
| chefandy wrote:
| I've tried that workflow with multiple public and university
| libraries. While the experience varies from Library to
| Library-- my current underfunded city seems not to have
| current non-archive digital newspaper access at all-- and
| some new commonly adopted platform I'm not aware of might
| have solved the problem, the workflow isn't compatible with
| the way most people discover news stories. It works decently,
| even if a bit clunky, if you are moderately database savvy
| and your use case resembles a print user's-- i.e. browse
| today's headlines from a small number of sources and use them
| to decide which articles to read. (Which is also probably the
| best way to avoid algorithmic bias if your source choice is
| solid.) However, most people access their news on a whim
| through social media, web searches, and aggregators designed
| to provide only the most relevant and appealing selection of
| stories without having to think about it.
|
| While you say it's more practical, that's an extremely
| subjective metric. For many people, spending a few bucks a
| month for something that works with their current workflow
| and saves rather than costs time is far more practical. Also,
| I've never seen a Library setup that gives access to
| desirable paywalled extra features like podcasts or NYT Food.
| I'm sure that's quite deliberate on the NYT's part.
|
| I'm happy to give a few bucks a month to news orgs; in fact I
| wish they were nonprofits that would somehow let me pay
| enough more to abandon their asinine surveillance capitalism
| tendencies and expand free access, but I have no idea what
| that would look like logistically. If there was a network of
| newspaper-like organizations that operated like PBS and NPR,
| ideally with its own news wire, that would be a great start,
| IMO.
|
| People having free and easy access to news from non-
| government-run sources (PBS and NPR are not government-run,
| naysayers) is a public good. I wish we could figure out how
| to shape the industry to reflect that.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Strange that this hit HN today. 2 days ago I wondered what the
| cancellation policy was for the WSJ and checked. At the time I
| did not plan on cancelling but after finding out that it was
| "call to cancel" I called at that moment. I cannot stand the
| policy where it takes 3 seconds to sign up online but you have
| to call in to cancel. If I can help it I wont give money to
| companies that do it. In WSJ defense (barely) it was a quick
| process, probably took 5 minutes.
| Axien wrote:
| I just canceled the WSJ. It is not terrible. They will try
| and convince you to cancel but will eventually let you
| cancel. The worst is SirriusXM Radio.
| infecto wrote:
| I was waiting for SXM to pop up. Literally one of the worst
| companies for this and I say this as someone who sadly
| worked for them for a little bit. You can manage everything
| in the web portal but to cancel you click a button and it
| tells you to call them. I know they have content and some
| people use them but they literally have so much friction in
| cancelling that it is a huge part of their business.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I have wanted to cancel WSJ for over a year now but their
| process kept me from doing it. I started a few times and then
| was like I really don't have time for this nonsense right
| now. I wonder if I do it now if I can get my subscription
| fees refunded.
| wrycoder wrote:
| You have to be firm and terse. They try to drag you into a
| sales dialog and offer a much lower rate. Tell them, "I
| don't want to discuss why I'm canceling, and I'm not
| interested in continuing, regardless of your rate." Just
| keep repeating that.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Now that I think about it I think they did try and
| convince me to not cancel but I have become so
| disassociated from human niceties since I started working
| from home the last few years I just interrupted them and
| told them to stop and I wanted to cancel. Kind of
| worrying that I did it without thinking or realizing.
| Might be time for me to reintegrate with society.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I tried canceling WSJ and they wouldn't take the call
| outside business hours. So I just called their Hong Kong
| office and cancelled with them, and refused to discuss
| anything but the immediate cancellation, and stopped them
| in their track when they veered off.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Getting the physical WSJ paper is ridiculous, but the digital
| subscription to the WSJ is great.
|
| It's the only one I pay for happily.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Can you cancel using the same medium you subscribed? That's
| the topic of the thread, not the current quality of the
| content.
| bborud wrote:
| Just out of curiosity: what would have happened if you had
| just stopped paying them after sending them an email
| informing them that you wanted to cancel?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Its the online version so they have my cc on record and
| charge me monthly. I guess I could have changed my cc to an
| invalid one but not sure if they have some sort of
| authentication process before accepting a new one, likely.
| If that was possible likely they would cancel it after a
| couple declined charges but you always run the admittedly
| small risk that they will just send you to collections
| which is no fun at all. Even if you are in the right you
| still have to deal with a ton of annoyance and try and get
| your credit restored if they report it to the credit
| agency.
| cgriswald wrote:
| You could probably also have let them charge you and then
| disputed the charges with your credit card company with
| your email as proof you shouldn't have been charged.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Strange that this hit HN today.
|
| these 'exciting' new dark pattern strategies spread very
| quickly among firms. many people are suddenly dealing with
| them. not strange imo
| maskros wrote:
| 5 minutes is still 4 minutes and 55 seconds too long. There's
| no good reason it should take 59 times longer than it ought
| to.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| No argument from me. They asked why I was cancelling and I
| told them it was because I had to call to cancel.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Next time pay for the subscription by check (mail it in).
| They can't bill you again automatically.
| jjnoakes wrote:
| 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.
| tpxl wrote:
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The subscriptions are fixed terms. Not lifetime. Why
| should they be allowed to bill me beyond the subscription
| term?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| You're subscribing for a year or whatever is the fixed
| period. How is it illegal to pay for it with a physical
| check?
| jjnoakes wrote:
| It's not illegal to pay for it with a physical check;
| it's illegal (unless your original agreement
| automatically terminated after a year) to not then pay
| for the automatic renewal at the end of the year.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Happy to break the law in self-defense.
| bborud wrote:
| I cancelled NYT by simply emailing them and telling them that I
| would be stopping payment. I was curious to see if they'd do
| anything. I never heard from them (and my subscription was
| miraculously cancelled).
|
| I'm not sure if it's a factor that I live in Europe?
|
| I don't think I ever want to give NYT my money again though. I
| have no wish to deal with scummy businesses.
| bakoo wrote:
| When I had to go through that about 7-8 years ago, actually on
| behalf of a boss of mine who couldn't be bothered sitting
| through the whole thing, it took a full 15 minutes.
|
| I will continue to bring it up when I can, no matter if they
| change their ways.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I my home country the law says that you must be allowed to
| unsubscribe the same way you subscribed. Which makes sense.
| tzs wrote:
| I wonder if I somehow got on a super secret VIP list and get
| special treatment?
|
| I called, got through quickly, told them I did not want to
| renew because I found that I wasn't actually reading it all
| that much, and they promptly canceled.
|
| Somewhere in there I realized I should make sure they were only
| cancelling the paper so I told them I wanted to keep my
| crossword subscription and that I realized that this would mean
| I'd pay full price when my crossword renewed instead of the 50%
| off price paper subscribers get.
|
| They told me it was indeed only the paper that I had cancelled,
| but told me I was wrong about the crossword price. The offer
| for paper subscribers is to buy a half price crossword
| subscription and that's what I bought. It remains a half price
| crossword prescription as long as you keep it.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Not being sarcastic, but what's special about the NYT
| crossword? Why not just go to a Barnes&Noble (or whatever)
| and grab a crossword book off the shelf?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The NYT crossword subscription gets you full access to
| their app which has every crossword they've ever published,
| and a bunch of other crossword-like puzzles.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| You ever tried canceling Amazon Prime?
|
| Amazon words the cancellation prompt in a way that it SEEMS like
| you're out the $139.00 when it renewed.
|
| And injects many options to keep you, while you think you're
| canceling.
|
| But no, it's prorated (because it'd be illegal otherwise) and
| it's all the way at the bottom many pages down.
|
| There are many, many dark patterns
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yes!
| dwighttk wrote:
| Is nytimes going to go out of business?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I think Match got sued for this, they go out of their way to stop
| you from canceling since as a business practice they'll show you
| bot messages before you sign up. Once you give them 40$ or
| whatever then you'll immediately see all your matches are fake.
|
| This alone is already a problem, but then canceling is
| deliberately made difficult.
|
| The problem is they've ( via their child brands like Tinder as
| well) made billions doing this. If you can run a business, make
| 10 billion dollars and then pay a 10 million dollar fine, you'll
| just pay the fines.
|
| I don't have a good solution to this. I personally refuse to give
| my money to or work for companies in this space.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I don't have a good solution to this.
|
| Break up IAC, which is an illegal combination, throw Barry
| Diller in jail for fraud and seize his assets.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >The problem is they've ( via their child brands like Tinder as
| well) made billions doing this. If you can run a business, make
| 10 billion dollars and then pay a 10 million dollar fine,
| you'll just pay the fines.
|
| Even worse, you'll choose to do it instead of doing something
| productive with your time. Why do something risky and expensive
| for less money?
| totorovirus wrote:
| Reminds me of my wsj cancellation. I procrastinated twice calling
| via hotline and they ripped off three months of subscription from
| me.
| aigo wrote:
| The Times of London does this, and so does The Telegraph.
|
| Most of my subscriptions go via PayPal or Google so I can just
| cancel the payment and eventually my service will be cancelled
| for lack of payment.
| dazc wrote:
| The Telegraph have stopped doing it. I think they have now
| realised it's counter-productive. Hopefully, others will
| follow.
|
| Incidentally, I also think it's now common knowledge that
| unsubscribing will, in most case, initiate a lower price offer.
| Gymkana wrote:
| I've used the Times a handful of times as a student. It's
| always painful when student discount ends and you ring up and
| say I can't afford PS26 a month. They'll drop it to PS10 then
| PS5 but they never match my student price. I've had to leave
| during bachelors and professional qualifications.
| tombert wrote:
| I remember about 15 years ago, I signed up for Real Rhapsody's
| unlimited music service. I tried it for about two months, didn't
| like it, and found that canceling required me _call_ them on a
| weekday during business hours (ending at 4pm eastern). I was
| still in high school at the time, and this is pre-smartphone so
| it would have been hard for me to do this during lunch, so it was
| pretty hard for me to cancel. Eventually I had to ask my mom to
| impersonate me, call them, and cancel it, but it was an idiotic
| thing. How uncomfortable are you that users will _like_ your
| service if you have to _trick_ them into staying subscribed?
|
| Granted, it was the Real corporation, I really should have seen
| crap like that coming.
| bredren wrote:
| > How uncomfortable are you that users will like your service
| if you have to trick them into staying subscribed?
|
| It reeks of insecurity. The issue is that it may be an honest
| reflection that it fails to deliver actual value.
|
| I can think of many examples of organizations I've seen that
| have used / are a form of dark pattern opt-out/unsub now:
|
| - Wave Apps the accounting software with their payroll service.
|
| - burning man org in their 2020 ticketing presale
|
| - Ancestry.com
|
| What the FTC needs to get into labelinf purposefully confusing
| unsubscribe interfaces that trick the user into not performing
| the action of intent as fraud.
|
| If internal docs show intent to mislead, (which in many cases
| they will) companies should face criminal charges.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _If internal docs show intent to mislead,_
|
| by the time a complaint is made then the internal docs have
| fallen out of the company's retention and backup policies...
| lagadu wrote:
| In Portugal the law makes it so you can cancel any service using
| the same means that you used to subscribe it, so if they support
| subscribing online, unsubscribing also has to be doable the same
| way; same goes for via phone, personal or whatnot. It makes
| sense, prevents service providers from making it too difficult to
| terminate a contract.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| This is extremely reasonable and civilized. Would you say that
| the rest of the legislation in Portugal is consistent, and the
| direction of the Country is towards good sense and reliability?
|
| I have noticed of other EU countries that a response against
| abuse may exist, but severely delayed and only partial (e.g.
| about sale of misrepresented services and other contractual
| scams, especially when carried out over the phone).
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Would you say that the rest of the legislation in Portugal
| is consistent, and the direction of the Country is towards
| good sense and reliability?
|
| not GP, ... it is a role-model when it comes to the points
| listed above. I think it's hard to answer your question
| because how would one define "good sense and reliability". At
| the risk of being called out for _whataboutism_ , here is
| something that would be sobering for most people (like
| myself) applauding the current "good parts":
|
| https://www.biometricupdate.com/202111/portuguese-
| lawmakers-...
| FpUser wrote:
| >"...At the risk of being called out for whataboutism..."
|
| One who calls the other "whataboutist" is usually a
| hypocrite.
| kranke155 wrote:
| No. Portugal is a (atm) an radically aging country, it is
| rife with corruption and politics are poorly led. Brain drain
| is massive. Employment is extremely difficult for both the
| jobseeker and the employer due to poor competitiveness, low
| productivity and terrible regulation. Healthcare systems have
| been dropping off a cliff.
|
| IMO going the direction of a dying country. And I am
| Portuguese.
|
| Virtually anyone I know with a good skill set that's
| profitable abroad has moved.
| mig39 wrote:
| Yes, everyone I know, in my age range, has moved to France,
| Switzerland, Canada, etc.
|
| We all want to _retire_ in Portugal, but it seems there are
| few employment opportunities unless you know the right
| people.
|
| I'm sure "retirement" is the only growth industry in
| Portugal these days.
| codingclaws wrote:
| Portugal is logical on some stuff.
|
| Another example is prostitution is legal but you can only
| advertise yourself. I wonder what other countries have
| prostitution set up like this.
|
| Or the speed traps that just trigger a red light.
|
| Decriminalization of all drugs obviously too.
| speeder wrote:
| I am from Brazil, and here speed limits are literally
| dangeorus.
|
| 1. In my city people mostly ignore speed limits, because
| often they are unreasonable.
|
| 2. At same time people are so used to the above, that they
| ignore speed limits in very unsafe places.
|
| 3. I don't ignore the limits myself since I am a new-ish
| driver, but I almost crashed multiple times, either because I
| was with my eyes too gluted at the speedometer, or because
| everyone else was ignoring the speed limit and almost crashed
| into my rear.
|
| 4. I got fined for crossing speed limit anyway, when I was
| trying to understand the fine, I found out they been placing
| radars on steep hills on fast roads, so you have basically
| two choices there: climb the hill using higher gears, and
| cross speed limit, or slow down until you can use lower
| gears, and risk people crashing into you.
|
| 5. In a specific very steep hill they put the speed limit so
| low that the only way to climb that hill is actually go fast
| as you can until right before the radar, brake hard,
| immediately put first gear, and shove your foot in the
| accelerator pedal again and resume the climb tires screaming,
| if you attempt to climb the whole hill slower your car is
| likely to stall, thanks to Brazillian popularity of really
| low power cars, our cars are literally illegal in some
| european cities because of how underpowered they are and thus
| dangerous in hilly places.
| istjohn wrote:
| Your 2012 account name is oddly apropos.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| In Poland it's similar (you can only work for yourself). It's
| not even taxed (don't know why). I guess NL and CZ has most
| liberal laws in this case.
| portportport wrote:
| The drug policy is well known, but the speed traps is new and
| amusing. It reminds me of the horn activated red lights in
| India. Genius idea.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Don't combine the ideas or everybody will be speeding and
| honking constantly.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Or the speed traps that just trigger a red light.
|
| Sounds like a great way to train the entire population is to
| run reds between 10pm and 5am.
| Spivak wrote:
| The population who would run a red light <<< population who
| would speed.
| bloak wrote:
| > Or the speed traps that just trigger a red light.
|
| This sounds interesting. Since when have they been doing
| this, and do you have a link to photos, video or a more
| detailed description?
| pnt12 wrote:
| It's a red-light with a speed warning and a detector - if
| you go over the allowed speed, it turns red, otherwise
| stays green forever.
|
| But we also have hidden radars which are not announced.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Sounds super dangerous though.
| dspillett wrote:
| The red light is some distance ahead, not right in front
| of the speed detector so that you have to immediately
| hammer down the break pedal and be rear-ended by the
| vehicle behind.
|
| Of course some will still get as close to the light as
| they can and hammer the breaks last moment, but they'll
| do that at other lights too, and other unsafe things, so
| the danger is not caused by the light in that instance.
| b3morales wrote:
| Is it a normal light at an intersection, or an extra one
| somewhere in the middle of a block? It's not hard for me
| to imagine people scoffing at the mid-block light and
| deciding to run through it.
| codingclaws wrote:
| Neither I'd say. They're usually on long stretches of old
| highways with no traffic lights between roundabouts where
| lots of commercial and residential buildings (and thus
| people) are right on the curb.
| mig39 wrote:
| The trick is to drive normal speed and at the very last
| second speed like a madman, so that it still has to cycle
| to amber then red just as you leave the intersection!
| timfi wrote:
| I don't know when Portugal started this, but in Germany
| there is at least the concept of a "grune Well" (literally
| a green wave). Simply put: if you drive at the speed limit
| you won't get any red lights. Sadly the german
| administration barely makes use of this as it doesn't make
| them any money...
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Many cities in the US do this along major roads. They'll
| time the lights to maximize traffic flow which ussally
| means if your driving the speed limit you'll at least get
| through 3-4 lights before you have to stop.
| mjburgess wrote:
| That's essentially the UK's law too -- but many arent aware.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > speed traps that just trigger a red light
|
| Much better than what I've seen in my (US) city: speed limit
| 30 mph, but lights timed for 40-45 mph to get a continuous
| green light down the one-way street. Either you speed,
| opening you to tickets, or you stop needlessly on lights that
| are set for a faster speed than you are traveling.
| sixothree wrote:
| We have the absolute worst of this world. If you leave a
| red light and travel near the speed limit (+/- 15mph) you
| _will_ catch the next red light. You can absolutely floor
| it and catch up with the next "pack" of cars and make it
| into the green light but you will be at the pack for the
| next light which will be red.
|
| I hate it. I hate it so much. Travelling down an avenue for
| 3 or 4 miles is just painful. The worst is when there is
| zero traffic (say 10:30 at night) and you sit at red lights
| watching nobody pass.
| tempodox wrote:
| I'd call that a "dark pattern in the physical world".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| People will do all sorts of ideological gymnastics to
| justify screwing the public out of money when they money
| lands in government coffers ad the end of the day.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Not untrue, but off topic.
|
| People here are talking about unjust systems built to
| needlessly punish law abiding citizens monetarily and
| time wise. No gymnastics or ideologies necessary.
|
| What comes to mind is the obscenity of civil forfeiture
| used without accompanying crimes upheld against the
| people who rightfully own said assets..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Uni
| ted...
| woobar wrote:
| Are lights timed to 40-45 mph in both directions?
| devilbunny wrote:
| Somewhat inconsistently. This was most obvious on a pair
| of one-way streets, but one of them has been returned to
| two-way traffic. AFAICT, the waves in opposite direction
| started at the same time and the two streams passed each
| other around the halfway point. Other one-way streets in
| the area aren't on precisely the same schedule. The
| stretch was only about six or seven blocks long. And the
| wave didn't start at the boundary street of the area on
| one end, but one block into the area.
| djrogers wrote:
| Not sure where you are, but if that's in fact the case,
| your city would be violating the law in at least
| California, and likely several other states.
| dhimes wrote:
| Not GP, but I've seen it in the Boston area.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Not that the .gov won't happily take in money as a result
| of the dark pattern they've created but the primary cause
| of the patterns creation is likely the same old poor
| coordination, inertia and ineptitude that tends to plague
| government in wealthy areas with lots of stakeholders.
|
| The road is signed probably for 30 because that's what is
| was historically or that's what they got after evaluating
| what the confusing web of rules and regulations says it
| should be.
|
| The lights are set up for 40-50 because the person
| responsible for tuning the light a) looked at existing
| traffic data and set the light to that or b) assessed the
| properties of the road using totally different measures
| and determined that's the speed traffic would go.
|
| And the city doesn't change the sign to reflect the
| reality of the traffic because a) they'd have to re-
| navigate the web of rules to do that and b) shirking
| potential revenue is a fast track to a dead end job for
| bureaucrats in that state c) doing nothing is easy.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Most assuredly not a wealthy area. But the local
| government is pretty awful.
| altrow1 wrote:
| that is good people finally realize it. these
| conspiracies are abundant! intentionally creating street
| traffic in this "clever conspiracy way" and no-option to
| cancel online, both are real, and detected few years ago.
| you see, it is green to discourage people from driving,
| in this way. yet, technically, they merely destabilize
| optimum good, not actually being evil.
| woah wrote:
| Which law?
| toast0 wrote:
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySec
| tio...
|
| Unless the road is determined to be a local road, posted
| speed limits are only enforcable if set by an engineering
| survey, or if it's at least X, which I think is 60 or 65.
| But I'm not sure it's illegal to post an unenforcable
| speed limit, or to ticket against it, it's just that
| those contesting the ticket will win.
| bradstewart wrote:
| My personal favorite was a poorly-timed stop light, with a
| red-light camera.
|
| If you entered the intersection as the light turned yellow,
| and drove the speed limit, you would still be partially in
| the intersection when the light turned red. And promptly
| get a ticket in the mail.
|
| Nobody realized what was happening (at least not those on
| the receiving end of the tickets) until my high school math
| teacher got one.
|
| She went out there and measured the intersection, timed the
| lights, then showed up to contest the ticket with poster
| boards containing diagrams of the velocity/distance
| equations.
| woobar wrote:
| Interesting. Before they made red light cameras illegal
| in my city they required two photos to prove that you are
| in violation:
|
| - one that shows your car before crossing the stop line
| when the light is red
|
| - second showing your car after crossing the stop line
| within same light cycle (i.e. seconds from previous
| photo)
|
| No need to do the math if you entered the intersection
| before the light turned red
| orangepurple wrote:
| Then gets sued for practicing engineering without a
| license.
|
| In a display of civic engagement, Mats emailed the Oregon
| State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land
| Surveying in the hopes that they could help him raise
| public awareness and asked for their "support and help to
| investigate and present the laws of physics related to
| transportation engineering."
|
| He got the opposite.
|
| After curtly informing Mats that they do not regulate
| traffic lights, the Board warned him that without an
| engineering license from the state of Oregon, Mats would
| be breaking the law if he even referred to himself using
| the word "engineer." Then, the Board launched an
| investigation into Mats, which lingered for nearly two
| years and culminated in a $500 fine. According to the
| Board, Mats engaged in the unlicensed "practice of
| engineering" when he spoke publicly about his "critique
| and calculations" for the yellow-light formula. Moreover,
| only Oregon-licensed professional engineers are allowed
| to use the word "engineer" to describe themselves.
|
| Although Mats is not a licensed professional engineer
| (and never claimed to), he has a broad background in math
| and science. In his native Sweden, Mats earned a degree
| in electrical engineering, and worked for the Swedish Air
| Force and Luxor Electronics. Mats even presented his
| research on traffic-light timing at an Institute of
| Transportation Engineers conference, and he corresponded
| with one of the physicists who developed the original
| 1959 formula.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2017/04/
| 28/...
| yurishimo wrote:
| This sounds like a power tripping bureaucrat more than
| anything. I would take it up on appeal. Heck, might even
| be able to find a lawyer to help bring up a countersuit
| on contingency.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| >Another example is prostitution is legal but you can only
| advertise yourself.
|
| And then serious criminals are out of the advertising
| business, but can still offer consultation, business and
| personal protection, and, of course, forced sex labour
| through human trafficking.
| ascar wrote:
| And all that stuff is still illegal as it is in the US. I
| don't see your point?
| pdpi wrote:
| GP's comment makes a whole lot more sense if you assume a
| big fat /s at the end.
| re-actor wrote:
| Criminals would be out of a buissness because it became
| illegal? Are you sure about that?
| chii wrote:
| > Another example is prostitution is legal but you can only
| advertise yourself.
|
| that's an excellent rule - because pimping should be illegal.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| That's not a pimp, it's an Erotic Services Agent ~s
| nefitty wrote:
| Wouldn't regulations be easier to enforce on agents and
| organizations instead of individuals?
| djrogers wrote:
| Pimping has little to do with advertising, it's a form of
| slavery. Nothing would stop a pimp from forcing his workers
| to be responsible for advertising themselves.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >it's a form of slavery.
|
| Or a protection racket.
|
| Or just fee for protection.
|
| Depends on the specific situation in question. There's a
| wide variety of schemes that fall under the definition of
| pimping.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Those are variations of slavery.
|
| "You work or I will make you suffer" is slavery.
| kortilla wrote:
| "A fee for protection" is not that. That's the equivalent
| of hiring a bouncer.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| One of the primary functions of a pimp is to provide
| muscle/thread of violence to dissuade customers from
| abusing the workers.
|
| Whether and do what degree the arrangement between the
| worker(s) and the pimp is exploitative is more or less
| tangential to that.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Big difference between "I will make you suffer" and "I
| won't intervene when someone I have no affiliation with
| nor obligation to interfere with makes you suffer."
|
| Mall cops certainly haven't enslaved mall owners.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > "You work or I will make you suffer" is slavery.
|
| All work is slavery.
| VRay wrote:
| Amen
|
| I got up late today, so I barely have time to make
| pancakes and coffee before I have to leave for my day's
| slavery.. if I'm late, I'll have to do the slavery in my
| underpants at home until the morning meetings are over.
| Then I'll drive to my slavery and be stuck there for 5-6
| hours, with only lunch and snack breaks. Unless I need to
| take off early to run errands anyway
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Actual slaves that don't get paid and get whipped if they
| don't meet quotas would have a major problem with your
| statement.
|
| Most of the people here not only have the option of
| quitting, but a fair number could probably choose not to
| work for several months, or even the rest of their life.
| They certainly are not slaves.
| mig39 wrote:
| > Or the speed traps that just trigger a red light.
|
| This is the best. You trigger a red light because you're
| speeding, and _everybody_ around you just glares at you.
| Including the old woman walking on the side of the street.
|
| It's like public shaming.
|
| Thanks bud, because of you, now we all have to sit at this
| red light and wait. Good job.
|
| That works so much better than the hidden speed camera ticket
| I get in the mail 6 months later, when I'm not even in
| Portugal anymore.
|
| One is about slowing you down, the other is about revenue.
| scelerat wrote:
| This would not work in Oakland. Cold red? zooooooommmmmm
| mig39 wrote:
| The power of an angry glare from an old Portuguese woman
| (dressed in black) doesn't work in the US.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Not just Portugal, this is a European thing but apparently
| Germany hasn't implemented it yet and will do so starting next
| year.
|
| That's the weird thing with some European "laws", they give
| countries 1 or 2 years to implement it and some countries abuse
| that to go and implement it on the very last day.
| anticristi wrote:
| EU regulations take effect directly and are roughly
| equivalent to national law (see GDPR).
|
| In contrast, EU directives stipulate the desired outcome and
| let countries draft their own national law to achieve the
| directive's desired outcome.
| toast0 wrote:
| > That's the weird thing with some European "laws", they give
| countries 1 or 2 years to implement it and some countries
| abuse that to go and implement it on the very last day.
|
| If you give them to the last day and they do it on the last
| day, they have done what you asked, it's not abuse. Want it
| done sooner? Require it done sooner.
| pantulis wrote:
| I can confirm this is supposed to be the same in Spain.
| Implementation varies across industries, of course.
| xeromal wrote:
| This is the law in California too!
| i_like_waiting wrote:
| What in case that some company doesn't collect your email e.g.
| they try to sell you only over the phone?
| ClikeX wrote:
| It's an EU thing, we have this in the Netherlands as well.
|
| We see a lot of services trying to sell you subscriptions at
| the door or on the street, though.
| cgriswald wrote:
| In that case, it seems that they should have people going
| door-to-door offering cancellation as well.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| > you can cancel any service using the same means that you used
| to subscribe it
|
| This should be the way for everything. I'm about to move and I
| need to cancel my power and my cable and I just want it to be
| as easy as logging into the system, selecting my last day of
| service, and that's it
| swyx wrote:
| Same with American Express. I couldn't believe that such a well
| known brand whose entire value proposition is great customer
| service has a "call to cancel" process. I hope it dies.
| strenholme wrote:
| Since I live in California, which has a "click to subscribe means
| you must have click to cancel" regulation, this isn't an issue
| for me. After the New York Times published their inaccurate hit
| piece attacking Scott Alexander and Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex
| Ten, I was able to cancel online just clicking my way through.
|
| I now subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, which looks to be the
| most neutral newspaper right now. Being a California resident, I
| have a special "California only" cancel button on my user control
| panel.
| MAGZine wrote:
| Canceling aside, I don't think the WSJ is particularly neutral,
| but perhaps it does appeal to your sensibilities (note,
| however, those are not the same).
|
| I find WSJ to take particularly corporatist/capitialist views
| on things. Which is fine for things business, I suppose, but
| I've read many articles from WSJ that are basically "hey
| government sucks, am i rite?" which is not neutral.
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| Not that HN is really the place for this discussion, but the
| _news_ section of the WSJ is pretty neutral and well written.
| The _opinion_ page is very slanted towards
| "corporatist/capitalist views".
| MAGZine wrote:
| That's an easy thing to say because it's more difficult to
| disprove. You could say that about the NYT, Al Jazeera,
| NPR, CNN, etc etc.
|
| Of course the topics that an institution choose to talk
| about also biases it. If you spend all of your front page
| space complaining about unions and talking about business,
| that is a different bias than one who dedicates column
| inches to stories about the environment. Or different from
| once that dedicates column inches to ones about social
| issues.
|
| But even if you go on wsj.com, I see "Biden EV Tax Credit
| Puts UAW Over Environment, Nonunion Auto Makers Say," --
| which is such an interesting way to frame the topic, but
| certainly not what I would call neutral. The topic pits UAW
| versus Nonunion automakers.
|
| If you want neutral news, in terms of content and in terms
| of story coverage, there are better options than the WSJ.
| csee wrote:
| "but certainly not what I would call neutral. The topic
| pits UAW versus Nonunion automakers."
|
| How is that not neutral? It's an unambiguous statement of
| fact that the tax credit is favoring unionized automakers
| over non-unionized automakers, and that this particular
| distortion/difference in tax credit has no environmental
| justification and is designed purely to help out unions.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I eventually opened a case with VISA to get them to stop
| payment to the Wall Street Journal because every time I called
| to cancel, I got a message that their call centers were closed
| due to COVID. As far as I can tell there was literally no way
| to cancel for several months during 2020. I do enjoy their
| reporting as a more right-leaning alternative to the New York
| Times but I have learned my lesson and will never again
| subscribe to WSJ.
|
| Meanwhile, the I have cancelled the NYT several times
| relatively painlessly (via online chat) and even been offered a
| discount to remain a subscriber, which I view as a much more
| consumer-friendly retention tactic.
|
| If anyone from WSJ reads this (unlikely, ha), you should know
| that it does not matter how good your reporting is - if you use
| predatory tactics to prevent cancellations you will turn off
| many potential readers simply out of principle.
| brandon272 wrote:
| I called to cancel last year. Then I had to call again a
| couple months later because I noticed that, despite calling,
| waiting on hold, requesting to cancel and then being told
| that my subscription was cancelled, they didn't cancel it,
| and the charges continued to go through on my card.
| patorjk wrote:
| I was able to cancel my WSJ subscription last year through an
| online chat (it was almost identical to how I unsubscribed
| from the NYTimes). I definitely would have preferred a cancel
| button though. A few months later I resubscribed after they
| offered me a deal. My only issue with them is that they're
| kind of expensive.
| chirau wrote:
| Wall Street Journal robbed me this way.
|
| I clicked to subscribe to a paid membership for both print and
| web. Then when I wanted to cancel, they sent me to a chatbot.
| The chatbot told me told it had unsubscribed me. Three months
| later (I wasn't at home), I realized WSJ was still charging me
| monthly for a WSJ subscription. I called them to see what is
| going on, they told me you can only unsubscribe via a call. I
| told them I had used the bot which was the only option on the
| site and it confirmed that I had been unsubscribed. The person
| told me it only unsubscribed you from Barron's not WSJ.
|
| So yup, after 10 years of loyalty to them, they definitely
| burnt me and I will never subscribe to them or any of their
| publications ever again.
| Humdeee wrote:
| Hold on here, does that mean that Cancel button only appears
| based on location?
| jedberg wrote:
| I believe for the New York Times it's based on billing
| address. So if you change your billing address to California
| you should get the cancel button.
| js2 wrote:
| I most recently cancelled my NYT sub a couple months ago. I
| was able to do so w/o interacting with anyone. I'm in NC.
|
| I think they've just finally relented on forcing you to
| interact with a human.
|
| They have also allowed me to keep reading past my
| subscription termination point, but they keep asking me to
| re-subscribe. At some point, I assume I'll start getting
| blocked entirely.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Wow. Maybe I'll actually try this. I've wanted to subscribe
| at various points but knew it would be basically impossible
| to cancel so never bothered
| js2 wrote:
| I've subscribed and cancelled the NYT several times over
| the years. Cancelling has never been "basically
| impossible." At worst, I've had to do an online chat and
| say "please cancel" three times that took 5 minutes of my
| time.
|
| Most recently (a couple months ago), I was able to cancel
| online w/o having to interact with a human at all.
|
| The NYT is a really mixed bag and regularly infuriates
| me, but it also has some columnists I really like, and
| occasionally has some terrific long form reporting. Hence
| why I've subscribed and cancelled so many times.
| jedberg wrote:
| Use a burner card from privacy.com, which lets you put
| any zip code you want. Then pick your favorite California
| zip code (that isn't 90210 because that gets flagged) and
| away you go!
| volgo wrote:
| This is why I always enter a fake address in CA :)
| throw10920 wrote:
| That doesn't work if they use your billing address, unless
| your billing address is in CA, in which case you're
| probably located there anyway.
| volgo wrote:
| You can use Privacy.com to generate a one-time use credit
| card number that lets you use any fake address you want.
| It will charge properly and you can set limit
| detaro wrote:
| yes.
| MaXtreeM wrote:
| After reading the article on Pewdiepie I stopped thinking about
| WSJ as a serious newspaper.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Can you link to this article? A lot of people consider it a
| serious newspaper still so there is an apparent disconnect
| here.
| MaXtreeM wrote:
| 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 context, like if you took any 10
| seconds from Dave Chappelle last special that would make
| him seem like a horrible person.
|
| [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-
| youtube... [2]:
| https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/disney-severs-ties-
| wit...
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| 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.
| Axien wrote:
| That is crazy. I spent 20 minutes trying to cancel the WSJ. It
| is infuriating.
| strenholme wrote:
| The thing the WSJ doesn't get is this: I wouldn't had
| subscribed to them if I didn't reside in California and
| didn't have my special "California cancel" button.
| bicx wrote:
| WSJ was the first service I thought of when I saw this
| headline. For such a revered publication, WSJ's customer
| retention tactics are scummy.
| Iefthandrule wrote:
| This would seem like an obvious topic for rival publications
| to run with.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| www.privacy.com
| b20000 wrote:
| finally
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Good _middle finger_ - > WSJ
| nixpulvis wrote:
| AT&T is offensively in trouble here. Not only can't you cancel
| easily on the web, you can't even go into their stores to cancel
| either. Finally, after 45+ minutes on the phone, they have a
| habit of hanging up on you. It's now happened to me twice within
| a month of each other.
|
| The FTC better have some real teeth here.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I might cancel my gym membership, and re-join online just to make
| sure I can use this if I need to.
| virologist wrote:
| "Click to subscribe, mail to cancel". would be more efficient.
| virologist wrote:
| even better "Click to subscribe, come in person to cancel
| (office hours Teuesday, ...)"
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Around here (Long Island, NY), Cablevision was _notorious_ for
| the "crazy, desperate ex" approach.
|
| In order to cancel the service, you had to call them, and they
| would connect you to a "retention specialist."
|
| They would beg, wheedle, lie, manipulate, even threaten.
|
| I remember when I changed from them to Verizon, I had to hang up
| on the guy.
| Axien wrote:
| I use Privacy.com and generate virtual credit card numbers. I
| cancel the credit card at the time of canceling the service (or
| at least trying to cancel the service).
| TomGullen wrote:
| Won't help if you breach contract and they go to collections
| ausername42027 wrote:
| exactly. it is really interesting that service even exists.
| Canceling a privacy.com card does not magically cancel a
| contract. Privacy.com seems like a great way to trick people
| into tanking their credit ranking when they think they are
| getting back at a company for being hard to cancel.
| why-el wrote:
| I give them a card I grab from privacy.com that has a set amount,
| when I want to cancel, I set the card's amount to zero. They fail
| to charge it after a few attempts. The end.
| dqpb wrote:
| Next, I'd like a law that requires every service that serves ad's
| to also have a paid no-ad option.
| nickforall wrote:
| I wouldn't get your hopes up too much. It has been illegal in
| Europe/the Netherlands for years, however it is not enforced at
| all. Most newspapers don't let you cancel without calling them,
| having to deal with sales people trying to convince you to keep
| your subscription.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Sounds like a juicy class action.
| marcvizcaino wrote:
| 1
| marcvizcaino wrote:
| 1.1
| nunez wrote:
| This is amazing.
|
| I wanted to delete a bunch of services I had passwords for in
| 1Password. A significant number of them couldn't be cancelled
| online. You couldn't even call. You had to email to ask for a
| cancellation. This, in effect, meant that they held your data
| hostage.
|
| Of course, this means nothing if fees aren't associated with non-
| compliance.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| this is only useful for some paid services (and does nothing to
| deal with your data they still have), but virtual credit cards
| are a life saver. I feel powerful every time I can't cancel
| something from a service's website but I can just go kill the
| virtual credit card I signed up with.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Though you still need a documentation trail showing the
| attempted cancelation, lest you find your credit history
| affected and a some scummy collection agency trying to
| collect years later.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| some of them will continue billing your account, even if they
| can't charge your card, and eventually turn it over to
| collections
| jgsuw wrote:
| This is fantastic, I am still bitter from having to wait on the
| phone for 45 minutes to cancel my NYT subscription, only to have
| an argument with the poor call-center employee about how I was
| really resolved to cancel the subscription.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I dealt with "fax to cancel" I think as recently as 2018.
|
| The wackiness is almost expected
| m3kw9 wrote:
| One click cancel link should be required to be given for every
| subscription.
| pR1vaCy_1000 wrote:
| I have a $1 iCloud subscription on an old iCloud account I no
| longer use. I could not cancel the subscription from a browser,
| so I called apple, and was told I have to do it from an apple
| device. The problem is I no longer have an apple device.
| Ultimately they escalated the problem, but I never received a
| call back.
| rexreed wrote:
| Vonage is notorious for not only preventing people from canceling
| online but making it hell to cancel over the phone. They
| frustrate people trying to port numbers and charge ludicrous
| cancellation and other fees. Totally extortionate and predatory
| behavior. I hope all customers become aware of these practices.
| aristophenes wrote:
| I had to cancel my gym membership because I was moving, and it
| required me to send a physical letter. I did this, but found out
| later that somehow I owed like 2 dollars, so they didn't count my
| cancellation request because my account wasn't up to date (should
| be illegal). They continued to bill me the entire membership fee,
| but my credit card had changed, so they sent my account to a
| collections agency. Right when I was trying to get a mortgage to
| buy a house. Cost me hundreds of dollars and much more in
| annoyance. Thanks The Edge for doing that to your previously
| loyal customer! It ought to be a law that once a customer informs
| you via email, text, phone or mail (and all must be easily found)
| subscription services can no longer accrue new charges.
| grumple wrote:
| I worked at a gym like this once upon a time. What an awful
| place. The workplace encouraged scummy behavior like this.
|
| And boy am I glad I invested in a home gym so I never have to
| deal with that industry again.
| Axien wrote:
| Yup when COVID struck my gym required I cancel in person.
| Moeancurly wrote:
| I had this almost exact experience with Philadelphia Rock Gym.
| They sent a couple emails "threatening" to send my account to
| collections over $50 I did not authorize them to bill me for
| (repeatedly said in writing to cancel my account, they kept my
| membership open anyway). I just ignored them, nothing ever came
| of it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Does your country have a small claims court? This is the exact
| situation you should sue them for reputational damage.
| vinaypai wrote:
| In most US states at least, you can only sue for actual
| damages in small claims court. Punitive, reputational or
| other things have to go through regular court.
| starwind wrote:
| Small claims cases against gyms are remarkably easy to win.
| Judges know the bs gyms put their members through when they
| try to cancel so the courts are already inclined to believe
| the other party
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That's one insanity I don't understand why companies can get
| away with. They can set up bureaucratic processes and even when
| you follow them, they "lose" your material, raise some weird
| objection or ignore it. Same happens with health insurances and
| hospitals. They ignore you whenever they feel like it but the
| payment and collections clock keeps ticking. I have heard it
| was the same in 2008 and later when people requested mortgage
| relief and the banks just ignored them for months and years.
| Frost1x wrote:
| It amazes me how successful consumer hostile strategies are
| in recent times. It sort of flies in the face of most
| economic models that claim markets self-regulate. This
| includes businesses in industries which aren't massive and
| monopolistic and even have competitors. When all your
| competitors decide to indirectly collude with one business's
| successful consumer hostile strategies, it becomes the norm
| and another barrier to entry for a competitor to come in with
| a better offering.
|
| In theory, consumer hostile practices should exist at a
| discount so a reputable business that isn't consumer hostile
| should be able to offer better products/services at a higher
| price point and let consumers decide if they want a hostile
| or non-hostile market. Some may claim that consumers just
| want cheap above all else and the market regulates to that,
| hostile or not. I dismiss this and claim the issue is that a
| price point signal doesn't give me enough information to tell
| me if a business is consumer hostile or not. Paying more
| absolutely does not guratentee a better consumer experience,
| it could just be a business operating at higher margins and
| that seems to be the norm--a business disguised as offering
| higher quality products/services or better experience to
| justify the price point. This model seems to work just as
| well and captures a subset of people willing to risk paying
| more for a hopefully more consumer friendly experience.
|
| The issue with all of this is, as a consumer, you can't know
| without trying, and are limited by anecdata of trial and
| error while businesses often have significantly larger pools
| of information and therefor leverage to work with and
| strategize against consumers on price points and margin
| padding. Reviews and that sort of shared information are
| already gamed with so much misinformation and disinformation
| that these consumer hostile strategies continue to hold well
| (and are legal). I can try limiting reviews to a trusted
| network by word of mouth so I know people aren't hustling me
| (mostly, for now) but that only helps when someone in my
| trust network has a recommendation. Often, they don't, and
| they too have limited selection so their anecdata is a small
| sample size as well, meaning a better consumer experience can
| exist at a better price point.
|
| As such, I'm not sure how you resolve this asymmetry in
| information in free markets. Consumers almost never have
| leverage unless they collude together because they lack scale
| and information that come with the resources of owning a
| business. Here you have hundreds, thousands, millions of
| customers you can sample from and test different strategies
| against, optimizing for your margins. As a consumer, I don't
| have the resources to do this and since consumer information
| is largely disjoint, I'm always left at a disadvantage hoping
| some business won't screw me over as many frequently do.
|
| What's worse is that if a consumer hostile business is
| successful enough to accumulate enough resources to play the
| continous rebrand/rename game, I can't possibly even build a
| reputation against something I consume. I'm instead
| encouraged to push to established businesses and further
| entrench the massive market share holders where we tend
| towards a different set of monopolistic anti-consumer
| strategies.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Mass market gyms are kind of unique.
|
| They are selling aspirations and tend to have a local
| monopoly based on location. There are many gyms, but there
| aren't many gyms in a particular locale convenient for
| whatever aspirational schedule exists.
|
| Because of that, it's really not in a cheap gyms interest
| to not be assholes.
|
| Nicer gyms like the Y or a Country/Social club use things
| like childcare or social factors to increase the friction
| of leaving. More serious gyms use the trainer relationship
| and cost more or have fewer amenities.
| daenz wrote:
| >so they sent my account to a collections agency
|
| Important clarification: they _sold_ your account to a
| collections agency. They made more than what you actually owed
| them by doing that, which is probably why they did that.
| vinaypai wrote:
| > Important clarification: they sold your account to a
| collections agency. They made more than what you actually
| owed them by doing that, which is probably why they did that.
|
| Um, no. Collection agencies buy debt at a discount, and make
| a profit if they manage to collect the full amount. It would
| make no sense for them to buy debt for more than what is
| owed.
| daenz wrote:
| I can't edit my original post now, but I misread that the
| account grew from more than just $2 before it was sold. If
| the gym sold a $2 account to a collections agency, the
| collection agency buying it lines up with my experience of
| them tacking on hundreds of dollars in overhead costs when
| they try to collect.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think the point is that they didn't actually owe
| anything.
| drstewart wrote:
| > They made more than what you actually owed them by doing
| that
|
| This makes absolutely zero sense and does not happen. Why
| would the collections agency pay more for debt than it's
| worth? Why wouldn't they sell all their accounts then? Free
| increase in profits!
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yeah; that is absolutely false.
|
| They make more, across all accounts, than they would in
| lost time/expenses -pursuing- those debts. But the
| collection agency did not pay them > X to collect on X. Far
| from it; the collection agency paid them a small percentage
| of the total debt for the 'right' to try and collect on it.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| They 'owed' zero.
| daenz wrote:
| I've been pursued by a collection agency for a bogus
| account with a very low value. The collections agency
| tacked on a ton of additional costs. Hundreds of dollars.
| Related to them processing the account, and said that I
| owed them for it. So my understanding of how it works, and
| maybe I'm completely wrong, that's possible too, is that
| collections agency stand to gain far more than just the
| original amount owed, if they can add their overhead costs
| to the account.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Important clarification: they sold your account to a
| collections agency. They made more than what you actually
| owed them by doing that, which is probably why they did that.
|
| I had this experience some years back.
|
| The obnoxious collections agent (no robocalls for that stuff
| back then) tried to bully me.
|
| I just laughed and wished them luck getting a penny out of
| me. Never heard from them again.
|
| Nothing on my credit report either.
|
| Perhaps things are different now.
|
| Something to remember is that corporations (including
| collections agencies) have to pay lawyers if they want to
| take legal action against you.
|
| And at $250-$400/hour, unless the "debt" is in the many
| thousands, it's generally not worth it to sue.
|
| Note that I'm not suggesting that anyone stiff their
| creditors. Rather, it's useful to keep that bit of
| information in mind when dealing with unfair/unethical
| attempts to extort money[0] from you.
|
| [0] Especially when a "collection agency" (read legal
| extortion racket) purchases your "debt" for pennies on the
| dollar.
|
| Edit: Added detail about "debt" purchasing.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| LA Fitness?
|
| I had to print and send them a letter. Or talk to the manager.
| Who is only there a few days a week. And no one knows when.
|
| Obligatory:
|
| "But the plans were on display..."
|
| "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find
| them."
|
| "That's the display department."
|
| "With a flashlight."
|
| "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
|
| "So had the stairs."
|
| "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
|
| "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom
| of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a
| sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."
| lostgame wrote:
| I laughed way too hard at this, having been a gym subscriber
| in the past, and also a fan of Douglas Adams.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Gyms are the worst about this. Typically they make it very
| difficult to cancel and say something like you have to notify
| them 30 days in advanced and pay for 30 days after you cancel.
| Effectively making you pay for two months you don't want.
| Almost every cheap gym is doing this.
| iandinwoodie wrote:
| LA Fitness allows you to either mail in the cancellation form
| or submit it in person. I was also cancelling due to a move, so
| I printed out the form and trekked out to the nearest location
| for a final workout and the piece of mind that my cancellation
| was complete.
|
| Lo and behold, you cannot submit your cancellation form without
| a Manager present. Okay, when does the Manager arrive?
| _Usually_ around 9:00AM is the response I got. I have to get
| home for a meeting at 8:30AM, so is there a mailbox I can drop
| this in? No. Can I leave it with you (the staff member
| attending the front desk) to hand to the Manager? No. Will the
| Manager be here around 5:00PM if I come back after work? No.
|
| Please note that I bear no ill will towards the pleasant staff
| member that was helping me.
| wil421 wrote:
| There was a class action lawsuit against LA Fitness about
| sending letters to cancel. I guess they finally allowed it to
| be done in person but had you jump through hoops to find a
| manager. They "lost" my letter a couple times until I sent it
| certified.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There's a business to be had in generating and mailing
| those letters certified for someone. For $10, you can have
| it printed and mailed by Lob certified and still have a few
| bucks margin, without the customer having to leave their
| home. They'd then have the certified tracking number to
| demonstrate it was delivered.
|
| This should _absolutely not_ be necessary, but is a shim
| until a regulator kicks gyms in the shorts over their
| predatory practices.
| mcronce wrote:
| FWIW, https://www.mailaletter.com can do certified w/
| return receipt, and there's also a service called Trim
| (https://www.asktrim.com) that can do cancellations for
| you. In my experience, some companies have explicit
| policy to not accept cancellation requests on your behalf
| from Trim, but it works for many.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This behavior is everywhere in the gym industry. It is so bad
| that the last time I joined a gym, I paid for a year up front
| with a physical check. I told them i don't have credit or debit
| cards (lie) and can only pay by check.
|
| At the end of the year, I walked away and never got any letters
| about paying a renewal or anything.
| RankingMember wrote:
| This is the only way to do gym memberships with peace of mind
| right now. Gym membership cancellation practices are in
| desperate need of regulation.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| > Gym membership cancellation practices are in desperate
| need of regulation.
|
| Agreed, and I also hate being stuck in 12-month contracts
| as well. I will never join a gym that makes me sign a long
| term commitment like that. The last local gym I joined was
| pretty cool about this. They had higher month to month
| prices and discounted longer term memberships. Gives you a
| chance to see how you like it after a few months.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| A lot of people will say "paying by check is such a hassle!
| I don't even have checks! It's so 1980s!" But you know
| what? It's a lot less of a hassle than canceling your
| membership when paying by credit/debit card.
|
| And if you don't have checks for your checking account, you
| can get order them online from walmart.com for $10 +
| shipping. Or, if you still use a bank that has a local
| branch, you can go into the branch and ask for a single
| printed check. They cost a couple of bucks.
| adrr wrote:
| I used to buy prepaid memberships to 24 hour fitness from
| Costco. Same with magazines like economist , just bought a
| prepaid digit subscription. Most places sell prepaid
| memberships because of the gifting aspect.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Great idea! For magazines, you can also subscribe through
| Amazon and manage the subscription with Amazon. They make
| single-click unsubscribe easy.
| artursapek wrote:
| Crypto would be good for this use case :)
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Ha, I made a similar comment about my experience with a gym
| elsewhere in this thread. Gyms are up near the top of worst
| practices when it comes to this kind of thing. There really
| should be legal ramifications for companies that do this.
| webinvest wrote:
| For Crunch Fitness, it took me 5 membership cancellation
| requests, 3 calls, 2 in person visits, and 4 months to cancel
| my month-to-month gym membership.
| Axsuul wrote:
| Couldn't you have just blocked the payee from your bank?
| mcronce wrote:
| It took me seven years to cancel Planet Fitness after I moved a
| hundred miles away. Letter after letter, nothing...finally made
| a trip back home one day and had time to stop and deal with it.
|
| Fuck gyms. I can run on the sidewalk for free.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Had the exact same experience. Moved out of state, had to
| continue paying for over a year until I had another reason to
| go back there and cancel it. Of course, there was no part of
| the process that couldn't have been done over the phone, or
| on the web.
|
| And this is relevant to the article, since Planet Fitness is
| specifically called out for being among the shadiest
| practitioners of this tactic.
| asmos7 wrote:
| Seriously regret signing up for that gym. The sales person lied
| about so much shit in hindsight. Signed up for the medium of
| the road package - tried to downgrade to the basic package told
| me I couldn't despite telling me when I signed up I could hop
| between them anytime.
| Dave_TRS wrote:
| My friend had a good suggestion I used. When you're signing
| up, I had them write down and sign beside the big lie I
| thought they were telling me about cancellation. Then when I
| cancelled and mentioned the terms, the manager said
| "unfortunately we would need to have that in writing". And
| then I produced my contract with it added in writing, signed
| by their staff member. Ridiculous the lengths one must go to
| have them follow through on what they say.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Gyms. Walk in with a wad of cash. Tell them you want to pre-pay
| for 6 months. Show them the cash. No credit cards, no atm
| numbers, no ssns, no drivers licenses, nothing. They will
| refuse. Then give them your phone number and let them know if
| they change their mind to call you. Leave. THEY call EVERY
| time.
| makecheck wrote:
| ...and collectively billions of hours of wasted time are returned
| to consumers everywhere.
|
| Generally though, we really need some _efficient_ mechanism for
| saying "hell no" to new things that are clearly anti-consumer,
| instead of letting them be conceived, implemented, and
| insufferable for _years_ before anything can be done.
| newshorts wrote:
| Nothing is easier than mailing a letter. You don't even need a
| router for it!
|
| Simply click to subscribe and mail us a letter of intent to
| cancel when you want. Of course it will take us 60 days to
| process mail and if your handwriting isn't great we might not be
| able to read your account number.
|
| To access your account number, simply log in and click the lower
| right hand side of the page 5 times while holding the shift key
| down. If your account number doesn't show up, call tech support.
| [deleted]
| subsubzero wrote:
| Great job on cracking down on illegal behavior from bad actors.
|
| The next step I'd like to see is to focus on having deletion of
| accounts made very easy for all apps. Alot of web/social media
| companies make creating a account dead simple, but when you want
| to delete an account the tab is hidden by dark pattern design, or
| its made extremely complex and time consuming by sending multiple
| emails to different 'departments'. Account deletion should be
| legally as simple as account creation.
| adamkochanowicz wrote:
| Privacy.com card. Set one-time use with limit equal to
| subscription price. I do this with shady subscriptions now and I
| decide when it's time to cancel.
| petilon wrote:
| This isn't limited to newspapers! Have you tried canceling
| internet service? My internet service did not use internet for
| cancelation. I had to call.
|
| Free ad for t-mobile: their 5G service for home internet is
| awesome.
| dinvlad wrote:
| 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.
| zachlatta wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| > 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.
| anandsuresh wrote:
| About time this happened. I experienced this with the ACLU, of
| all the entities out there using this dark pattern. Enable
| subscriptions online to donate to the ACLU, but if you changed
| your mind, you have to get the phone to cancel. Needless to say,
| I just let my credit card expire.
| puyoxyz wrote:
| > The new guidelines around "negative option marketing" -- which
| includes everything from automatic renewals to free trials that
| convert to paid subscriptions if consumers take no action -- go
| beyond mandating that companies offer straightforward
| cancellation.
|
| No, fuck this! If I get a free trial I _want it_ to auto renew;
| if I have to take another step to make it renew that's a waste of
| time, and inconvenient. If I don't want it to renew I'll cancel.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Most people I talk to say they are against regulation. But
| without regulation you get stuff like this. I too am against
| having to get a permit for a kid to open a lemonade stand, but I
| am pro regulation to allow me to easily cancel subscriptions or
| my gym membership.
|
| Also I wonder if the NYT will ever report on how hard they make
| it for their customers to unsubscribe?
| enonevets wrote:
| I've had gym memberships where calling to cancel wasn't good
| enough, you had to come in person to cancel.
| glitcher wrote:
| The article's framing is a little odd by putting the emphasis on
| news organizations. In my experience the worst offenders have
| been ISP's and phone providers. And it is such a widespread
| practice, it happens with everything from credit cards to gym
| memberships.
|
| Another funny thing I'm wondering now, is if companies might find
| they are more profitable by eliminating these manipulative
| customer retention departments. Maybe try shifting the focus to
| making better products that customers want to stay with in the
| first place.
| lookalike74 wrote:
| Hedge fund dweebs: "We kill newspapers intentionally." Everyone
| here: "Fuggin NYT"
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| There was a skit on SNL recently that satirized this issue,
| wonder if the FTC was watching, ha!
|
| It's about trying to cancel your cable.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Maybe OT, but Square (the online merchant processor) has a button
| for immediate deposit of funds.
|
| Click it by mistake and find no verification step and immediate
| and irreversible fee for 1.5% of your queued transactions.
| slt2021 wrote:
| I keep a separate capitalone cc for all "subscriptions" and
| always keep it disabled, so that no charges will ever go through.
|
| just enable it back for 10 seconds when signing up for service
| and disable it back.
|
| so far it kept me safe from annoying services asking for cc and
| their unexpected charges
| 93po wrote:
| I use https://privacy.com/ for disposable numbers for just this
| reason. It's nice.
| treebot wrote:
| Gym memberships are notorious with this. I always wondered how it
| was even legal. I cancelled my debit card and they sent me to
| collections.
| golemotron wrote:
| > To comply with the law, businesses must ensure sign-ups are
| clear, consensual, and easy to cancel. Specifically, businesses
| should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy
| to use as the method the customer used to buy the product or
| service in the first place.
|
| That's a tall order with one-click.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Seems like a lot of box subscription companies are gonna need to
| do some work this holiday season. There are a lot of companies
| out there who are also posing as US entities when they're really
| based overseas and have small LLCs as US affiliates who sell
| whitelisted products who will be affected too.
|
| Recently I purchased a yearly subscription for an app from a
| foreign "health" company and after the checkout process, I was
| presented with some supplement options. These options were
| showing a discount on a per-month basis, but were also
| deceptively packaged in such a way that (a) the price was
| actually per month, and (b) if you chose ANY of the items on the
| screen, you were immediately billed for them without checkout.
|
| Realizing that they just hit me for $270 for half a year's supply
| of supplements, I immediately sent an email to their customer
| service that I wanted my money refunded because I did not intend
| to pay a quarter grand on what were essentially fiber pills.
| These are shipped from a California warehouse. It was past
| midnight CST.
|
| Twenty minutes later, I receive an email telling me that they are
| sorry but my order has been processed and there's nothing they
| can do, but if I wanted, they could send RMA instructions on the
| package. Their terms of service dictates that they have a "no-
| refund" policy and will only accept returns if there is physical
| damage to the shipped product. I asked again, and was rebutted
| again with the same sort of nonsense. Nobody was processing an
| order for a small goods company in California after midnight.
|
| Welp... my next email to them informed the customer service rep
| that it was past midnight in California so no shipping had
| occurred. That I worked for a company with local and national
| news reach and I would be glad to share the information of my
| story, the app, the company name, and the parent company name
| with reporters who would be interested in covering deceptive
| business practices.
|
| 10 minutes later, I received an email apologizing for their
| transgression and another confirming that the charges were
| reversed.
| twothamendment wrote:
| I've only had one good experience with call to cancel. Ok, one
| company and many good calls. Drumroll please, for AOL. Every time
| I'd try to cancel they'd give me another two or three months for
| free. Then I'd pay them for a month and call again.
|
| I was a teen and paying for this new fangled internet myself
| because my parents didn't get it yet. Paying 4 months out of the
| year was affordable!
| indus wrote:
| Last week I analyzed thousands of SaaS vendors that are using
| _dark patterns_ in their billing loop [O].
|
| Found out that many of the practices are borderline illegal..more
| so now.
|
| Notables:
|
| 1. No notification when free trial converts to paid
|
| 2. Silent recurring renewals
|
| 3. Shady card authorization to bypass rule engines
|
| 4. Upsize during billing updates!
|
| 5. Charges during training and onboarding
|
| [O] https://quolum.com/blog/saas/i-analyzed-saas-billing-dark-
| pa...
| taxyz23 wrote:
| I totally agree that call to cancel is a PITA and companies
| should be called on the carpet for it. The prime example of this
| is when I tried to cancel my Consumer Reports subscription a few
| years ago and it required me to Snail Mail a cancellation. What
| hypocrisy. But government intervention and more red tape is not
| the answer. Public shaming and taking your business elsewhere
| works better and maintains freedom. Otherwise we are only
| inviting in the long, inflexible, and political arm of the
| bureaucracy (and even worse in this case federal bureaucracy) to
| get involved in every facet of how a business structures its
| interactions with its customers. It encourages wasteful
| litigation, clutters our life with mountains made from molehills,
| incentivizes running to the government for the answer to every
| annoyance, and makes starting and running a small business the
| equivalent of running a minefield not knowing which local, state,
| or federal law or regulation it may violate with any particular
| action.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Ah yes, that free market where any rapscallion can create a
| multi-hundred-reporter corps filled with publisher and Nobel
| prize winning staff spread across the globe to report on
| current events and politics.
|
| You can't fork the NYT.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Public shaming and taking your business elsewhere works
| better and maintains freedom._
|
| This was not borne out in practice. I, too, wish more consumers
| were discerning and picky, and I, too, dislike regulation, but
| this part of the argument against it isn't valid.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| I found a loophole for NYT and The Economist. Convert your
| payment to PayPal (they allow you to edit payments, but not
| remove them), and then go into PayPal to cancel the active
| payment agreement. Easier than cancelling the card, or calling
| them.
| simion314 wrote:
| I want to see the anti-regulation individuals explaining how this
| is bad and is affecting the poor small guy, and they need to do
| more work to implement this (the usual bullshit when a regulation
| they don't like like GDPR is discussed).
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| You don't have to wait for them to agree that your subscription
| is cancelled. When I call I tell them I'm cancelling and they're
| no longer authorized to charge my card. If they don't stop the
| charges, then it's much easier to talk to my own credit card
| company and do a charge-back.
| zorked wrote:
| Also a common practice in Europe (Germany, France,
| Switzerland...), but frequently even worse: click to subscribe,
| send a fucking letter to cancel it. Le Monde and Der Spiegel both
| do it.
|
| I'm a news junkie, I think paying for news is important, but I
| don't have even 1/4 of the subscriptions I would have if it
| wasn't for scummy tactics and/or the fear that I will be subject
| to them in the future.
| chmod775 wrote:
| >[...] and Der Spiegel both do it.
|
| They might have changed. When I checked just now, they offer a
| phone number and an E-Mail address to cancel a physical paper
| subscription (there's no account, so that makes sense).
|
| An online "Spiegel+" subscription can be cancelled via their
| website.
|
| https://abo.spiegel.de/de/c/abo-service/spiegel-abo-kuendige...
|
| It may be different for their non-German publication, but I had
| trouble finding any English information - which may be saying
| something...
| hnbad wrote:
| I live in Germany and have cancelled several physical
| magazine and newspaper subscriptions and even political party
| memberships via e-mail after signing up online. I can't say
| anything about Der Spiegel but I would be surprised if they
| did it any different given that German consumer protection
| agencies have some teeth.
| koilke wrote:
| Fortunately I have been able to cancel my Le Monde Diplomatique
| for many years through email. I did not get a confirmation
| email but they stopped billing me at least.
| jaclaz wrote:
| To be picky, at least here in Italy, not "send a letter", but
| rather "send a registered letter with delivery receipt", which
| plainly means that you have a non-trivial cost (several Euro, I
| believe in Italy it is now 10 or 12 Euro) and you have to
| physically go to the post office to send it.
|
| Recently many companies are (finally) allowing to use the PEC
| (which is a form of Certified Electronic Mail) which has the
| same legal value as the registered mail, but that the average
| citizens do not have (unless they have it for other reasons),
| which however has a (small) yearly cost, but that may be
| "dangerous" in the sense that it becomes your "legal address"
| so it needs to be monitored as anything that arrives there has
| legal value and is considered delivered to you the moment it
| arrives in the inbox.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Shouldn't the company bear the burden of that cost, not the
| consumer? That's kinda silly.
|
| Oh you require it by certified air pigeon? Great, happy to;
| pay for it.
| tremon wrote:
| The recommendation for using a certified letter is that you
| (as customer) have an independent paper trail to make your
| case should it go to court. At least in NL, a certified
| letter should not be required by the company itself.
| Ekaros wrote:
| In Finland cancelling rental contract can be fun, if you
| don't manage to contact your landlord. Your regular
| certified letter technically isn't enough. You need even
| more expensive version "registered with advice of
| receipt". Which is probably only way to prove in court
| that person received it...
|
| Though I haven't had issues in cancelling stuff. Online
| services work nicely for all other stuff.
| jaclaz wrote:
| ... and if we want to get even pickier (again at least
| here in Italy) a Law firm will likely send you not (still
| by certified mail with receipt) a "normal" letter (i.e.
| one or more sheets of paper inside an envelope) but
| rather a "piego" (literally "fold") i.e. the sheets of
| papers folded in three, with the address (and the stamp)
| written on the back.
|
| The rationale is that you could claim that you received
| the letter, but upon opening the envelope you found just
| some blank sheets, with the piego there is no way to deny
| that it has been received.
|
| And viceversa, there have been cases of envelopes sent
| intentionally with blank sheets inside, only to get the
| receipt and then be able to claim that "document X" has
| been sent within a required deadline (and actually
| fabricating the document later).
| mejutoco wrote:
| Check the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. They do not even
| allow to subscribe by credit/ debit card, only by sharing your
| bank details. What a joke.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I thought that was illegal already, and has been for a few
| years? Not sure if by EU or German regulation.
|
| FWIW, from 2022 on, Germany will have a 2-click unsubscribe law
| [0]. It requires clearly labeled buttons and forbids a lot of
| dark patterns.
|
| [0]: https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/211006-new-two-
| click...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Most importantly, Germany has the Verbraucherzentralen which
| have the right to sue on behalf of (all) consumers.
|
| Many countries that don't have that will have consumer
| protection laws that simply get ignored, because simply
| ignoring them works for the company.
| [deleted]
| evancoop wrote:
| There's something odd about legislation of this ilk. Virtually
| every comment here bemoans these nefarious activities, and the
| commenters themselves try to avoid companies that utilize these
| dark patterns. The market, therefore, seems to be working - the
| companies that pull this type of nefarious BS find their way into
| the dumpster of failed ventures (as they should!). Would a law,
| in effect, force companies to mask their unsavory dispositions?
| Customer LTV is actually _higher_ when they are given the
| opportunity to control their subscriptions...
| dahart wrote:
| > the companies that pull this type of nefarious BS find their
| way into the dumpster of failed ventures
|
| What are some examples of companies that failed over this? All
| I'm seeing here are very large very healthy companies being
| named like NYT, WSJ, Sirius, etc.
|
| Seeing anecdotes of a few people trying to avoid being scammed
| doesn't demonstrate a functioning market. If anything, the
| evidence here is the opposite of what you suggest: that dark
| patterns are working on the public at large and companies can
| easily get away with bad behavior indefinitely if allowed to.
|
| > Would a law, in effect, force companies to mask their
| unsavory dispositions?
|
| How would that work here, exactly? If there's a cancel button,
| then there's a cancel button.
|
| Regulation has worked well for many, many things. Companies
| sometimes do need to be told what's not acceptable, and they
| have in the past complied once told.
| evancoop wrote:
| Can we truly scour the internet for small-time violators?
| Sure, if a massive entity like NYT or WSJ fail to comply,
| that could be called-out and addressed. But are we prepared
| to enforce such a paradigm at scale?
| dahart wrote:
| Yes, we are prepared to enforce this. That's precisely what
| laws, courts, and an enforcement agency are for. This
| process has worked many times in the past and it will work
| now and in the future.
|
| I don't understand your implied objection. Yes, small time
| violators, and big time violators alike, will be reported
| by their customers. Currently, customers don't have any
| place at all to take their complaints, because it's not
| illegal for a company to attempt to prevent a subscription
| cancellation.
|
| How do you propose to call out and address the issue
| without a law? How are you proposing to enforce individual
| violations, and what is the violation exactly? You claimed
| that market forces were taking care of this already, but
| that's not true, and runs in direct contradiction to the
| mountain of evidence in this thread alone.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| the major difference is that so far, if a company provides the
| honest service, they are at a disadvantage. But since the law
| equalizes the process for everyone, they are not at a
| disadvantage anymore.
| evancoop wrote:
| Are the companies that offer honest service disadvantaged in
| the long-run? Sure, in the short-term, a captive audience is
| profitable, but eventually, this should harm LTV?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I don't see how they would be advantaged. Their users are
| leaving, the chances of re-subscribing are small, while the
| users of their competitors are not leaving. Their honest
| service is a small thing to matter in the overall
| perception of their product, especially when the biggest
| names in the sector are using dark patterns.
| sempron64 wrote:
| I subscribed to Verizon Fios service entirely online but when
| moving I found out there was no way to cancel except to call
| their support and bounce through several numbers. Quite annoying.
| However, because when signing up you do need to have a technician
| come to your residence, so there is some non-online interaction,
| it might not be against the rules.
| Havoc wrote:
| Just had to sit on a phone call forever to get rid of uk beer52
| sub.
|
| It's evil AF. Real life dark pattern
| synergy20 wrote:
| What about IRS's pay me when you profit over stock, deduct 3000
| per year if you lose money until you're dead? not symmetric to
| me, not at all.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Great job FTC/Lima. We need it and you delivered.
|
| On a separate note. Why is it really hard for HN community to
| make a compliment? Yes, some companies will try to skirt around.
| But most of us seem to agree this is a step in the right
| direction and being hopeful is nice.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > On a separate note. Why is it really hard for HN community to
| make a compliment?
|
| You can find a bunch of compliments in this thread, and others.
| Don't portray the "HN community" as a monolithic entity with a
| single will. It's not. And trying to guilt-trip the community
| into making compliments is bad form, really annoying, boring to
| read, and goes against the spirit of intellectual curiosity.
| dang wrote:
| I agree with you otherwise, but please edit out swipes like
| that last sentence. It's not necessary and not in the spirit
| of "Be kind" [etc.] a la
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I went through the effort of canceling my NYT subscription this
| morning, and _thankfully_ they have an option to cancel "using
| your account," which avoids a pointless phone call or virtual
| chat. It's the third option listed, of course, and there are a
| couple of guilt-trippy pages you have to slide past, but in all
| it took me 2 minutes to do.
| dqpb wrote:
| Do you live in California?
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I do not.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| How about "click to subscribe, click 6 diminutive, threateningly
| labeled buttons to cancel".
| alexfromapex wrote:
| What about snail mail to cancel?
| alex_h wrote:
| 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.
| danuker wrote:
| Perhaps "small claims court" would fit the bill. Maybe there
| are lawyers specialized in that.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Someone needs to inform TMobile's Home Internet division of this.
| dboreham wrote:
| Ah, I fondly recall when the CTO of AOL tried to cancel his AOL
| account...
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| A hard-to-cancel suscription is basically automatic theft, and
| should be treated as such
| john37386 wrote:
| I subscribed to a weekly meal kit. It was very easy to onboard
| and I liked the service for many months. My situation changed and
| I no longer needed their service. I wanted to cancel my
| subscription and it's impossible to do online. It's written in
| super small to call their happy representative. I didn't like
| this situation so what I'm doing is skipping the meal kit for the
| next 4 weeks. Every month I log on their website and skip the
| next 4 weeks... I'll do this until my credit card expired. Just
| for this, I won't recommend them to anyone. It's sad because I
| kind of liked it when it was useful to me.
| xg15 wrote:
| Question from a non-American. Is it actually legal to "cancel"
| a service by having your credit card expire?
|
| At least here, if there is a subscription with recurring fees
| active, you're liable for those fees, whether or not the
| provider is able to collect them at this moment.
|
| This sounds like you risk building up a lot of debt and
| eventually having a collections agency come after you.
| john37386 wrote:
| I might change my strategy and finally call them at some
| point. It's just frustrating to be stuck in this situation.
| Thanks for the tip.
| weswpg wrote:
| Many banks will _automatically_ transfer recurring
| subscriptions to your new card as a "helpful" measure.
|
| > Updater services allow merchants to know when your credit
| card information changes, and to alter their records
| accordingly. If you don't want to continue the
| subscription, you'll need to cancel it directly.
|
| https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/recurring-
| charg...
| ydant wrote:
| You can also try changing your address to a California
| address, and then the cancel button might magically appear
| in your account, due to different regulations around this
| for companies doing business in California.
| jffry wrote:
| > Is it actually legal to "cancel" a service by having your
| credit card expire?
|
| Especially for services that are paid up-front, they
| sometimes specify in the contract that the service is
| terminated upon non-payment (my renters insurance is this
| way).
|
| Many services don't contractually specify this, but they are
| still in the habit of doing it because documenting debt takes
| effort, and selling it to debt collectors only gets you a
| fraction of its value. It's relatively easier for them to
| just shut down the account and move on.
|
| That said, the terms of most services I've interacted with
| require you to explicitly end your service via one of a
| contractually specified set of communications channels (e.g.
| "call us or send a letter to XYZ address").
|
| So yes, it's also the case here that you risk accumulating
| debt and being send to collections.
| heliodor wrote:
| It depends on whether you have a contact that binds you to
| pay until you cancel. Gyms force such a contact. Most SaaS
| websites don't. They'll cancel your service if they can't
| collect and move on with their lives.
|
| Some day, someone will offer contract enforcement as a
| service that makes it really easy for a SaaS to come after
| you for payment and collect. Or maybe the friction of the
| legal system makes it untenable and the legal process has to
| become easier as a prerequisite.
|
| And to nitpick on vocabulary, it is _legal_ to break a
| contract. It is illegal to break a law.
| jffry wrote:
| Most SaaS services are pre-paid rather than post-paid, so
| if they cannot bill you, it's easy for them to shut off
| your service and be out basically no money.
|
| My experience is that the actual terms of service don't
| guarantee that will happen, but rather that it's more cost-
| effective for the company to block your account than it is
| to allow a debt to accrue, document that debt, and then
| attempt to collect on it or sell it to debt collectors for
| pennies.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Probably not legal, but in the sense that you could get sent
| to collections for what you owe vs getting charged with a
| crime. If the company wanted to be difficult I think they
| could keep billing you and then send you to collections and
| likely most people would pay to avoid court costs and
| continued credit degradation.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Can you name the meal kit place ( asking only, because I was
| debating the heavily advertised one about fruits and veggies )?
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| You should honestly just tell your credit card about this
| situation and if they are tier 1 (Chase, Amex, etc.) they will
| likely deny the charge on your behalf if you can show proof
| that you tried to cancel but weren't able to.
|
| People can say they have you in whatever financial agreement,
| but if the processor has evidence you are NOT trying to pay it,
| they can at least stop it from going on their rails (and your
| card)
| ghaff wrote:
| My very limited experience with Blue Apron was that it was easy
| enough to cancel. But pretty much all the meal services, as far
| as I can tell,work on the subscribe and then you have to cancel
| model. Which makes them pretty uninteresting to me.
|
| I _might_ give a service a try for a week here and there but I
| definitely don 't want one week in and week out. And I don't
| want to deal with signing up and then (hopefully if all goes
| well) immediately canceling. Dark pattern.
| ericwood wrote:
| For a very very long time (I don't know what it's like these
| days) Blue Apron's cancellation has been available online,
| but not linked anywhere on the site. Contacting support would
| either have them cancelling the subscription for you, or just
| sending you the link.
|
| It was an extremely dark pattern intended to combat churn,
| which was a huge problem. Practically nobody working there
| liked it, but the orders to do things this way came from
| execs.
| werdnapk wrote:
| I used to subscribe to a meal it service (Hello Fresh), but
| circumstances changed and I just chatted with the online rep
| via the website and was able to cancel rather quickly.
| [deleted]
| tristanperry wrote:
| Good. The more exposure this tactic gets, the better.
|
| I remember trying to cancel my The Times (of London) subscription
| a few years ago. It was a terrible experience - having to ensure
| a pushy sales call for 20 minutes, where the call handler kept
| ignoring my requests to cancel as they kept reading a hard sell
| script.
|
| The sooner this practice ends, the better.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Should not you only use anonymous / pre-paid / virtual /
| revocable credit cards for those operations?
| _Donny wrote:
| 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 ...
| docdeek wrote:
| I had that exprience with the NYT - I had to time my call right
| to hit the office hours on the US east coast.
|
| That said, when I last had an interaction with them about a
| subscription, I did the whole thing via a 24/7 online chat. A
| far better and more convenient experience, if one that still
| lacks the simplicity of a simple 'unsubscribe' button.
| Manozco wrote:
| 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.
| hajhatten wrote:
| Now I just wish this was implemented in my country/EU. NYT set
| the precedence for our national newspapers.
| quitit wrote:
| It's why they hate people that sign up via IAP - literally one
| click and the subscription is gone.
| vojvod wrote:
| What's IAP?
| montag wrote:
| In-App Purchase
| quitit wrote:
| IAP for in app purchase.
|
| There are currently two ways to sign up for the New York
| times online, one is via the website and the other is via a
| subscription from the various app stores(an in-app-
| purchase).
|
| To unsubscribe from the website-based subscription requires
| a call to NYT's customer service based in New York which
| have limited operating hours- here they'll try their best
| to convince you not to unsubscribe after waiting in a phone
| queue.
|
| However if you chose to subscribe through an IAP then you
| simply browse to your active subscriptions and press a
| button - far simpler and on par with how easy it was to
| sign up.
|
| Making subscriptions difficult to cancel is not new in any
| industry, NYT's behaviour here isn't unique, or even the
| worst example. I use it as a demonstration that even
| reputable companies use these tactics.
|
| This is one of the reasons why certain businesses loathe
| IAPs, (regardless of the cost _). When providing your
| details to a business there is a lot of added potential for
| lock in, follow-on marketing, increasing the cost at
| irregular intervals and selling your information to 3rd
| parties.
|
| _ I say "regardless of the cost" because many types of
| digital goods have minimal costs to provide them. For
| example a 15% or 30% cut of such purchases is negligible
| when selling an in-game currency because there is no
| genuine cost for providing that currency. Even if the app
| store charged 0% instead of the 15% or 30%, the business
| would still be missing out on using your personal details
| for all of the other valuable ways they can extract money
| from you/your data.
|
| To use Amazon as an example - I receive extreme levels of
| spam for the custom email address that I use with Amazon,
| many vendors I have purchased from have immediately on sold
| my contact information.
| vojvod wrote:
| Thanks, it hadn't occurred to me that the app stores
| would enforce easy cancellation. I'll remember to prefer
| in-app sign up over website for any new subscriptions in
| future.
| quitit wrote:
| It's best to check both options before proceeding, as
| some businesses do offer a cheaper subscription service
| when working directly - however as mentioned that may
| come with strings attached.
|
| I feel the success of small developers relies on IAP, it
| means I can purchase from them without needing to trust
| them - the app stores do a good job of reviewing the app
| for malware and if the app doesn't live up to
| expectations it is trivial to get a refund from the
| various app stores.
| ddek wrote:
| Had a similar issue with a US publication recently. They
| emailed to say "Your subscription of $120 has automatically
| been renewed, please check your card details or contact us to
| alter it."
|
| Fortunately the card they have expired last December.
| makach wrote:
| THIS. I am thinking that I can finally cancel my nytimes
| subscription^^
|
| I mean, I really appreciate the articles but I haven't been
| able to follow as closely as I wanted.
| nasir wrote:
| I immediately instructed my bank to block the upcoming payments
| and on the renewal day the subscription was cancelled. This is
| pretty much a flow of their cancellation.
| wheels wrote:
| At least in Germany, having to cancel by sending a letter (or,
| amusingly, sometimes a fax works) is still common.
| hnbad wrote:
| This is true for traditional "contracts", e.g. phone,
| apartments, gyms, etc, but these generally also involve
| paperwork when signing up (though in some of these cases you
| can sign up online and then have the confirmation mailed to
| you).
|
| This is definitely not the case for websites or apps and I'm
| pretty sure what the NYT is doing wouldn't amuse German
| consumer protection agencies.
| joeberon wrote:
| Germany operates on way more paper systems than the US though
| sorokod wrote:
| Was cancelling my cell provider and was required to send a
| fax - hello Vodafone.de
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Cancellation by mail is always fine, no company can opt out
| of it in a legal way. You don't even need to get the
| address right, you can mail it to any subsidiary of the
| company - it is the companys responsibility to correctly
| route it internally. You can even directly address it to
| the CEO and at "personlich" to it. My favorite.
| pantulis wrote:
| You would need proof of receipt and proof of content in
| case contract termination does not happen, though.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| In theory yes, in practice I had multiple disputes over
| contract termination and in 100% of those cases the
| counterparty with happy with the photo. And also compare
| it to any "phone calls" where you basically have nothing
| as a proof (dunno about your jurisdiction, but in Germany
| it is illegal to record phone calls without prior consent
| and also would require technical means to do so).
|
| Also, if you ever worked in a large corporation, they
| have a lot of means to track incoming mail
| ("Posteingangsbuch") and for an enterprise to try to
| pretend not to have received a letter would require
| maldoing by a lot of employees (who usually are not
| commited to giving false statements in court for their
| employer).
| Faaak wrote:
| In general I write an e-mail saying "please don't make us
| waste more time by requiring me to send a letter and please
| revoke my current subscription".
|
| Works somewhat
| wheels wrote:
| There are third party services that handle cancellation
| (e.g. Aboalarm) that are more reliable, and don't require
| any more time. I honestly just have an online fax account
| where I can upload a PDF to send a fax for like 20 cents,
| and that almost always works. It's still a dark pattern
| though.
| imtringued wrote:
| Stupidly enough, you have to cancel SEPA direct debit
| mandates with a written document to the merchant.
| whazor wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| rich_sasha wrote:
| A few times I found it was easier to cancel a card than to
| cancel a subscription.
|
| I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for goods
| and services is to pass full details of your payment card,
| sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust the
| merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token they
| can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify it.
|
| It thankfully is now more of a thing of the past, but it used
| to be the case in the UK at least that places would take a
| telephone card payment, where you recite your card number,
| expiry date etc. So not only can they make any future payment
| they like, there is even no durable record of them having these
| details.
| viknesh wrote:
| I once had a paper/digital subscription, and at some point I
| had cancelled the card linked to it. Unbeknownst to me (my
| parents were receiving the subscription), they had kept
| sending the paper despite the card being cancelled. When NYT
| eventually realized the card had been cancelled, they claimed
| that I owed them for the ~year or so that I had been
| receiving the paper after the card was cancelled, and
| attempted to send this to collections.
|
| Completely outrageous business practices if you ask me.
| soco wrote:
| I'm not sure why is this outrageous. You had a contract
| with NYT so they deliver you the newspaper for a payment,
| contract which you didn't even try to cancel. This is how
| contracts work.
| manigandham wrote:
| That's not outrageous at all. Your failure to pay doesn't
| invalidate your contract that you will pay for their
| services.
|
| It's definitely frustrating to cancel, and this is a good
| ruling that will help make it easier, but it's still your
| responsibility to do so.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| How could it _not_ invalidate the contract? Services are
| provided after payment is made. If no payment is made, no
| service is provided.
| soco wrote:
| Have you ever read your contracts? Maybe it would be time
| to do so now, before you run into troubles with
| collectors.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Of course. I just opened up a contract I signed with a
| legal firm. It says lack of payment ends the contract.
|
| Why can't everything be simple and easy? Maybe somebody
| needs to pass a law to make it so.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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 "helping" themselves to a very healthy
| tip for delivery; I'd tipped in cash. The owner repeatedly
| professed that he didn't know how to issue a refund and
| offered cash.
|
| He was playing stupid because he didn't want to deal with the
| transaction fee, nor did he want a paper trail of his fraud;
| I strongly suspect he was doing this to other people, too.
| Warned him three times and three times he said, gosh, he had
| no idea how to issue a refund to my card.
|
| I asked for just the fraudulent tip back and my credit card
| company reversed the entire charge. So not only did he lose
| the tip, he lost the cost of the food _and he got dinged with
| a chargeback fee._ He also lost my _weekly_ pizza order.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| 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).
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to
| spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of
| it
|
| A peeve of mine is that the trust-until-a-screwup system
| is used in far more critical places than with a credit
| card. For instance, "DOT certification" of tires has no
| paper trail until people die.
|
| If a tire fails while operating within its speed regime
| and before five years from manufacture, then it is to be
| reported to the DOT (US Department of Transportation).
| This usually only happens if the police are reporting on
| a fatal accident - most common citizens neither know that
| this option exists nor how to report it. If enough
| reports of a specific brand or type of tire come in, then
| the manufacturer (or importer) must provide proof of the
| testing done and pay some fines.
|
| Many of the cheap Chinese tires are out of business
| (read: have changed business names) far before this
| critical last step could ever be reached, assuming that
| any reports were filed at all.
| soco wrote:
| I also wouldn't call debit cards "the norm". They are in
| majority (1 to 5?), true, maybe also because many are
| issued for free by the bank where you have the account
| (which doesn't mean they are also used). But still not
| really "the norm".
| f-jin wrote:
| Can't speak for all of Europe, but my bank in the
| Netherlands (Rabobank) certainly does offer chargeback
| options on debit card purchases.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Disputes are enforced by Visa and Mastercard rules and
| apply to debit & credit cards equally. Some countries may
| have some extra legal protections for credit cards, but
| for clear examples of merchant bad faith the card
| network's dispute resolution process should be enough.
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| I had to resort to cancelling a card once too, but it didn't
| fix the problem. My Credit Card Provider (Barclaycard)
| implemented the Visa Account Updater service with no way to
| turn it off so my new card details went straight to the
| merchant.
|
| Ended up cancelling the account I was so frustrated, lost a
| customer of 10 years.
|
| https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Typically you can call your bank and ask them to block
| transactions from a particular merchant that you have an
| issue with, I have done that before, once on credit card
| and once on a current account.
| Xelbair wrote:
| >I still find it insane that the "normal" way to pay for
| goods and services is to pass full details of your payment
| card, sufficient to make any future payment, and just trust
| the merchant. Surely the sane way is you generate some token
| they can redeem against, but you can e.g. expire it or modify
| it.
|
| That's kinda how Blik payments work in Poland. They generate
| one time code that is used to purchase goods, you also have
| to confirm it on your device(usually a banking app).
|
| That code is one time use and expires after 2 minutes - and
| it can be safely told out loud. You also get transaction
| details before you confirm it on your device.
|
| Expanding this system to a token that allows recurring
| subscription would be pretty convenient.
| fundatus wrote:
| It's not a token, but similar: Europe has Direct Debit
| mandates, which you give to the biller and they can be
| revoked.
|
| https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/mandates/
| rich_sasha wrote:
| That's better, agreed. But can I e.g. limit payment amounts
| on these?
|
| On Direct Debits in the UK, the merchant just charges me
| whatever. This is for things like utilities and phone
| bills, so I don't have major trust issues, but still it
| irks me.
| zwaps wrote:
| In a way, it's even better than credit card: You can not
| set a limit - except contractually, but you can enforce
| it. You can do the charge-back yourself (via the Bank's
| website) within like 6 or 9 months of the transaction.
| This will cost the vendor a lot (relatively speaking)
| money and is pretty easy to do. However, if there is any
| doubt about who is right, an action like that will lead
| them to invoice you all associated costs, send it to
| collections and then a legal fight begins.
|
| Which I guess why many businesses prefer Klarna or other
| payment processors. You login with your bank account and
| then wire the money to them, instead of them pulling the
| money. Then, no chargebacks are possible.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I haven't seen an option to set a payment limit, but all
| banks give you the ability to cancel a direct debit
| authorisation at any time. For that reason alone I'd say
| it's always better to use direct debit than give a
| merchant your credit/debit card for subscription
| services.
|
| In any case, the banks seem to be very good at refunding
| direct debits in cases where the merchants appear to be
| abusing them. My ex once noticed after several months
| that her gym was still charging her even after she'd
| cancelled - the bank made it very quick and easy to claim
| back all the extra payments!
| malka wrote:
| That's what 3dsecure is for.
|
| in EU (well, at least in my country, France) a payment
| without 3dsecure is extremely easy to chargeback.
| soco wrote:
| I don't think 3d protects you in this case of recurring
| charges.
| nivenkos wrote:
| It's just as bad in Europe! Signed up to O2 Deutschland - had
| to send a fax or send a physical letter to cancel.
| nasir wrote:
| You can instruct your bank to stop the direct debit payments
| and they'll cancel your subscription.
| odiroot wrote:
| I had to do exactly that with o2 Germany. They continued to
| charge me after the contract expired. And they even tried
| to charge for the router that I actually sent back.
| hnarn wrote:
| You shouldn't say this to people like it's some obvious
| truth. There are many cases in which this action will land
| you in trouble due to it not being a legally valid
| termination of the contract (which of course may be
| different by country -- it's very common that cancelling
| requires an actual message to the other party).
|
| One specific example is if your contract has a termination
| period, which is pretty common, at least in my part of
| Europe. If you simply stop paying, you are denying the
| other party N months of revenue (your cancellation period)
| that you are contractually obliged to pay. You are now
| defaulting on your payments and will likely pay additional
| fees.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This makes sense if the contract indeed has a minimum
| commitment that hasn't been reached.
|
| But if the contract has no minimum term (or it has since
| passed) and you've made a reasonable effort to attempt to
| cancel with no success, it'll now be on them to recover
| the money through legal means which would require them to
| explain to the court why your cancellation attempt was
| ignored, demonstrating their bad faith in the process.
| That's not something they want to do.
| hnarn wrote:
| The point of my comment was "this is not good general
| advice". The point of your comment seems to be "it can be
| good advice in some cases", which makes no sense to me.
| Obviously it can be good advice in that exact case where
| it makes sense, but it's not good general advice.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'd argue it's good enough general advice and would apply
| to most online subscriptions as they typically have no
| minimum commitment. The ones with a minimum commitment
| would be the outliers and would require special
| treatment.
| nasir wrote:
| I agree with your point that you could get into trouble
| for violating your contract terms. I perhaps should have
| mentioned specifically about NYTimes which seem to have
| designed around people blocking the payments to cancel
| their subscription.
| nivenkos wrote:
| This was the whole issue though. I closed my bank account
| and moved country, and they delayed cancelling it and then
| chased me up on one month's payments for years - when I had
| no easy way of making payments in Germany.
|
| In the end I paid it though, it was only 20 euros!
| hnarn wrote:
| 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 is more
| or less unheard of, unless they for some reason need a
| physical paper with your signature on it (I've heard this
| happen with customs, for example), but in almost all areas of
| society this has now also been replaced with Bank-ID, which
| is digital.[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID
| revax wrote:
| You have to call or send a letter to cancel your
| subscription of the French newspaper LeMonde.
|
| It's not just Germany.
| [deleted]
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I had this same issue with a number of French companies.
| Couldn't figure out why they weren't cancelling my
| contract despite repeated letters until someone told me
| you have to send the letter with proof of receipt
| otherwise they just ignore it.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Yeah, I live in Sweden now too.
|
| I think Sweden is the exception here really though (and the
| other Scandinavian countries, and possibly the UK).
| hnarn wrote:
| To me, that's enough exceptions to not generalize about
| "Europe".
| tchalla wrote:
| There are 3 ways to cancel an O2 contract - (1) Online
| intimation + phone call, (2) Letter or (3) Fax [0]. Most
| routers (like Fritzbox) come with a fax function which you
| send an online fax [1]. O2 charges a maximum of 0.14 cents
| per fax page or free based on your DSL plan. Alternatively,
| you can also send a physical letter online (0.70 cents) [2].
|
| Your comment below says that there is no receipt for
| confirmation. O2 provides a default PDF form on their website
| which to fill for termination. The letter explicitly states
| that "o2 should send you a written confirmation of
| cancellation". It is illegal for O2 to be in receipt of a
| letter and not send a confirmation. I am sorry if that
| happened to you!
|
| Don't get me wrong - the auto-renewal of contract practices
| in Germany are predatory for the consumers. Recently, there
| has been a change in law that forces providers to extend
| contracts by 1 month instead of 1 or 2 years.
|
| [0] https://www.o2online.de/service/kuendigung/
|
| [1] https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-
| Box-7490/...
|
| [2] https://www.deutschepost.de/de/e/epost.html
|
| [3] https://static2.o9.de/resource/blob/498264/12cd6ca6ee17a0
| 2b9...
| nivenkos wrote:
| This was 10 years ago, it definitely wasn't possible by
| phone call back then.
|
| Hopefully it'll get better. I also had a terrible
| experience with Vodafone in the UK, charging the higher
| rates for data usage with no warning.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| 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.
| Manozco wrote:
| It sure as hell doesn't work like this for the newspaper Le
| Monde (in France). Sure you can sign/resign with
| Apple/Google but if you sign with e-mail, you have to mail
| a physical letter to resign (8Euros one with proof of
| delivery and all)
| umanwizard wrote:
| I subscribe to Der Spiegel (German weekly news magazine)
| and as far as I can tell it can't be cancelled without
| e-mailing them.
|
| This is unfortunate because although I can read German, I
| can't write or speak it, so figuring out how to write that
| e-mail would be a headache.
|
| Edit: Thanks to aboalarm.de, which I learned about from
| this thread, I have learned the correct formula to use:
|
| > Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
|
| >
|
| > hiermit kundige ich mein oben genanntes Abonnement Ihrer
| Zeitschrift fristgerecht zum nachstmoglichen Zeitpunkt.
|
| so if I do ever decide to cancel, this thread has been
| quite useful.
| jfk13 wrote:
| You could email them in English. Der Spiegel is large and
| international enough that it's reasonable to expect them
| to cope with that.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You're probably right. I haven't tried.
| llampx wrote:
| It probably depends on which country is handling your
| subscription. With a German address, they don't have to
| consider any request in any language other than German.
| hnarn wrote:
| Source?
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Here is the Dutch implementation, because it's the first
| I could find in English:
| https://business.gov.nl/regulation/automatic-renewal-
| subscri... As is says there "Consumers must be able to
| cancel their agreement in exactly the same way as they
| signed up for them."
|
| It's based on an EU directive, but a recent one so not
| all countries have it live yet. More details on the EU
| directive and the German implementation starting next
| year: https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/211006-new-
| two-click...
| ahartmetz wrote:
| IIRC it's a law that is just a few months old.
| revax wrote:
| That's not really a source.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| It's a possible explanation for older anecdotes about
| having to cancel by fax.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" 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
| misnome wrote:
| Yes, beer52.com is atrocious for this also. I tried over
| a couple of weeks in lunch breaks and never got through.
|
| Eventually I sent an email to some random customer
| support email I found complaining and they actually did
| it.
| llampx wrote:
| Europe is big. This is most definitely not illegal in
| Germany, in fact it is the preferred practice by anti-
| consumer companies.
| sitic wrote:
| A recently passed German law requires (among other
| changes) an online cancel button, however companies don't
| have to implement it until July 2022 unfortunately.
|
| https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/vertraege-
| reklamat...
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Probably no less than 90 days in advance too.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Which is ironic from what I understand to be a mobile phone
| operator. Clearly they don't trust their own network
| shp0ngle wrote:
| No, they just want it to be as hard as possible.
|
| Although I was surprised how relatively big faxes are in
| Germany. I never had sent a fax before I was in Germany.
| nivenkos wrote:
| From nuclear power, to card payments, to online shopping
| - Germany is extremely conservative with regards to
| modern technology.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Faxes aren't _that_ big either. I never liked them, never
| owned one, and I remember sending two faxes in my life.
| Maybe a few I don 't remember. The last one was... to
| cancel a mobile phone contract.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Still better than waiting hours on a "support" phone line
| nivenkos wrote:
| It's not, because there's no real receipt confirmation.
|
| They ended up chasing me for 3 years over 20 euros when I
| moved to the UK. At least here in Sweden, credit checks
| aren't really a thing thankfully.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yeah, but try to cancel an internet subscription here in
| Sweden...
| nivenkos wrote:
| I've always had it included in the BRF or rental
| agreement. Only 28 Mb/s mind...
| Aardwolf wrote:
| You can send a signed letter and that should be legal
| proof
| raverbashing wrote:
| This is not all of Europe, though Germany is known for this
| shenanigans (but on the other hand this gives you a
| confirmation of when you cancelled it if you send it Advice
| of Receipt)
| melomal wrote:
| Wall Street Journal does the same thing. It's completely mad.
| insaneirish wrote:
| Tip: when you're ready to cancel, change the physical address
| in your account to one in California. Magically, a cancel
| button appears (to comply with California law).
|
| I did this the last time WSJ decided to jack my rate to
| something obscene.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Yeah; I've had this "send us a letter via snail mail to cancel"
| recently. Saying "it's unreal" doesn't capture the absurdity.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I used online chat to do it. It took several attempts to get
| connected. They offered me a really good deal to stay but I
| declined on principle because I don't want to support such
| practices.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| 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...
| tootie wrote:
| That's not really it. They want a chance to convince you to
| stay and/or get feedback on why you're leaving. They can also
| offer some kind of one-off promotion or something to retain
| people. Subscriber loyalty is the absolute lifeblood of these
| kinds of businesses.
|
| I work at a non-profit and we collect recurring payments from
| people who don't actually get anything tangible in return. The
| membership are rigidly ethical in all their fundraising and
| messaging, but they think of "call to cancel" as being a fair
| practice.
| histriosum wrote:
| 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 I can't imagine
| having any other response to someone cancelling their
| recurring donation than sending them an e-mail thanking them
| for their support and offering a conversation for some
| feedback if they'd be willing to tell us how we could do
| better. I suppose it depends on the non-profit sector you are
| in, but often times people giving low dollar recurring
| donations aren't particularly well off and I can't imagine
| forcing them to call me and tell me that they love our
| organization but they're just too broke for a while to
| continue..
| sokoloff wrote:
| 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 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.
| pxndx wrote:
| the NYT is not a small startup.
| ratww wrote:
| You don't have to "build" anything. Just have a button
| "cancel subscription" with a mailto: link... or even some
| text saying "email us at @ from your account and it will be
| cancelled within N hours/days".
|
| Currently what most companies (including startups) do is
| burying the cancellation instructions in some Knowledge Base,
| or forcing some back and forth via email or phone.
|
| You can rationalise bad behaviour all day, but we all know
| very well the reason people don't make it easy to cancel.
| makapuf wrote:
| Well a simple email would be too easy to forge. But I'm
| sure its not hard to setup something I "your account" page.
| ratww wrote:
| > Well a simple email would be too easy to forge.
|
| Email is how thousands of SaaS handle cancellations today
| already.
|
| > But I'm sure its not hard to setup something I "your
| account" page.
|
| That's the whole point of the subthread...
| makapuf wrote:
| Email reception, yes. Email sending is different, you
| would need to check DKIM that the sender is really the
| one, and that has also some setup cost.
| ratww wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't think your posts have anything to do
| with my message or with this thread.
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| > 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.
| kvark wrote:
| Exactly this line of reasoning brought me to Obsidian tool,
| which manages files you already own. It could be a minority
| of users, but we love that attitude!
| forgotmyoldname wrote:
| Employing people to handle phone cancellations is way more
| money and effort than a cancellation script.
|
| I've never encountered a small startup that relies on call to
| cancel--only big companies that actively know they're making
| it hard to leave.
| rexreed wrote:
| So much of the current economy derives benefit from captive
| customers who are charged ridiculous fees because they have no
| other place to go (think drinks at a movie theater or baggage
| fees on an airline, but there are many versions of the captive-
| customer squeeze), use extortion-type tactics to retain
| customers (you lose functionality of the product you've
| "bought" if you leave or otherwise lock you into their product
| making it painful to leave), or otherwise strong-arm their
| customers from leaving once they have them on board (high
| termination fees, impossible cancellation methods, threatening
| collections if you do a chargeback).
|
| Many SaaS compaines even do this -- luring their customers in
| with low or even free offerings and then turning off those free
| or low priced offerings to force their users into higher paying
| brackets without providing any additional functionality.
| Pipedrive just announced that they are sunsetting their popular
| Esssentials plan for no really good reason than to squeeze
| their customers into a higher plan. I have had other companies
| decide to arbitrarily double or even quadruple the price of
| their offering for the same features because they can't find
| any other way to generate more revenues and probably didn't
| have the right price to begin with if it can't sustain their
| business.
|
| Are these products good? Yeah they're decent enough. But these
| tactics say more about trying to squeeze every nickel not only
| out of those who would otherwise want to leave, but even those
| who would like to stay.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That would require that there is somebody overseeing the
| complete user experience. In reality the people who design the
| product probably never meet the people who design the
| subscription management systems.
| lostgame wrote:
| This has nothing to do with confidence.
|
| It is a psychological manipulation tactic to make it more
| difficult to cancel, in the hopes that the subscriber will give
| up partway through the process because they don't want to pick
| up the phone.
|
| It's all about profit. The shareholders don't really give a
| damn about the company's confidence in its product. They care
| about subscriber numbers and the dollars that come from them.
| The quality of the product is way secondary to that.
| avian wrote:
| > it shows such complete lack of confidence in their product.
|
| It can also show complete and utter overconfidence. "The only
| reason people would want to unsubscribe is by accident. We're
| doing people a favor when making it as hard as possible to make
| that mistake."
| lostgame wrote:
| Gave me a giggle, but yeaaaaah, no. XD
|
| Let's be real. It's a dark pattern to make people give up on
| cancelling, rather than go through with it.
|
| The more difficult something is, the more likely people are
| to give up on any phase of doing that thing.
| gwd wrote:
| If it's so amazing that people only unsubscribe by accident,
| they'll certainly miss it quickly and subscribe again
| immediately. The practice of using "dark patterns" to prevent
| people from unsubscribing is utterly disrespectful.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Planet Fitness does this. You can sign up in a couple of minutes
| online but they require you to go into the store and request
| cancellation.
| dqpb wrote:
| Finally! FU NYT
| Zanfa wrote:
| 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.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| 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).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Reasonable would be lack payment ending the contract. We should
| be able to simply stop paying them with zero repercussions. Let
| them deal with the administrative trivia required to cancel a
| service.
| _pferreir_ wrote:
| This TBH, I think we're so used to being taken advantage of
| that we don't realize we should be asking for more.
| Especially if it's the kind of service which doesn't involve
| extra preparation costs for the provider.
| flerovium wrote:
| The problem is that in the US, one cannot easily stop a
| debit/credit card from being billed for a particular service.
|
| A more general solution is to make the payment infrastructure
| allow me to ban a particular merchant. You can implement this
| by reissuing a debit card, but there's no reason not to make
| it seamless for individual merchants.
| danieldk wrote:
| This is the case in the Netherlands and a contract cannot
| revoke this right (Burgerlijk Wetboek 6:236). If you subscribe
| online, you should be able to unsubscribe online.
|
| Another thing that helps if you don't want to fight someone who
| violates this and they require you to send a letter, that an
| e-mail also qualifies as legally binding. So, if they ask a
| letter to end a subscription, they must also accept an e-mail.
|
| (IANAL)
| grenoire wrote:
| T-Mobile Thuis literally delayed the end of my subscription
| by _two_ months, and only cancelled it when I called back.
| There wasn 't ever a way to cancel online. In practice
| they've really been truly garbage, lawful or not.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Ziggo is similar, very shitty customer service, and you
| have to talk to an aggressive sales person to be allowed to
| cancel. The moment fiber was delivered to my area I
| cancelled them and just hung up on the sales guy lying to
| me about how their speed was higher (it definitely isn't)
| than fiber.
| danieldk wrote:
| Ziggo is terrible. I recently overheard one of their
| salespersons (at MediaMarkt) claiming that Ziggo is also
| fiber internet (it's cable). Only when the customer
| pushed him, he admitted that it is not really fiber, but
| then argued that it doesn't really matter, because
| 90whatever percent of the route from the data center to
| home is fiber.
| consp wrote:
| > doesn't really matter
|
| Their 35/50Mbit upload speed says differently. I'm really
| looking forward to not having to call them again for
| discounts (since you otherwise pay more than new
| customers) because I can then actually leave them when
| the fiber is installed.
|
| Good to know I just have to hang up on the sales guy.
| delecti wrote:
| Then you will be happy to learn the content in the article this
| thread is about.
| skyde wrote:
| I faced this problem with the airport Gogo wifi
|
| they charge monthly fee but you need to call and spend hours on
| the phone to cancel.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Looking at you Consumer Reports and LA Times!
|
| Any company that forces me to call to cancel, and then works
| really really hard to retain me, and then starts offering me
| better and better deals loses my business for life.
|
| If you can't offer me your best rate before I leave then you are
| just trying to get over on me and I'm offended. Have fun losing
| customers and going out of business.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Someone tell NYT.
| lode wrote:
| These days you can cancel yourself via myaccount.nytimes.com.
|
| Go to Subscription overview, and at the very bottom click
| "Cancel your subscription".
|
| You can also use this to get a better deal. Just start the
| cancellation, choose "My subscription is too expensive" as
| reason, click Continue a couple of times and they'll give you a
| reduced rate to keep you. I now pay 2 euros a month for a
| digital subscription.
| Macha wrote:
| My understanding is this is only available in certain
| jurisdictions which mandate symmetry between subscribe and
| unsubscribe options. Others direct you to phone or Web chat.
| lode wrote:
| Aha okay I didn't know that. That's just plain evil then.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Beautiful. Take that, NYT website, lol
| mikevm wrote:
| 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.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| 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.)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Ironically, this may make people more likely to subscribe
| romwell wrote:
| Well, making something illegal doesn't make it non-existent.
|
| Let's see how this is enforced before putting those "Mission
| Accomplished" banners up.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Great - please inform the NYT immediately so they can stop this
| incredibly sleazy practice for their own business.
| viro wrote:
| Honestly avoiding stuff like this is why I loved how the App
| Store did subscriptions.
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| Another dark pattern - "share my data with these" list, on by
| default, 4000 entries, and you have to uncheck them manually one-
| by-one or accept.
| lutorm wrote:
| I got this spiel from someone, don't remember who now. When they
| told me I needed to call to cancel, I responded "If you can
| process my subscription online, you can process my cancellation
| too. If you continue charging my credit card, I will charge back
| the transaction." Then it was suddenly possible to cancel online
| just fine.
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