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.
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.
I seriously thought that I had signed up for a phishing site ...
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...
Let's see how this is enforced before putting those "Mission Accomplished" banners up.
These experiences honestly make me want to never subscribe to a newspaper again.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am glad FTC is doing something others are afraid to do.
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.
Click it by mistake and find no verification step and immediate and irreversible fee for 1.5% of your queued transactions.
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.
It’s evil AF. Real life dark pattern
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.
Capital One lets you create an unlimited number of cards at no charge.
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.
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.
Free ad for t-mobile: their 5G service for home internet is awesome.
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.
The FTC better have some real teeth here.
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!
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).
It's about trying to cancel your cable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM
they charge monthly fee but you need to call and spend hours on the phone to cancel.
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.
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.
That's a tall order with one-click.
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.
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.
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...
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 :)
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.
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.
Granted, it was the Real corporation, I really should have seen crap like that coming.
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
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.
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
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.
Also I wonder if the NYT will ever report on how hard they make it for their customers to unsubscribe?
https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=1166...
This is actually better for users and legitimate, useful services.
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...
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.
"... 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.
The wackiness is almost expected
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.
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.
But no, I have to find a special link to unsubscribe, and they say it takes them another couple months (!) to actually do it.
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
Chargeback to cancel.
Note: I can upgrade plans on spectrum just fine, but cancellation or downgrades means talking on the phone.
Based on my anecdata, this technique works just fine for companies - either they can charge longer for things that are not used, and/or they get a chance to personally talk to a customer to upsell them.
I'd very much like to believe these technique does work against companies, but I don't see it.
Trying to close accounts for my just-deceased brother took HOURS over several days. The retention person at Verizon even said there could be many reasons not to cancel a dead person's account.
If you can subscribe by their website, you should be able to unsubscribe by their website. Same for phone, in-app, or in person.
They have been sending me a long list of unwanted emails "Because I had dealings with the company". Which I most definitely have not.
And of course there is no way to "unsubscribe" unless I firstly log on. But the trick is that I don't actually have an account. So to unsubscribe from Expedia mailings, I firstly have to create an account.
Needless to say, I will never, ever, be doing any business with Expedia.
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