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posted by janrinok on Friday November 19 2021, @03:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the unsubscirbe dept.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/11/the-end-of-click-to-subscribe-call-to-cancel-one-of-the-news-industrys-favorite-retention-tactics-is-illegal-ftc-says/

Discovering they had to get on the phone to cancel a subscription they signed up for online rankled several respondents in our survey looking at why people canceled their news subscriptions. The reaction to the call-to-cancel policy ranged from "an annoyance" and "ridiculous" to "shady" and "oppressive."

Publishers tend to think of this as "retention." A study of 526 news organizations in the United States found that only 41% make it easy for people to cancel subscriptions online, and more than half trained customer service reps in tactics to dissuade customers who call to unsubscribe.

The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, recently made it clear that it sees the practice as 1) one of several "dark patterns that trick or trap consumers into subscriptions" and 2) straight-up illegal. The FTC vowed to ramp up enforcement on companies that fail to provide an "easy and simple" cancellation process, including an option that's "at least as easy" as the one to subscribe.


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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday November 19 2021, @04:38AM (2 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday November 19 2021, @04:38AM (#1197655) Journal

    Just let it run empty when you want to stop

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:32AM (#1197659)

      That doesn't always work. I know that in the past, AOL would continue to place charges and send things to collections if they couldn't keep charging for subscriptions that hadn't been canceled.

      IMHO, it's pretty fucked up when they send something to collections for several months worth of charges when they could have cut their losses at one month and just sent that bit to collections rather than deciding to keep charging month after month, knowing that they hadn't been paid for the previous months of "service."

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:02PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:02PM (#1198105) Homepage Journal

      I signed up with Compuserve back in 1983 or 4 when I got a 300 baud modem. It was a "pay as you go", you only got billed when you used it. It was pretty worthless, and after not using it for two years I got a $3 bill with a note saying that now there was a monthly charge. I wrote "cancel" on it and returned it, but they kept billing me monthly (they really thought I'd pay?) for years, until they finally went out of business.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 19 2021, @04:59AM (8 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 19 2021, @04:59AM (#1197656) Journal

    I was still a teen, or early 20's when I decided that "introductory offers" and "cancel anytime", or anything of the sort was always going to be a ripoff. They lure you in with a deal that looks too good to be true, and it usually is too good to be true.

    How 'bout them credit cars? 1% APR, right? Look at the fine print, carefully, and find how many ways they can weasel out of that. And, if you actually do qualify for that 1% APR, it was just an introductory offer. After the first 6 or 12 months, the APR jumps to 120% and your gonads - or ovaries, as the case may be.

    Depending on which browser I'm using, Youtube is in my face to "Try it free" Youtube TV.

    And, of course, more on-topic - visiting most news sites gets you a little popup asking you to subscribe. Cancel anytime, my arse. Oh - on the funny side, sometimes that popup offer is higher priced than visiting their front page, and click the "subscribe" button. The popup should have read, "Special offer for 180% of normal price, today only!"

    Never click those special offers. The best thing that can happen is, your email is sold to scammers around the world.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:12AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:12AM (#1197666)

      Never click those special offers.

      For only 200 dollars we can build a wall from Brownsville to San Diego to keep the gooks out. Will you help us?

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @07:20AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @07:20AM (#1197675)

        You're already here, gook.

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:26PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:26PM (#1197779)

        Now's the time to jump into DWAC [forbes.com]. Be on the ground floor with Trump's new venture into social media.

        It would be like if a jar with $100 in coins went up for sale, and people were bidding $850 for it because doing so might allow them to invest the coins in a Trump-branded venture.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @04:23PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @04:23PM (#1197747)

      Jeez, Runaway! Why couldn't you have shared this incredible discovery with the rest of us sooner? Imagine all the suffering you might have prevented.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:08PM (#1197759)

        Runaway didn't want to get Bannoned.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:17PM (#1197774)

        Insufferable clods will suffer despite any advice offered to them. Go suffer elsewhere, please.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:58PM (#1197793)

      Yeah, them credit cars are real scam, ain't they.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by mcgrew on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:07PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:07PM (#1198106) Homepage Journal

      APR doesn't matter to me, I pay them off every month.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 19 2021, @06:56AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday November 19 2021, @06:56AM (#1197672) Journal

    Only took, what, 20 years? And it's funny how an entire sector adopts the same anti-consumer tactics. AOL was hardly the only ISP to make it hard to quit.

    If they don't answer the phone, if there's some prob with the communication channel, guess you can't cancel, huh? Prodigy would just mysteriously drop my connection whenever I tried to write a complaint. So I did the same back to them. Oh, sorry, never received that letter about my Prodigy account being seriously delinquent. Must've got lost in the mail, just like my emails to you guys. Took them nearly 2 years to get it and give up.

    Used to be that not paying to renew was a perfectly fine way to cancel, none of this 30 days written notice bull. According to another ISP I had for a year, an email doesn't count as written notice. I ended up disputing their charge on my credit card.

    Also nuked all our magazine and newspaper subscriptions, when almost the entire publishing industry started pulling the crap of automatic renewal, unless you call. Claimed it was for our convenience.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday November 19 2021, @01:38PM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday November 19 2021, @01:38PM (#1197699)

      Both Paypal and Skype, if you don't use the service for a few months they nuke your account and steal your credit. I will never ever use paypal or skype.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Friday November 19 2021, @08:55AM (1 child)

    by inertnet (4071) on Friday November 19 2021, @08:55AM (#1197681) Journal

    From TFA:

    If you can subscribe online, you should be able to cancel your subscription online.

    This is required by law in the European Union (which is not the same as Europe).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:00PM (#1197771)

      If they use VoIP to their call center, isn't that "online"?

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by SomeGuy on Friday November 19 2021, @02:14PM (1 child)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday November 19 2021, @02:14PM (#1197709)

    Do you want to get raped by big companies now?
    [Yes] [Maybe Later!]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @02:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @02:54PM (#1197721)

      We can all dream of getting that "no" option.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:43PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:43PM (#1197768)
    I use privacy.com when I don't trust the vendor or when I intentionally don't want a service to renew. You can generate credit card numbers on the fly and set per purchase amount, total amount, yearly amount. You can pause or delete cards. Very useful if you want to sign up for a trial but not go through the hassle of canceling. I've had an RV park try and charge for an additional night that I didn't approve, some weeks after the night I paid for. I didn't have to do anything, the charge failed to go through.

    I also use paypal if available for anything that's a subscription. For example, you can use paypal for adobe creative cloud. There's a 1 year contract and you have like a 30 day period in which you can cancel before it's renewed for another year. On top of that you have to call or chat to cancel. F that, just login to paypal and cancel the recurring payment. They'll send a bunch of mean emails about it but there's nothing they can do about it and eventually stop.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @05:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @05:32PM (#1198099)

      I wouldn't trust PayPal for subscriptions. I had one that renewed nearly a month early for several hundred dollars, and PayPal refused to acknowledge that it wasn't an authorized charge. A few weeks later and it would have been an authorized charge, but not several weeks early.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @08:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @08:31PM (#1197845)

    It's a sign those industries are getting desperate. I still remember how the guy from the cable company in Long Island knocked on the door to beg, and also threaten, us when we cancelled cable at the house there. Let's hope that when the propaganda arms of the elites die that we'll be able to make more progress against them.

    Of course, there are still Google, Facebook, and their ilk but the stage is already set to tackle them too.

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