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The New York AG just won a lawsuit over a process that 'deliberately' wastes subscribers' time:
A New York judge has determined that SiriusXM's "long and burdensome" cancellation process is illegal. In a ruling on Thursday, Judge Lyle Frank found SiriusXM violates a federal law that requires companies to make it easy to cancel a subscription.
The decision comes nearly one year after New York Attorney General Leticia James sued SiriusXM over claims the company makes subscriptions difficult to cancel. Following an investigation, the Office of the Attorney General found that the company attempts to delay cancellations by having customers call an agent, who then keeps them on the phone for several minutes while "pitching the subscriber as many as five retention offers."
As outlined in the ruling, Judge Frank found that SiriusXM broke the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA), which requires companies to implement "simple mechanisms" to cancel a subscription. "Their cancellation procedure is clearly not as easy to use as the initiation method," Judge Frank writes, citing the "inevitable wait times" that come along with talking to a live agent and the subscription offers they promote.
The Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on hard-to-cancel subscriptions as well, with a new "click to cancel" rule going into effect next year. Under the law, companies must make canceling a subscription as easy as it is to sign up. "This decision found SiriusXM illegally created a complicated cancellation process for its New York customers, forcing them to spend significant amounts of time speaking with agents who refused to take 'no' for an answer," Attorney General James said in a statement.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday November 24, @02:46PM (2 children)
My wife once had a one-month trial subscription to a piece of Adobe software.
She cancelled within the month.
Six months later I went through her credit card records and discovered we were still paying for it.
She had very long conversations with Adobe reps to try to cancel, no luck.
What finally ended the payments was when the bank discovered a major leak of credit card data and spontaneously terminated every customer's credit card and issued a new one with a new number.
Of course we got a call from Adobe asking or the new card number. But in this call my wife had the upper hand.
We have never done any business with Adobe since, and advise others not to deal with them either.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 25, @03:40AM (1 child)
I have heard of some CC accounts that let us spawn off temporary account numbers for us to fund with an amount of our choosing. We can then fund it with sufficient funds to cover expected charges.
That might be why some businesses won't accept debit cards, as those temporary cards are easily abandoned when they experience rogue charges.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday November 25, @02:06PM
I have the impression that debit cards have a higher level of security than credit cards.
But I have no real evidence for this.