Or, it should be exactly as difficult/complicated to cancel as to sign in. Want a 15-step cancellation process involving phones, faxes and a blood offering? Gotta require all that to sign up too!
Yeah, these services don’t have to add much friction to trap vulnerable folks like the elderly. Obscure the cancel button under a couple menu levels and dark patterns and they have people trapped for life. It can be very insidious
The Fair Consumer Contracts Act will in future introduce a mandatory 2-step termination process […]. Wherever the consumer can conclude a subscription contract against payment, the provider should also give the consumer the opportunity to terminate at the same point. […A] cancellation button should be included on such registration pages for memberships at the first stage (with the wording “Cancel contracts here”). This “first” cancellation button should then lead to a confirmation page on the second level, where the respective user is identified and the consumer can effectively send the cancellation (i.e. with the wording “Cancel now”).
I was pretty sure that there is something and a lot of searching finally led me to the “Unfair Commercial Practices Directive” from 2005. There also is a guidance to that directive from 2021 that is found here: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX…
Section 4.2.7 (dark patterns) is what is interesting for this topic. In the paragraph at the end of the section it includes the sentence:
unsubscribing from a service should be as easy as subscribing to the service
So it appears that the EU intended it that way but because it’s only a directive, implementation differs by country. I also didn’t see anything about being able to cancel in the same way you subscribed(e.g. that they can’t force you to call or send a letter if you subscribed online), but afaik german law has a ruling like this.
Edit: I took so long to write this and find the links that I forgot the german law was the reason for the comment I answered…
I’m not sure how the GDPR would apply to a service subscription. While the service is running, the companies have legitimate interest to keep your data, so you can’t have it removed.
NordVPN literally will not let me delete my account. My 3 years is over, there is no method to delete when signed in to their site. You have to fill out a form with your payment details and shit to “verify your identity” (who remembers that shit from 3 years ago).
Literally emailed from the email associated with the account, called, logged in, etc. they won’t delete it until I send my credit card info in the clear, over insecure email.
My credit card got stolen a few months back and it’s been great for my finances. All this shit chrging me 10 dollars here and there without me noticing that I haven’t been using.
Are you talking about those security questions? So dumb. After having days-long trouble getting my internet fixed because of them, I started treating those as additional passwords, generate the answers with my password manager, and save them in the notes section of the entry.
I just tried to delete my inactive NordVPN account from a European IP (not through a VPN, I actually live there). Spent 10 minutes searching for a delete option without luck. The only way seems to be by submitting a form (which for some reason also requires “payment info”). Sketchy as fuck.
If you are European, I believe there is some government office you can complain to about gdpr violation (can’t help more sorry, I believe it is a little different from country to country)
That actually is how email works, assuming you use a local client vs a web client. The headers will contain the origin IP it was sent from. Easy enough to geo locate and see it’s European.
Contact your bank or credit card company and explain, they will take care of it. Source: I was in a similar situation a few years ago, just not VPN related.
What prevents you from revoking your payment mandate at your bank?
In Europe at least, your bank must honor this request and there’s nothing your debtor can do about except spending 1000’s to recover at most 3 months of payments with the current legal apparatus in Europe.
It’s not that they’re trying to stop payments but to delete the account entirely. Stopping was easy when I did it but I haven’t tried deleting my account.
The one thing where I agree with cable companies about is the risk to consumers accidentally canceling all or multiple services when they intend to just cancel one. It will be hard to explain that a package price will no longer apply if one part of the package is canceled.
However- it can be addressed with a well-designed cancelation instruction screen. This is a constraint to the communication and process design; it is not an insurmountable barrier like the cable companies are suggesting.
As a software developer who only has business customers, let me tell you the following:
No matter how foolproof your system might seem. It never truly is. There is always some idiot (sometimes with a degree) who just can’t understand/use it.
But they could still try and mostly succeed. They just don’t want to.
The system doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to prevent most customers from accidentally cancelling more than they mean to. Anyone who fucks up can be handled by the customer service department.
You can’t make a perfect UI, because people think differently. What is obvious and logical to one person, is obscure and nonsensical to another. It is impossible to make a one-size-fits-all interface to anything, not just software.
You could make a big, red, flashing button that says “pressing this button will cancel all your channels, are you sure you want to do that?”, and you would still get an significant amount of users complaining that pressing the button did exactly what it said it would because users don’t read.
The system now is that you have to call them, get bombarded with ads and berated by their customer service for an hour, then maybe they'll think about cancelling you. And gyms are even worse.
I have a feeling they’ll make it difficult to use. Then when people do it accidentally because of they’re shitty UI, they’ll point to that and say, “see?!”
No one will ever be in danger of accidently cancelling everything. The system will be intentionally designed so that you can only cancel one thing at a time, and that will be obtuse as possible. There will be a great risk of thinking you’ve cancelled something when it hasn’t been cancelled, which will only be resolved by calling customer service.
You’ll go through six to eight pages to cancel each item, and when you’ve done that you’ll get a confirmation email that will require you to click on something, log in, and confirm the changes for them to actually apply to your account. If you get the confirmation email and do nothing, your changes will not save.
There will be a slew of angry customers calling customer service, who’s job it will be to give back as little money as possible and retain every customer that calls. That job will be so awful that someone working that job will commit suicide because of it. The cable company will see that and market it as a success to their shareholders, and as an “easy cancel anytime” in advertising.
When I was younger I remember buying credit cards with a set balance on them to pay for subscriptions that seemed shady.
If cancelling was anything except convenient, I’d just use up the balance on my next trip to the grocery store, then shred the fucker and forget about it. Company XYZ could then have fun trying to bleed a rock.
Only downside is that was a pain in the ass too, but at least kept the control in my hands.
Wondering if any banks have a way to set this up as a kind of partition on your account? Never looked into that approach but it seems like such an obvious solution.
Bank of America used to have a way to make a temporary credit card with a set amount of money on it. I haven’t used it in a while, so I’m not sure if it’s there still.
Privacy.com is literally the digital equivalent of what you were talking about. As for bank services, I don’t know that I have heard of any personally.
You can use wise.com, they also give you free virtual credit cards. Up to 3 simultaneously, it’s amazing. Been using them for years, absolutely for free.
In the US, gift cards will often be declined for setting up ongoing transactions. Every transaction has a merchant code associated with it and many subscriptions and services will read the merchant code and reject it on that basis alone. Doesn’t matter how much of a balance the card carries.
I’ve thought about using them like that as someone without access to privacy.com, but they do charge an activation fee and other random little fees I didn’t want to deal with. So I just… didn’t buy whatever it was I was considering at the time lol. Always keeping an eye open to see if there are any alternatives though.
I used to work at an Internet provider that offers a discounted auto pay program.
No, at least not there.
Every once in a while we’d get complaints that a card wasn’t working and it was because they were trying to use a gift card, and the system recognized gift cards and declined them immediately. Needed to be a credit or debit card with your name on it. Or at least someone’s name on it. Who payed didn’t matter, but a real person would be billed every month.
here in Brazil it’s really common for your bank to provide an option on your bank app to make a virtual credit card that you can block and unblock for different types of pay or providers and independent of your physical one
Virtual card numbers usually work well. I always made sure to use them with stuff like SiriusXM and other clowns that make cancellations difficult. You can leave them active or cancel them arbitrarily. Some card companies let you set them up via their app or website.
Why do they have the “right” to lock people into an ongoing subscription though? Subscriptions should absolutely be easy to cancel, even if there’s a termination penalty, it should not be on the consumer to jump through hoops and waste their time to get out of it.
It shouldn’t be more bureaucratic because then people are not inclined to use anything, including services they need or want. It should simply be clearly worded so that you know what you’re getting and don’t feel tricked by any hidden fees etc.
God, hearing them squirm is almost making me horny. Please keep them groveling at the feet of the FTC. I reallllly wouldn’t mind hearing this for a few years at least.
…Funny how whenever Republicans are in power, we get dickheads like Ajit Pai do absolutely nothing, arging that his hands are tied. But when democrats get voted in, the FTC starts drafting rules like being able to cancel a bill with a single click instead of fighting on the phone for 3½ hours with a bullshit sales rep until you have to threaten to sue them in order to cancel your internet or cable package. It’s really funny how that works.
Subscription-based services already change the agreement of a transaction too much in favor of the provider, because it goes from "convince me that your product is good enough to go through the hassle of obtaining it" to "convince me that your product is bad enough to go through the hassle of cancelling it". It is only fair to try to tilt it in favor of the consumer as much as possible.
“Cable firms to FTC: We shouldn’t have to let users cancel service with a click — Customers may “misunderstand the consequences of canceling,” say lobbyists”
“Cable Firms to FTC: We Shouldn’t Have to Let Users Cancel Service With a Click”
Yes, so so different. Oh wait no, it’s the same thing with the subheading in the title instead. Are you taking the mick or just busting for an argument? They are posts about exactly the same thing.
I have never gotten a better price by threatening to cancel. I was instead told to cancel and signup again in a year or two so I could qualify for “new customer” pricing. There is no reward for loyalty with Telcos.
I imagine it depends on the availability of viable competition in the area. In many areas of the US, there is only one ISP available to customers, so when people threaten to cancel, they know that most of them are bluffing.
The point is that it’s extremely common practice to call your ISP and tell them you’re cancelling so they’ll send you to Retentions and you can get a few more months at “50% off” (a reasonable price). This would be included in those “3/4 people stay”, but those were never actually going to cancel anyway, they only say they are so they don’t have to pay the insanely inflated sticker price.
If a company does that, they are teaching customers that the original piece is too high and that you can always haggle for a lower one. Is this really what they wanted? Sounds like this could hurt your business.
I think they know the original price is bad but also that there's a significant chunk of people who either don't care or will forget to call in about a price reduction. They've probably figured out a fairly reliable figure as to what percent of their customers will or won't haggle and run revenue projections off of that.
I’ve been with all three major Canadian ISPs and it’s the same everywhere. Like clockwork, once a year you call them. You could say “I’m looking to cancel” but at this point they all know why you’re calling, don’t waste anyone’s time, just ask “hey could you please transfer me to Retention” and they’ll be glad not to have go through the song and dance. Retention picks up, immediately offers you a bad deal because it’s protocol, you reject it because you never take the first deal, they offer you a better deal, you take it, job done. Easier than changing, cancelling, or paying for something, by far.
i’ve worked at a call center years ago on the retentions dep. of some mobile internet provider. after learning of such trickery, i’ll fucking tell everyone that will listen “hey mate, you’ve got a internet/telephone/cable tv subscription? are you in the “fidelity” period? (yeah that shit is a thing here…) ok so listen, AS SOON AS a second passes from the end of the period, this is how you get the actual decent price for service…”
some people had to stop me on my track several times because i was repeating myself to them (forgot who i’d already told about it) because i must make sure everyone knows
This also proves that they are deliberately screwing you on a price they have no trouble lowering to keep your business. Only to overcharge you again as time goes by.
To play devils advocate, my guess might be that consumers will have to schedule to return hardware or something. But honestly, it’s just so they can bully people when they try to cancel.
Since they don’t let you to keep the hardware in the case they unsuccessfully bully you to keep the subscription, this is a not a problem, the hardware need to go back in both cases.
The ‘hardware’ is also $30 crap you can buy off eBay or wholesalers usually. Some of the modern ones even overheat because they are so poorly constructed, lol. I love the little “Designed with ❤️ in Philadelphia. Made in China” tagline on the label with the implied “Overheats in any climate above 40F indoors” just afterwards, lol. Comcast quality.
The article says, people might accidentally cancel their whole package when they only mean to cancel a single item, or they might cancel a single item and not realize it loses them a bundle discount.
Gosh, maybe the people designing the web UI for the cancellation process for their employer should make it clear exactly what the customer is cancelling so they’re not going to make that mistake.
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