New California Law Requires One-Click Subscription Cancellations (thedesk.net) 89
A new law in California will make it easier for consumers to cancel their streaming subscriptions and similar products when they enroll in automatic renewal of those services. From a report: The law, passed through Assembly Bill (AB) 2863, will require companies that offer automatic subscription renewals through one-click purchases to also offer customers a way to cancel their subscriptions through the same one-click method. California already had one of the toughest subscription cancellation laws in the country, requiring companies to offer a way to cancel a recurring subscription through the Internet if they allowed customers to sign up for a service that way.
The initial law was meant to prevent companies from allowing customers to purchase a subscription through the web, while forcing them to call a hotline to cancel them. Consumer advocacy groups complained that companies would often subject customers to frustrating long wait times on the phone with the hope that they would eventually hang up without cancelling their service. While the law was good in theory, it contained at least one loophole: Companies were in compliance as long as they offered a way for customers to cancel their subscriptions online, but could make them click several links or visit several webpages with opt-in requirements before a cancellation request was processed.
The initial law was meant to prevent companies from allowing customers to purchase a subscription through the web, while forcing them to call a hotline to cancel them. Consumer advocacy groups complained that companies would often subject customers to frustrating long wait times on the phone with the hope that they would eventually hang up without cancelling their service. While the law was good in theory, it contained at least one loophole: Companies were in compliance as long as they offered a way for customers to cancel their subscriptions online, but could make them click several links or visit several webpages with opt-in requirements before a cancellation request was processed.
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:5, Informative)
... Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Seriously have you been living under a rock? No one is responsible for their own actions anymore.
Seriously, have you been living under a rock? Companies make it as hard as possible to cancel a subscription, hoping that a significant fraction of people will just give up and let them keep sucking your money.
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Can I do it with one click?
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It's a Russian disinformation specialist, probably the best of the best.
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I see, so you're the one living in the echo chamber. Tell us all how the politicians sat around and dreamed up ways to beat on companies... while accepting huge PAC contributions.
As opposed to tons of their constituants complaining.
Yes, it is that hard to cancel (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like babysitting to me forcing companies to make it easier to cancel a subscription. Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Yes. I've had subscriptions where I've literally had to spend an hour to cancel a twelve-dollar-a-month subscription; where the required way to cancel turned out to be to call the number given in small print and talk to a human being whose entire job description is apparently "try to stop the customer from cancelling". They deliberately make it hard, because they want that sweet free money that they can siphon off from you every month. If they could make it impossible to cancel they would do that, but instead they very deliberately make it as hard to to as they can manage.
Stopping a subscription should never be harder than signing up for it in the first place.
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Stopping a subscription should never be harder than signing up for it in the first place.
"But the headline says California passed a new law!!"
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Stopping a subscription should never be harder than signing up for it in the first place.
"But the headline says California passed a new law!!"
And BIG CORPs will gladly comply ... by burying that one-click button about 47 levels deep, and only showing it to you after obtaining an "identity confirmation code" (gotta make sure it's REALLY YOU dropping the sub) via phone call that gets bounced around though 13 different handlers.
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The law, passed through Assembly Bill (AB) 2863, will require companies that offer automatic subscription renewals through one-click purchases to also offer customers a way to cancel their subscriptions through the same one-click method.
I don't deny your characterization of the motivation for these companies to behave this way, but the law does seem to be addressing specifically that.
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I don't deny your characterization of the motivation for these companies to behave this way, but the law does seem to be addressing specifically that.
Not having read the actual bill, I can't say what exactly it specifies. But think about this from the company's perspective. The fine summary suggests that only if it's a one-click subscription do you need to have a one-click cancel. OK, what are a company's options? They can either make cancelling easier or make subscribing just hard enough that I don't need to change the cancellation process. Any sane company will weigh how many subscriptions they'll lose through multiple clicks versus how many they'll lo
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I have read a little bit about California's recent plastic bag saga. I vaguely remember when the initial ban went into effect; a friend of mine that lived out there explained it during one of my visits to that State.
I remember when the local Wal-Mart had a bin where you could bring those thin 1-use plastic bags back for "recycling". Those bins are no longer at that store.
And those thicker plastic bags have been obstensively shown to be great collectors and spreaders of contamination into your food shopping
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I remember when the local Wal-Mart had a bin where you could bring those thin 1-use plastic bags back for "recycling". Those bins are no longer at that store.
Yeah, I remember those too. I think I used to be able to put them in my mixed recyclables but now am advised not since they gum up the sorting machinery. You'd think having a bin full of nothing but pre-sorted bags would eliminate that problem but apparently not. Too bad, from what I remember, the actual material, polyethylene, recycles pretty well.
And those thicker plastic bags have been obstensively shown to be great collectors and spreaders of contamination into your food shopping haul.
Have they been? I know people worry about this but I haven't see any specific evidence. Given how infrequently they are actually reused (I've never seen anyone r
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Yes, paper does rip when it gets wet ... and when the bag is not filled correctly. Seriously, there is a correct way to bag groceries into a paper bag and a correct way to handle that bag. I try to forget those days long ago when I used to do that for $3.41 an hour.
All of the arguments I ever heard from MSM about the thick plastic bags was "Wash them out thoroughly between uses or else risk cross-contamination"; no mention of bleach (wipes or liquid) in those comments. Maybe it was just MSM expressing a mil
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What's frustrating is that I've seen some things that required minimal proof of identity to sign up for (a credit card that was pre-approved) but painful to unsubscribe without lots of proof.
Every single time I do the "free Prime membership for a week!" it's easy, but when unsubbing a day later I resort to web search of "how do I unsubscribe from Prime", because it's not obvious. Once I find it, then it's obvious in hindsight :-) Similar issues if I ever order anything there and then want to remove the cr
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Stopping a subscription should never be harder than signing up for it in the first place.
YouTube can make a button to subscribe, and that same button turns into the unsubscribe button. They should all be like that.
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Absolutely. It should be just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. Making people call up, navigate through a phone tree, wait on hold, then argue with a customer service rep shouldn't be necessary
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The problem is that they make it confusing on purpose, to increase chances that you miss your cancellation.
They also make it very easy to subscribe by accident.
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like babysitting to me forcing companies to make it easier to cancel a subscription. Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Try reading the provided article.
The initial law was meant to prevent companies from allowing customers to purchase a subscription through the web, while forcing them to call a hotline to cancel them. Consumer advocacy groups complained that companies would often subject customers to frustrating long wait times on the phone with the hope that they would eventually hang up without cancelling their service.
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh no the horror they are doing something pro consumer why do they hate America?
Yes companies need to be forced otherwise they will make it as hard as possible.
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:5, Informative)
Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
The problem is that it's *not* this simple. If it were as easy to stop a sub as it was to start, this wouldn't be a problem.
Instead, companies have a strong tendency to involve several convoluted steps (to "confirm"), commonly involving dark patterns or other forms of obfuscation ("Would you like to stay instead? Click the big-bright 'yes' button on the bottom right to keep your subscription, or the small, not-even-underlined 'no' button here in this line of text, if you'd like). There have even been reports of people canceling credit cards to attempt to end a subscription, only to have the subscription 'follow' them to the new card, where the only way to get around this is to close an entire bank account.
The problem isn't that people are too stupid to cancel, it's that one must essentially be capable of outsmarting professional psychologists and intentional obfuscation efforts in order to say 'no more'.
It's not 'babysitting' to have laws against false advertising; it's a requirement for a fair market. Equally, these companies basically asked for this kind of regulation because of how difficult they made it. If it was a matter of going to Account->Subscription->Change Subscription->Cancel->Here's-A-Single-Retention-Deal->Cancel Anyway->Your-Subscription-Ends-On-This-Date, it probably wouldn't have been a problem...but let's not forget this example [youtube.com] that's nearly 20 years old.
So yes, this law was earned by companies who have spent decades being guided by the Ferengi rules of acquisition, rather than actually competing to retain customers.
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like babysitting to me
You aren't wrong on that assessment. But, when the entities under your jurisdiction are behaving like babies, sometimes a babysitter is exactly what you need.
Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Cancelled a gym membership lately? If I can create a subscription by clicking a button, I should be able to cancel it in the same fashion. It shouldn't need phone calls, printed and signed forms, fax machines, email chains, support tickets, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, lawyers, or exorcists. It should be a button click. The fact that we need legislation to make this happen is ridiculous.
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Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Yes
Re:Dogma (Score:1)
You can really see the dogma at work when the first question to a law that 100% protects the consumer is why the government is picking on poor corporations.
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Horse hockey, as Col. Potter would say. Have you, personally, ever cancelled subscriptions? You've never seen how obscure the links are, and then the hoops you hve to jump through to cancel?
Re:Is it that hard to cancel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like babysitting to me forcing companies to make it easier to cancel a subscription. Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
To the anti-government-at-all-costs crowd..
There's a reason I want the government to interject in some B2C matters.
Gone are the days where you can just show up to an unethical or immoral business owner and tar and feather them, or worse. If the government says I cannot take a hammer to the leg of the company who just hangs up every time I try to cancel a service, then I expect the government to do for me what I am not allowed to do.
Pick one.
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Seems like babysitting to me forcing companies to make it easier to cancel a subscription. Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
Does it seem like babysitting to you to allow people to subscribe to something online? No? Then why can't they do the same with cancelations? Oh, its because companies want to make you call some number and sit on hold for 45 minutes, hoping you'll get frustrated and hang up? Corporate sycophants are pathetic.
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Is the public really that slow where they can't figure how to stop a sub?
as a voter, why can't I regulate the businesses in my state more in favor of consumers? Maybe I'm sick of dark patterns or unreasonable processes such as forcing me to call a number that leaves me on hold and sometimes hangs up on me if I am on hold too long. Kind of sick of the manipulative B.S. and I just want companies to operate an above board business.
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Yes, very often it's a royal pain in the ass to cancel. Very often you must phone to talk to an actual person in order to cancel, and that person is trained to delay and dissuade you from canceling. So if it takes seconds to subscribe, it should only take seconds to unsubscribe, whereas in practice it may take ten minutes to unsubscribe for me, and I have spent over an hour trying to unsubscribe to some stuff that was for my mother.
Fascinating stuff -- also, credit cards! (Score:5, Informative)
In my recent experience, only one place kept hounding me to update the card. Several other vendors were able to renew the subscription anyway (even though I did not update the card on record).
Re:Fascinating stuff -- also, credit cards! (Score:4)
I'd blame the CC company for letting it happen. A canceled card is a canceled card. No more charges and don't transfer them to my new card.
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It's a nomenclature issue. A cancelled card is just that - the card itself was cancelled, not the account. What you want is a closed account, or a new way to block further transactions from a particular retailer.
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What you want is a closed account, or a new way to block further transactions from a particular retailer.
I apologize for going off topic here but I wanted to mention that I want a way to block transactions from a particular retailer that exceed an amount I define. It's bad enough that more and more of them want to directly reach into my wallet, they love price increases, too. T-Mobile, for example, raised my rates after a very public statement that they would not. A few months before that they disallowed using credit cards to get a $20/mo autopay discount. So they now they have a very real chance of makin
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T-Mobile Money
Hey now, I get a great exchange rate to AT&T Nickels. I only get charged a 3% currency fee, 7% convenience fee & a 12% government compliance fee. Bargain!
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Heh. "oops we charged your credit card twice, here's a T-Mobile Credit that you certainly cannot use to pay your power bill."
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A cancelled card is just that - the card itself was cancelled, not the account.
I don't follow the logic. They are using the cancelled card to continue the sub. If the card is cancelled, it doesn't work. Yet, they use some cheap tricks to somehow continue charging.
Don't worry they'll just update the T&C to say, "we are gods, we'll do whatever we want. You now owe us a $30 cancelled card use fee"
The credit card companies are just in bed with the oligopoly corps to con you out of your money. They'll lie, cheat and steal all the way.
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No, there are ways around the cancelled card thing. There are services that will automatically update payment information - if you get a card cancelled and get issued a new card, these services will automatically send the updated card information to services that are subscribed. Sometimes the service can query card providers
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I don't follow the logic. They are using the cancelled card to continue the sub.
No they aren't. They use the credit card once to create a pre-authorised charge token on the account, and reuse that token for the subscription fee every month. The card itself is only used for the initial setup and as a convenient way to tell the customer where to look for the money. They are not using a cancelled card, they can't do that. They are charging your account.
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I had a recurring subscription to some service and had to call them several times to try to cancel but they just wouldn't do it.
I finally removed my credit card information from my account so they couldn't charge it.
They continued to charge my account and I accumulated a balance due. I just ignored their pleas for payment and they eventually gave up.
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I just ignored their pleas for payment and they eventually gave up.
That's all well and good until they sell your account to the blood suckers. The kind of "collections companies" that buy the debt for pennies on the dollar and are have some insanely unscrupulous business practices. I hope you never have the pleasure of having one of those sorts of companies on your tail. And most likely the "I cancelled my card and haven't used the service since" isn't a sufficient excuse to absolve you of the debt.
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Yes, you're right.
Fortunately that didn't happen to me but it could.
This is common with medical debt (which has higher balances hence more incentive to collect).
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Oh, it's actually those particular dregs of the earth that you *DO* want hounding you. It's the real lenders like the originating banks that can grief you and get away with it. See, this is an industry whose mission statement could trivially be paraphrased to: "Let's find people who've already had a run of misfortune, pile more misfortune on them, and now we can all get our jollies by kicking them while they're down!" That sort of outlook does not compel high-quality people into choosing it as their care
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You need contact information leading back to the agency.
This is the biggest part of the plan that falls apart. The types of shitty companies I'm talking about don't exist very long. They open their doors, buy a shitload of the "pennies on the dollar" debts, squeeze as much blood out of the turnip as they can for a few months, then fold up shop. By the time you get your lawsuit paperwork filled out "Shitty Collection Company LLC" doesn't exist anymore. When your process server shows up to the address provided, someone identifying themselves as representing "Shi
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Not likely.
In fact, chances are your account is just one of many being bundled up to be sold to a collection agency.
It may appear that they've given up, but in
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You’re free to leave any time you want for that libertarian paradise. Haiti fits the bill perfectly. No government to get in your way or the way of business.
Re:How about one click cancellation of citizenship (Score:4, Funny)
Haiti fits the bill perfectly.
And all the free cats and dogs you can eat. Bonus!
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Nice but not a big help (Score:2)
I'd rather see a law requiring that canceling be approximately as easy as enrolling. Those businesses that have zero customer support and a sign up page but when you look for canceling it you find out there is no web page.
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I'd rather see a law requiring that canceling be approximately as easy as enrolling.
I disagree. Canceling should be much easier.
To enroll you have to provide a lot of information (name, address, credit card) and choose a plan. No reason why cancelling should be that hard.
Slashdot time travel? (Score:2)
Did they post about the veto of this bill by the governor before posting about the bill itself?
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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That was a different bill (AB-3048). This is bill AB-2863.
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That was a different bill (AB-3048). This is bill AB-2863.
Thanks, it all looked similar but I failed to locate the bill number for the other one after a quick search of the ./ article. I retract my concern.
Parasitic Businesses (Score:3)
Most businesses want a recurring revenue stream and will go to great lengths to protect it. They're sort of like aphids on a plant. They use the state as "ants" (regulatory capture, power of authority) to protect the aphids, and the ants "tax" the aphids by extracting the honeydew. Think of the consumers as the "plant" they're pretty powerless to stop the ant/aphid racket, especially at the federal level in the USA.
I wouldn't be surprised if the business affected by this get a law passed to preempt the California Law. Businesses are too powerful in the USA. The syatem is deliberately set up to elevate the interests of businesses over the public good.
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Its more than 50% pro-business due to the following:
1.Gerrymandering
2. Laws making voting as difficult and time-consuming as possible in red states
3. Election day is on a Tuesday instead of Sunday.
4. Some states let employers threaten voters with dismissal if they don't vote the way the company wants.
5. People don't vote in their best interests.
6. General apathy.
7. No initiative and recall at the federal level, and in some states.
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Election day should be a federal holiday.
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A lot of businesses don't close for federal holidays. (Of course, many also don't close for Sundays.)
Mixing ensuring that everyone has a chance to vote, only legal voters vote, and anonymous ballots is a tough problem. If you want to also check that your vote was counted correctly and that nobody else can see how you voted ... well, I'm not sure there IS an answer. (Not that any of our ballot systems claim to meet all those conditions.)
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One party does not want this, because it would mean more people would vote. They don't want more people to vote because the demographics say they're in the minority. Having to actually appeal to the majority of voters is just too much effort compared to just discouraging or hindring voters from voting.
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4. Some states let employers threaten voters with dismissal if they don't vote the way the company wants.
I'm going to call bullshit on this one, but let's say it's true for a minute. How would the business know what your vote was if you go and do it in person? They can't. This is my #1 problem with mail in ballots because now there is a way. It's even more a problem with an abusive spouse.
Voting should be done in person, privately
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Only eleven states have decent protection laws in place.
https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/politics-workplace-what-employers-need-know
With few exceptions, there is limited legal protection for political activities in the workplace. Private employers generally may refuse to hire and even fire “at will” employees because of their political views. In other words, “political discrimination” often is not unlawful under federal law. Several state and local jurisdictions,
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Some states let employers threaten voters with dismissal if they don't vote the way the company wants.
Your reply dances around but never answered were this is legal. Because it's not, in fact it's a perfect example of why we have anonymous voting. But let me give you the exact text under federal law (Title 52, section 10101)
No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such othe
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Most businesses want a recurring revenue stream and will go to great lengths to protect it. They're sort of like aphids on a plant. They use the state as "ants" (regulatory capture, power of authority) to protect the aphids, and the ants "tax" the aphids by extracting the honeydew. Think of the consumers as the "plant" they're pretty powerless to stop the ant/aphid racket, especially at the federal level in the USA.
I wouldn't be surprised if the business affected by this get a law passed to preempt the California Law. Businesses are too powerful in the USA. The syatem is deliberately set up to elevate the interests of businesses over the public good.
Don't worry. For the moment Gavin Newsome will veto this. He's too business oriented to let something this people oriented pass.
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Around here car washes keep popping up all over the place. I found out they all enroll you for a subscription plan.
Re: How about NO MORE MAGIC OPT-IN CRAP? (Score:2)
This is easy. Don't give your email address and your credit card data to sleazebags. Problem solved. If businesses make it hard to unsubscribe, then just don't subscribe. When communicating with a spammer, use a disposable email address.
banks (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this law include the ability to cancel recurring debits from bank accounts? That's more dangerous than recurring credit card charges.
Years ago I signed up for my utility company to direct debit my payments. After years of paying, I was moving away and went to cancel. The system asked for a password, but I had not established a password when I signed up; just my acct and the credentials for the bank; and I never looked at their website after. Customer service said "what is your password?" When I said I never created one, they said "Ok, but what is your password." I had to go to the utility's president's office to eventually get it resolved. It took about a dozen phone calls.
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Does this law include the ability to cancel recurring debits from bank accounts? That's more dangerous than recurring credit card charges.
Years ago I signed up for my utility company to direct debit my payments. After years of paying, I was moving away and went to cancel. The system asked for a password, but I had not established a password when I signed up; just my acct and the credentials for the bank; and I never looked at their website after. Customer service said "what is your password?" When I said I never created one, they said "Ok, but what is your password." I had to go to the utility's president's office to eventually get it resolved. It took about a dozen phone calls.
Moral of the story: Never let any company reach INTO your accounts. Use something like check-free to push payments to them.
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Don't let them into your accounts, but use whatever "check-free" is?
Nope. I write checks for my bills. Nobody gets into my account but me.
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No because you can already do that. Banks typically give you insight and the ability to block these kinds of transactions.
Fast moving cancel buttons (Score:2)
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No doubt.
Some of us who prefer keyboards to mouse clicks, would just tab to the button and press the space bar. But most people these days have no idea you can even do that.
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In an ideal world.... (Score:2)
...companies would be compelled to offer cancellation/opt-out via the exact same methodology that one subscribed/opted in. None of this "join online, but have to send a registered letter snail mail to cancel" crap.
I have a much better idea (Score:1)
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If you actually want a service to continue every month, I personally don't *want* to have to sign up again every month. I like it that my prepaid cell phone plan auto-renews each month. It saves me from having to do anything to just keep it going. Subscriptions aren't an inherently bad thing. It's just that some services abuse their subscribers.
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Oh I hope they do this. I'm sure people like you will quite pestering us with your silly ideas out of frustration just wasting your time trying to keep your internet connected, your phone paid, your power going, your water and gas on etc.
Seriously dude have a think about what you just said. Subscription to recurring payments are virtually essential for modern life.
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Oh I hope they do this. I'm sure people like you will quite pestering us with your silly ideas out of frustration just wasting your time trying to keep your internet connected, your phone paid, your power going, your water and gas on etc.
Seriously dude have a think about what you just said. Subscription to recurring payments are virtually essential for modern life.
We all survived long before paying for something over and over again became "virtually essential for modern life." You should never have to keep buying something you already paid for period!
Honest question (Score:2)
Just looking at all that recent work that FTC has been doing and this, I have to ask. Why do mostly progressive government bodies do this sort pro consumer stuff and conservatives mostly want the markets to figure it out? It is reasonably clear that markets can be manipulated and consumers do suffer at the hands of businesses big and small.