In Turkey, you can cancel any subscription you have through the governments app called "e-Devlet" which stands for "e-Government". It is an awesome system, a service making it hell to unsubscribe? Just cancel it through e-Devlet and if they don't cancel your subscription, you can sue them.
Though I think it only works for Turkey based companies, sadly.
For more context, prior to this, ISPs would force you to send them a cancellation notice over fax (which nobody has) if you wanted to cancel your subscription, even though they would come to your house to sign the contracts when first subscribing. There exists a law that states "cancellation can't be harder than subscription" and if you intend to cancel a subscription but an easier way is not provided, you aren't legally obligated to pay for the service anymore. Ask me how I know.
Also, "you can sue them" in this context means "you can use e-Devlet to sue a company online, without having to leave your house". It goes straight to your local Consumer Court, who asks the company to send in their defense and then the Consumer Council gathers together to reach a verdict. This total process normally takes around 3 months and you have to do absolutely nothing once you send the official complaint online, but some companies like to delay this procedure just because they can, by sending in their defense the last day before the deadline.
> Also, "you can sue them" in this context means "you can use e-Devlet to sue a company online, without having to leave your house".
e-Devlet is awesome in this regard, I am still suprised lots of more developed countries don't have anything similar. It is like a swiss knife for healthcare, financial and legal services. The e-Devlet app is also pretty fast and the webpage does not suck.
Though I wish the signup process was simpler, because you need to go to the nearest government post office to get an account. But I guess it is like that to prevent impersonation.
Having something this awesome in the U.S. would cut out so many billions of dollars of profit that there is zero chance of it ever being implemented in my lifetime. In the U.S. the purpose of government and regulations are to make it easier for entrenched companies to make a buck. Unfortunately for the citizenry just about all the low hanging fruit in terms of providing a government service to make lives easier and/or less costly have entrenched businesses siphoning money from people.
My favorite example being tax season: The fun mini-game wherein the government knows what you owe, but makes you guess anyway, and guessing wrong could get you in trouble. So we pay experts to make better guesses for us. And some of us know about an Easter egg that might unlock a free guess.
The government only knows some of the information for your taxes. Now, it would be a massive improvement if the government just came up with a number based on your 1099s and W-2s and sent you a bill with "Did we miss anything?", but it's not fair to say the IRS knows exactly how much you owe.
For the overwhelming majority of Americans, W2 and 1099 forms capture all of their income for the year. Yes, some small percentage (less than 20% ??) will have other adjustments to make but that’s why other countries have you verify their info.
Here in Poland you basically get the form with the numbers, add whatever else you need deducted and that's it. That if you're salaried worker, all is handled between your employer and tax office.
Here, if you are a salaried worker, your employer handles the taxes and the mandatory public insurance. When talking about wages, it is always post-tax. Good part is, you don't have to waste time or effort on your taxes, bad part (or good depending on who you are) is, nobody thinks about taxes so they don't know the absurd amount of money they pay the government every month.
If you are self-employed, all you have to do is do the regular tax bracket income tax calculation on your net income (total income - work expenses) and add the fixed mandatory health insurance cost. It is very easy and can be done through e-Devlet or your bank's mobile app/website but many people just hire an accountant because mistakes can be costlier than the minuscule cost of hiring one. Another alternative is to get all your payments through a payment processor that handles taxes for you, which is the go-to option for side hustles.
If you are an employer, you do the same as above, but for yourself and all your employees.
For all the other extra taxes (car ownership etc.) you are notified if you owe anything and the payment is again as easy as online banking or e-Devlet. I've never heard anyone complain about the process of paying taxes. The absurd amount of taxes on the other hand...
This seems like a great solution -- allow a centralized party to control the front end (and create an audit log), then transmit the intent to the service to act on.
I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service.
But the ceding of front end control to services themselves doesn't work. We already learned that with email / unsubscribe.
> I'd prefer to see it as a non-government, not-for-profit service.
Hard, because the government has authority, a random company does not.
I'd still trust my government more than a random non profit company, if my trust decreases, I'd vote for different people to manage the country - which is not possible with companies.
Actually, at least for this system, it is more like a common API enforced by e-Devlet with a client on e-Devlet, rather than the government tracking your subscriptions. Every time you open the page for this central cancellation system, it queries the providers' servers using a token generated from your digital key (so you can't query random people's info) and shows you if you have a subscription with them or not. If you want to cancel, it basically generates and sends a digitally signed and pre-filled form over digital mail (kind of like e-mail, but legally binding, timestamped, encrypted and mandatory for all corporate entities - like some sort of online notary).
At this point, everything continues as if this system wasn't involved, but now you have proof of intent to cancel. If they don't act on it in 2 work days you are in no obligation to pay for them anymore. And even if you accidentally do pay, you will be refunded.
Unfortunately not that I know of. Probably some executive thinks security by obscurity is a real thing. In my opinion any software developed using taxpayer money must be licensed copyleft.
Well, the government can access your bank logs, so I don't think them seeing you have a TV and internet subscription is an issue. It's a great benefit of having an authoritarian government.
The government can access the bank logs, but it doesn't have an automatic channel to do so for everyone at once. Making it easier for the government to spy on its citizens definitely is an issue.
They don't need a subpoena/warrant for data that the company chooses to sell the government. It's not your data, but data about you owned by the company. The government can ask a bank or netflix for all their customers data or even for an online portal that gives them unlimited access to whatever they need in exchange for cash and plenty of companies welcome the new revenue stream. (see for example https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-dat...) This isn't limited to the government buying up data either. Things like access to real-time GPS location has been for sale from every major mobile carrier
Even if that was the case: compared to the subscribing companies themselves selling not only that information, but also your personal data to the highest (and lowest) bidder?
What makes you think a government like the US doesn’t have this info? We’ve already seen that they have no problem buying data they otherwise can’t collect directly from individuals.
The legal framework for a private company doing it is already there. At least in the US, you can always cancel with a properly worded certified letter to the company. You would probably need to give the company limited power of attorney to send the letter on your behalf. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, its essentially the same thing as title companies. You give them power of attorney and they deal with the DMV for you for things like transfering title of your car.
Having said that, I don't think the market for painless cancelling is big enough to do this given the legal overhead that would be needed.
With companies, it's even easier: just cancel. Even if (as with Netflix) it takes until the end of the month, at least I can just ditch them. Even if elections are fair and regularly scheduled, you're essentially firing and re-hiring an entirely new company administration every n years. This is incredibly inefficient and probably why most govt websites (in every democratic country?) are pretty bad compared to their private counterparts.
And, there's no real incentive to improve, while with private companies, if you don't like them, you just stop paying for them. That profit motive (and threat of its loss) is very powerful - much more powerful than the "I'm helping my fellow citizen by engaging in civil service" (or, perhaps more likely, "I'm accruing power by running for public office").
That's why this "click to cancel" proposal is so important: it keeps companies from becoming embedded, like the incumbent govt that gets lazy and complacent, knowing that they'll never get voted out.
You could do it without the need for centralised party. Banks could issue a cancel notice i.e. a webhook/something to poll that says "this card will no longer be honoring this subscription".
That way users can cancel in our bank app... potentially right next to where we see the line item, and will have the protection of the bank being the one who does so (vs a user clicking something on their site).
I think if the government does it, they can leverage whatever they already have for identity verification. If it's a 3rd party NFP they have to deal with that, right?
Either way, my initial reaction to this is great, now we can prank other people by canceling their subscriptions.
This service already exists (not not-for-profit). It's called PayPal. It has its own problems, but it does make it easy to cancel recurring subscriptions (if you can find where to do so buried in its menus!)
Ahh didn't mean to come across as needlessly harsh. I like the country BTW, and I conceded that this idea might be a good one. Most people are acutely familiar with many of the faults of America, and are probably less so with those of smaller governments. I think my comment was coming more from a "wow maybe they actually did something right with tech?" perspective than anything else, similarly to how I might react if Apple was lauded for making strides in right to repair or something like that, or Google was praised for protecting user privacy, and I hoped to provide some context that most people would lack. But if my comment was unhelpful or unfair then I apologize.
Subscription providers will be as shameless as allowed by law. Or worse.
I try to cancel subscriptions immidiately after signing up when i only want the service for a limited time.
For an Italian newspaper's online subscription, after contacting them for cancellation via web form, my family was informed: you have to call a number and that cancellations will only be accepted 1 day before the end of the subscription.
Let me re-state that: you have to remember, one year after signing up, to call that number within a 24 hour window (maybe less, depending on their office hours), reach somebody, and hope for their honesty in confirming the cancellation, because your have no proof that you did so.
Or you are locked in for another year.
Luckily, I had used PayPal as subscription payment method, wich has a separate web interface for cancellation.
And also remembered the call after one year, for good measure.
But what a disrespect for consumers! Quite surprised this was apparently legal in Italy (we don't live there, it was an educational subscription).
> Quite surprised this was apparently legal in Italy
Did you verify that? Because I wouldn't be surprised if it's not actually legal, but that it's just a "we'll try it and no one fines us if we break the law" type of thing. When I lived in the UK (pre-Brexit) quite a few companies broke EU consumer laws all the time, such as mandatory listing of FULL price up front, but no one really seemed to care enough to actually do something about it so loads of companies (small and large) just did illegal stuff.
From what I can find, EU law isn't super-strong on subscriptions, although most countries do seem to have national laws. For example in Netherlands automatic renewals are only allowed month-by-month after the initial contract period, and you need to be able to unsubscribe with the same communication method that you used to subscribe. Simple common-sense no-brainer stuff, really.
You're completely right; I don't know, but challenging that or even just finding out more about the legal situation in Italy was beyond my language skills.
Seems like a good candidate for some old fashioned bulk complaining. Hit up the BBB, Yelp, etc. It seems stupid to us, but most companies actually care about those silly review sites even though none of them are binding in any way. The BBB especially.
You could also remind them via an online contact form once a day that you think this policy is garbage...
>I try to cancel subscriptions immidiately after signing up when i only want the service for a limited time.
Maddening: Apple requires iOS devs to allow a trial to run its full course even if the user cancels early. There's an exception, though. Wanna guess what it is?
Yep, Apple's own services. Cancel an Apple Music, TV, etc. trial early, and it ends immediately.
Though this is relevant in the USA, not Italy, confirm whether your state has single or dual party consent laws for recording prior to implementing this if you want to use it in any sort of legal proceedings.
I've always taken the 'calls may be recorded for quality assurance purposes' message played before connecting you to go both ways. Does the grammar work differently in Italian?
Illinois says that any subscription must be cancelable in the same place it's created, so if I sign up for Hulu using my smart tv,I can cancel there as well. It's really good.
People often complain about the proliferation of streaming services, but thanks to the law mentioned above, I'm able to subscribe and then immediately cancel. If I decide I want more time I can resubscribe later. I get to watch what I want with a minimum of recurring bills.
This is one reason I prefer subscribing via Apple's store where possible--it's always a hassle-free cancellation and all my subscriptions are in one screen.
The other benefit is simply seeing the current subscriptions, even if you had to cancel elsewhere.
I should be able to see on my Bank of America credit card which companies are going to bill me within a month - and either be able to block it or click a link to cancel.
I feel like I've seen some smaller financial services which have this feature, but most people want to use a major credit card.
I just put all of my recurring charges on a single credit card (car insurance, Netflix, etc.), and then don’t use that card for anything else, it makes it so much easier to track/manage.
This is also a reason to subscribe with paypal. (Interestingly Disney+ felt it needed to send me an email every day for 3 months saying "your subscription is about to be cancelled!" after I did this. But when you go into the D+ interface, the ONLY thing you can do is update your payment information. So I did what anyone would do: marked their email as spam and got on with my life. But I can't help but wonder how many fake subscriptions D+ is floating like this...)
My favorite thing about Apple subscriptions is free trials. You can sign up for a trial and then immediately cancel it and still use your full trial period. No nags. No more need to make a calendar reminder "CANCEL X" on the day before (and inevitably ignore it when the day comes if you're me).
It would be even better if they added a prompt on the free trial signup "Become a paid subscriber after free trial ends?" so you could just click "No" and not have to go through the few extra clicks to cancel (I sometimes have trouble finding the subscription list where you cancel tbh), but it's still infinitely better than signing up for a free trial with the subscription company directly.
Funny thing is that it works like this only for other apps. If you try to cancel some of Apple’s own subscriptions during the free trial, it will end immediately.
The person I replied to specifically said they have trouble finding the list. Giving them the path to get there doesn’t solve the issue, it’s like someone saying “I sometimes forget the steps” and replying “that’s not a problem, just remember the steps”.
The point of the shortcut is they don’t have to remember. And it only needs to be set up once, after that it’s a single tap to reach the screen. Building the shortcut takes less time than it took me to type either comment.
Yea, perhaps, but there are also a lot of people who don't like adding new stuff to their homescreen just to access a few times a year. The difference between the App Store vs Settings app route is that everything is much more clearly labeled in the latter case.
You can't cancel a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel subscription online. You have to call them and sit on hold for god-knows-how-long. I ended up just sending my bank a stop payment order.
Did you try cancelling while in Illinois? My understanding is that some places only show the cancellation option when you're in a jurisdiction that requires it, and that a VPN can solve the problem
One of the great perks of living in the Netherlands. We already have this. If you can sign up in 1 minute using the web you must also be able to cancel in one minute using the web (For the Dutch: Wet van Dam). This rule is only for consumers not for businesses. Consumers are very well protected here.
I keep running into Dutch e-commerce sites that advertise prices without fees and VAT, and I haven't figured out who I'm supposed to complain to. Just yesterday, the first indication the prices weren't accurate is when I saw the real total in iDEAL.
Prices without VAT are the main listed price on Dutch websites whose primary clientele isn't the end consumer.
Examples I remembered offhand: elektramat.nl, rvspaleis.nl
Those both list the price with VAT too, but the primary list price is without.
You'll find plenty of more examples e.g. if you think about what the house you're in is made of, and look for those materials in bulk. E.g. I-beams, pallets of wood, insulation etc.
Ahh yeah, websites targeting other businesses might give the ex-VAT price the preference. Although your 2 examples still show the price including VAT directly under the non-VAT price.
I was buying tickets for an upcoming music concert here in Amsterdam. The map showing prices in different sections was one price, but they wanted €74 extra in "total fees", and an additional €14 in VAT.
I only noticed that after writing the comment. Still feels wrong to advertise one price, then sneak in "total fees" (whatever those are) in between the checkout flow and the payment processor page.
ACM is responsible for this kind of stuff; you can send them a "tip": https://www.acm.nl/en
I know that at least a few years ago they were actively and aggressively enforcing these kind of transparent pricing legislation, although I don't know the current situation, or what they do with tips sent to them.
Are you using a VPN or proxy? I never saw any website without VAT prices. I did once find a site where the prices were different when viewing it with an apple device.
As someone who immigrated here from the US, holy crap is it so nice to actually cancel something. I tried a few different Dutch streaming services before settlign on which one I wanted to keep and cancelling the others was painless.
Customer protections for online purchases are also great. The return policy for buying online is so much better than in person, I have friends who will purposefully browse in-store, then place an order on their phone and pick it up at the customer service counter 5 minutes later, solely to take advantage of the extra consumer protections. This is especially true for more expensive purchases like appliances (looking at you Mediamarkt)!
Nothing makes me want this to pass more than Disney and Netflix fighting it. If those assholes are opposed to it, almost by definition I'm going to be for it.
For customers it is quite good, but to be fair, Netflix cancellation process is very straightforward, at least in Europe. There weren't any tricks, they just said see you later and cancelled.
I'm in the US, and it looks straightforward here too. It only gets slightly tricky if it's billed indirectly (through a partnership with some other company, where the subscription is offered as a part of a package). So I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
If it's straightforward to cancel, the rule should not be any work on their part (it's certainly no great engineering lift).
We all know that once profitability/growth drops, all the companies will resort to dark patterns (over time) to keep the numbers looking good, unless prevented from doing that.
I have a free Netflix sub through Verizon. I no longer use Verizon but my sub is still active until November.
Netflix says I must go through Verizon to cancel but Verizon killed my account once I changed providers. I guess I’ll see what happens in November since I currently have no way to cancel.
I prefer that the government doesn't go too heavy handed with the rule and try to solve all problems with requirements such as maintaining detailed phone records. We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.
I think the rule of "sign up online, cancel online using a clearly visible option in the account settings", plus the legalese to cover corner cases, would be a huge improvement. Making it difficult to cancel a subscription is the oldest trick on the book and is tantamount to fraud.
Having read the proposed amendments outlined in the notice, I don't see any mention of this. Outside the proposed amendments, the only mention of this is commentary that several state AGs have urged the commission to amend a different rule (the telephone sales rule) to require recording consent when provided by phone. However, this proposed rule making notice is about the negative option rule, and no such requirement is being proposed.
The requirements the FTC are proposal are refreshingly reasonable. Here is a link to the FTC's page on this, which includes links to the full text of the notice as well as a link to a one-pager summary.
> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.
As the same time, I would love to see cost build up when the large players grow larger.
Maybe some form of enforcement tiers -- you need to do this or that when you have this many of users.
> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.
If that were the effect of the FTC's maneuvering, I would not expect Netflix or Disney to oppose it. It would be the government helping them build moats - a wonderful reason for them to pay those lobbyists.
> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.
A laudable goal in theory. In practice when was the last time a small player entered the streaming market? This mindset enables the massive entrenched corporations to abuse customers.
There are quite a few niche streaming services which have kicked off in the last few years -
- Nebula (content from YouTube creators),
- WoW Presents Plus (RuPaul’s Drag Race and associated shows)
- Taskmaster.tv (the UK taskmaster series)
I’m not sure how independent any of those are (e.g. RuPaul’s Drag Race is linked with MTV, and Taskmaster with the UK channel 4) and they are intentionally niche, sometimes with a single show.
None. Perhaps one of it triggers some deletes or privacy related changes.
This has actually been the case in Germany (and perhaps even EU) for a while. Mostly because courts have ruled that cancelation must not be harder than signing up.
In Germany they were especially trying to force you to send letters or fax cancellations when you could sign up or upgrade via phone, e-mail or web form. Courts said no to that practice.
That isn't signing up, that is filling out a profile and/or stating/proving who you are (for payment processing & fraud prevention purposes). While it is often closely linked to “signing up” it is not actually a direct part of it.
Even if you consider it all to be part of the sign-up, it could be a single form so the match of “as many forms to cancel as to sign-up” still works: this one form for signing up, the “are you sure, this is why you might prefer not to” page being its opposite at the other end.
They don't have to, they can just do fewer or the same that it takes to sign up. Better yet, we could require "one-click unsubscribe". It's our country and we get to choose to make it better.
I agree, that would be super annoying, but at the same time the law would still be mostly working this case, since you still don't need to eg fax a form or have to get on a long phone call. I think "the effort you need to sign up" is a reasonable ceiling, and while it's unfortunate if a company decides to be petty and make you enter your address again, that same company would probably do more if they were given the legal right to do so.
Daydream: Companies with customer-hostile subscriptions policies are all required to use the IRS's new "Advanced Corporate Tax Management" web site. Where the ever-shifting dark patterns of UI and ever-resetting defaults (especially the "voluntary extra contribution to the US Treasury") make their lives difficult. And that IRS site's webmasters collect a percentage on those "extra contributions", and appeals can only be made in person on the ISS, and ...
Why is it still the norm in the US to allow companies to charge their customers whenever they please, without the customers having any control?
In India, businesses are required to get a consent, at the time of subscription, to charge the customer on a recurring basis. This is called an e-mandate and requires multi-factor authentication to create. The card holder can cancel the mandate online, through their bank, without having to rely on the business doing the right thing. The business cannot charge the customer beyond that point, without obtaining a new mandate.
When you sign up, you are agreeing to the contract ("I agree to the terms and conditions"). Those terms and conditions legally dictate what you are agreeing to and how you will be charged, and what conditions are necessary to break that contract.
They aren't allowed to charge you whenever they please, without customer control, they have to abide by the contract. Unfortunately, most people don't read the contract, and companies put ridiculous terms in there that people happily agree to.
It's not unfortunate that most people don't read contracts - it's unfortunate that services create such dense contracts int their defense, knowing full well no one reads them.
I propose the following: a ToS is accompanied by an audio transcription playing at average speaking speed. A person can only use the service after the whole thing plays. We'd quickly see a race for short ToS.
Or maybe require layers to accept ToS. If lawyers wrote them, maybe it would be helpful for a lawyer to read them to consumers! They could even amend it and negotiate changes with the service provider - maybe the terms are not compatible with their client's Terms of Consuming.
These are just joke scenarios, but they show the power imbalance between service and consumer.
This is what Netflix's Terms of Use says, "If a payment is not successfully settled, due to expiration, insufficient funds, or otherwise, and you do not cancel your account, we may suspend your access to the service until we have successfully charged a valid Payment Method.".
A customer will be well within the bounds of the contract if they cancel their mandate through the bank, as long as they also don't expect to have continued access to Netflix.
Even in the US, there is nothing stopping the customer from closing their credit card account, except that it is an unreasonably inconvenient for the customer. It is far simpler and IMO sensible to be able to revoke consent for specific purposes through my payment instrument. So why doesn't the banking system in the US provide this as an universal option to customers? After all, this is exactly what Apple facilitates albeit at a high cost.
Re-read that closely. You still owe them the money, they aren't absolving you of the debt. Netflix seems content not to pursue customers for it, but there is nothing legally stopping them from coming after you for the amount you agreed to pay until you formally cancel. Thats the rub. Access suspension != account cancellation.
You can ask a US bank to stop future payments to a given merchant, but it doesn't actually absolve you of your contractual agreement to pay the merchant. Most internet based services have decided that it is bad business to pursue accounts where the payment was unsuccessful, but from a legal perspective, you are still on the hook.
I'm not saying I agree with the way the US system handles this, but to say that "the norm in the US to allow companies to charge their customers whenever they please, without the customers having any control" is inaccurate since customers have agreed to the terms of the contract which define when the customer is charged and what control they have.
"Unfortunately, most people don't read the contract"
Unfortunately, we lack laws to mandate easy-to-understand terms of service that highlight the most important information in a way that actually serves the people instead of businesses.
It's not and 99% of the time it's blatant user error. Like the guys top post that is refusing to believe his father slammed the re-subscribe button when sharing his account with him.
The example from the top post sure I may give some leeway, but there are plenty of subscription services where it is clearly multiples of effort more difficult to cancel than to subscribe. Common example being - can only cancel over the phone after being told 10 reasons by a sales rep as to why you should continue to pay. This is not down to user-error, this is blatantly trying to fraud your users.
Germany enforced this a couple of years ago: if you can contract with someone electronically, cancelling this needs to be as simple as agreeing to that contract.
Annoyingly, a lot of companies try to work around this - I tried to cancel a newspaper subscription a while back and they didn't offer that. So I simply wrote a quick email. Then they requested to call me to discuss this and I had to answer via email quoting that relevant law. Then they accepted it. Annoying.
Cancelling Wow, Amazon Prime, Audible or Netflix is really just a mouse click (with Amazon Prime and Audible using some dark patterns to convince you to stay).
A smilar law should be implemented at EU level. Our DSL provider in Czechia makes it very difficult to cancel a service. You can easily sign up online. But they say you have to call somewhere no earlier than two months and no later than one month prior to expiration which renews yearly. Then they mail you a code, which you must provide to them by calling them again. This is an excellent illustration of how badly everything would be (for example food standards or local laws) if we weren't a part of the EU. Yet some stupid people (mostly old) are complaining about the EU all the time that it is a Brussels' dictate. But the EU creates at least some order here!
You will then be transferred to a retention agent who will help you complete the signup process. Confirmation of signing up could take up to 5 business days.
> The Internet & Television Association, which counts Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery as members, said in its public comment that the proposed reg is so vague, it would lead marketers to be excessive in their disclosures, leaving consumers "inundated" and "confused."
I have a rule and that is, anytime somebody pushes back on something with the rationale, "doing X will confuse our users," it is ALWAYS because they have some ulterior motive that has nothing to do with the users at all. (And furthermore shows how little they think of their users's general intelligence.)
The hilarious part is that these companies have no problem whatsoever with their customer contracts and "Terms Of Use" documents that are 75 pages of 6 point font text full of one-sided terms, that they use to beat/rob their customers.
But when they simply are asked to disclose their bad behavior, it's "Oh, no! We can't show our users a complex document! They'll be inundated!!!"
It's the fact that unsubscribing to several services on a mobile phone is a nearly impossible task that is infuriating to me. Most streaming apps immediately divert you to their app (if it's installed) if you search for them on the web. These same apps will also tell you to "go to the web to manage your subscription". This forces the user to first delete the app and cross their fingers that the website doesn't just bounce them back over the app store.
Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years? It never brings a desktop site anymore... so annoying.
Apple tried to fix this by diverting any in-app subscriptions thru their app store, but because they take such a substantial cut of the sub revenue, companies would rather redirect users to the web to buy a sub and not provide the capability within the app. Despite Apple's efforts here, it has completely backfired and made the end user experience a deplorable state of affairs.
> Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years?
In large part because it’s really bad practice to have separate desktop and mobile sites, it’s generally better to just have one responsive site.
However, some badly designed sides achieve “responsiveness” by hiding functionally, which is bad because phones have no way to “zoom out” (emulate a larger screen size) to get the buttons to show up.
> Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years? It never brings a desktop site anymore... so annoying.
Likely because the site's fingerprinting to determine if you are on a mobile device uses more heuristics than the "Request Desktop Site" functionality leverages. This, IIRC, is just a user agent hack, but browsers send a _lot_ more data about your machine than just a user agent.
I have a small SaaS business and do the vast majority of development myself. I made it just as easy to cancel as it is to sign up, just a couple clicks. Not that anybody does: churn is way below every benchmark and those who cancel for a time frequently come back.
Being customer-friendly pays dividends, folks. Not sure why big companies don't get that. Maybe it's because the only stakeholders I have to answer to are myself, my cofounder, and our customers.
I have switched to prepaid gift cards instead of giving apps the right to take money from my bank account. No payment information linked to Google- got burned by auto renewal once and never again.
Not paying a debt you legitimately owe doesn’t eliminate the legitimacy of the debt. Most app owners probably won’t take any further action against you because it’s not usually worth the time and money (at least in the US), but they’re entitled to. If they sell your debt to a debt collector, have fun with that.
(Tangent: there is usually a certain number of years of inaction after which they can’t go after you for the debt, unless you again acknowledge the debt. The details and the ways to reset that clock vary by jurisdiction.)
Non-USA here (which might affect things): Isn't the point of paying with e.g. a Netflix gift card that they auto-cancel/pause your subscription to Netflix after the gift card runs out of funds? How would that incur a debt?
The subscription is a recurrent commitment that you sign up for through a contract. They cancel it automatically because they don't want to bother collecting the money - it's expensive to do so and will lead to permanent churn. But they can; it's your problem to fix the payment method to cover your monthly/yearly commitment. All they have to do is to keep the service available and put something in the contract to that effect.
It's similar with power/water bills. They can't/won't cut utilities, a form of subscription with a fixed cost in addition to the usage cost, right away (there is a process for that), but you owe the money all the way until they are cut.
Netflix is not a basic utility. The only thing they have in common are similar billing intervals.
But that’s kind of beside the point.
When you sign up for a subscription, they only commitment you have made is for the chosen billing interval.
If it’s a month you’ve committed for a month, if three years then you’ve committed for three years.
But you have not in any way shape or form committed to a single second beyond that.
Most (all?) have auto renewals clauses that are very convenient for both the seller and buyer, but to enforce it when the buyer wants to quit is basically extortion.
Not being a basic utility is not relevant for the legal implications here, as the renewal terms aren't tied to being an utility - that was just a familiar example. The renewal laws are clearly specified in the contract you accept when signing up for these services, for instance Disney Plus says:
"If you do not timely cancel your subscription, your subscription will be renewed at the price in effect at the time of the newel, without any additional action by you, and you authorize us to charge your payment method for these amounts...We do not refund or credit for partially used used billing periods."
This can be easily read and argued as: if you do not cancel, you owe them. You can argue this in front of a judge, but it will be really hard to say it's "extortion" if the cancellation process is streamlined.
Of course I realise the terms and they may even be legal someplaces.
But the basic reality is that none of these firms would enter into a contract with terms like these because they are outrageous.
Just think about it. The act of doing nothing over a certain short time period is supposed to legally bind you in a new contract and even with unknown pricing?
This is not business between equals and people behaving this way deserve all the crap they can be tossed.
In the US, yes. If the letter of the contract says that you are responsible for a monthly payment, how that debt is settled every month does not change the terms of the contract. A gift card just allows you to settle the debt with a mutual debt owed.
I was mostly wondering if the contract is indeed the same or if the services have a separate fixed-term contract for gift cards. But I guess it’s par for the course (ie. really customer-hostile) if they indeed force even gift card paid subscriptions to be perpetual…
Everything I said is true in many countries outside the US too, except possibly the prohibitive legal cost of pursuing a small unpaid debt in court. In particular, I know for sure that invalidating a payment method does not invalidate an otherwise valid obligation to pay in Canada or Germany, and I think that’s the typical rule worldwide.
If Netflix chooses to cancel or pause the subscription after the gift card runs out of funds, that’s their business decision. It’s probably wise as a practical matter for them to limit access to unpaid services when it won’t usually be worth their time and money to force the matter judicially.
But other things they could choose to do include continuing the subscription and using any and all legal debt collection methods until you catch up on the accrued debt, imposing reasonable penalties for nonpayment as per any specific contract wording or any applicable legal defaults, and claiming any damages and/or lawyer fees incurred depending the specific circumstances and the rules of the relevant legal jurisdiction.
The details do vary between countries and between some countries’ subdivisions, sure. But the general principles of what I’m saying are typically true in most countries.
On quite a lot of services the contract term is the billing term, and it just renews every time a successful payment happens. For example a month-long contract that auto-renews monthly. If the payment fails, the current contract simply ends and no debt is created.
Obviously: read the terms of what you’re signing up for, to check.
True but it's good to have reminders that this isn't universal behaviour. Say, in Germany the local companies (even purely online services) have no qualms about sending your bills to collections if you just stop paying.
Charging me for a service I've asked to cancel doesn't really feel legitimate either. I've been through this with a gym that wouldn't cancel and then got sent to collections, which honestly just showed me how worthless collections is. So I get a few more spam calls or spam mails - I'm already ignoring those anyway.
The next time you apply for anything that depends on your credit history, the collections history will show up on the credit report (assuming you’re in a country that has those - far more than just the US) and either cause your application to be refused or to be approved with bad terms. This will stay on the credit report for years.
It’s probably not worth anyone’s time to go after you more aggressively than that merely for the amount of a gym membership, but if they so choose they’re absolutely allowed to sue you to get a court judgment which appropriate authorities will enforce for them against your assets and income. For larger debts, this is in no way unlikely, if they think you can afford to pay.
To be clear, I support the proposed FTC rule and think it should be as easy to cancel as to sign up. But that procedural question is separate from what commitments may exist. for example, if they give you a discount for a 12-month commitment but still allow you to pay monthly, or if they only offer memberships with a minimum commitment of 12 months, canceling in month 3 would very reasonably still require you to pay the rest of the current 12-month term before your obligation ends.
For some contracts, I can imagine allowing the alternative of repaying the amount of the discount received so far due to the annual commitment, plus interest on that amount. But if you received and used any perks through the annual commitment which would otherwise not have been available to you, or if they incur significant upfront costs for new members which are amortized across the first 12 months of membership, allowing this would not produce a fair outcome.
You’re lucky then, in a way that doesn’t generalize to the broader question of collections being or not being worthless. Many debt collectors will routinely report longstanding uncollected debts to credit reporting agencies.
Maybe you got a rare debt collection agency that doesn’t bother, or one which decides your debt was too small to be worth their bother for that, or maybe your debt collector is actually the accounts receivable department of the gym (which probably isn’t set up to submit credit reports) rather than an external collections agency (which usually would be set up for that).
The thing about it is - fuck them - I'm not paying someone who scammed money out of me, no matter how they threaten me. If debt collection is part of that scam, then fuck them too.
I respect your feelings, and as I said upthread I do want it to become mandatory for cancellation to be as easy as signing up. Gym membership cancellation hassles are an awfully common abusive scam that should be legislated or regulated away and turned to something that’s actually fair for both sides instead of predatory.
My earlier replies to you were simply discussing the law as it is and the practices and consequences currently typical in debt collection, aside from when I agreed that changes in the legal rules would be a good thing. Neither your feelings nor my policy preferences change how the world currently works.
> If they sell your debt to a debt collector, have fun with that.
If you have the time and volition, and aren't terribly concerned with your credit rating, it can actually be quite fun because a lot of debt collectors routinely violate the law in terms of what they're allowed to do, and you can usually make some money off them in that way.
Of course, I'm talking about small debts. If you owe enough money, the collector will probably sue you, and that truly is no fun.
What i don't understand is that it is essentially a necessary service for consumers, because corporates have the luxury to can and will not care about problems with automatic (over)charging.
So therefore i'm all for 1-click canceling subscriptions.
well, it's not only cancel protection, it's a privacy tool. Imagine your credit card # like a SSN common across multiple platforms. Now imagine that SSN being different every time.
Furthermore, if a platform gets cracked that credit card # has a limit with little to no value.
The ease of pulling the plug on one platform is an added bonus.
Yep. Revolut let’s one create new virtual cards on demand (for recurring purchases), as well as virtual cards that get cancelled after a single purchase.
Why not just setup virtual card service like privacy? Been using them for the last few years. It has been too damn good so far. I just hope they do not get greedy in the neae future. Not sire why the personal banking does not do this already.
> Not sire why the personal banking does not do this already.
Bank of America used to do this. It was a flash program that generated the numbers and of course once flash was discontinued they didn’t care enough to port the program over to a modern web app.
I really appreciate that legislation here forces companies to accept cancellation by email. There are services that have the contact addresses as a directory and you can just fill out a form online and they have to honor your cancellation.
When was the last time US consumers got any kind of win? Even though this seems like an obvious proposal, I find it hard to not expect the FTC to get their asses kicked in court.
The issue is so simple. The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them. Well. So it either costs the companies or it costs the consumer. But the consumer is exercising their free choice while the companies are ignoring said choice and forcing them to pay for something they don't want. That's textbook extortion.
Easy solution: impose crippling fines or maybe a little prison sentence here and there for extortion. Why not? That's what it is. Do it and watch how fast the mobsters, I mean, the companies will change their tune.
The solution to like 90% of all problems: The CEO is legally responsible for every illegal action taken by the company. This is also true for all managers down to the department that caused the illegal action.
That's it. Nothing else. You'll see a massive amount of bad behavior from companies instantly stop. When your neck is on the line, you won't do it. Or you'll quit.
However given history, this will never occur. Unfortunately thats now how we think of commerce, and so companies can try to act as they please with socialized risk and all gain.
>The CEO is legally responsible for every illegal action taken by the company.
You think CEO compensation is out of control now? Think about what you'd have to pay someone to be the CEO of any moderately large corporation if that were the case.
You think your boss is up your ass now? Think about what they'll be like when they are strictly liable for anything you do.
I'm not against more executive responsibility, but you have to consider the externalities of your policies.
I think there's an easier solution that would be less disruptive. Create a legal designation of "executive" and require that every company have at least one (ie the CEO). Anyone in that class bears legal responsibility for the actions of the people they manage. If you follow the standard hierarchy for CFO, CTO then decisions that require specialized knowledge fall on them instead (e.g. if your CFO is committing tax fraud and you didn't know and it's not reasonable that you as the CEO would be able to recognize it then it's only the CFO's problem). Then instead of criminal liability if you're found doing something illegal you are barred from holding any executive position.
I think this puts the incentives in the right place, being able to tell your CEO "no, I'm not willing to risk my career for that" I think would be a powerful self-regulating force and also provide cover from who can't afford to say no from being thrown under the bus. It's essentially professional licensure but reversed.
> You think CEO compensation is out of control now?
The other side of the coin of CEO compensation not being related to real-world concern is that CEO compensation isn't related to any real-world concern.
There is no reason to think it will increase or decrease due to such a change.
There isn’t some bug that can be fixed that would suddenly make this work. DAs, states attorneys and attorneys general have all the power in the world to make life hell for any company doing bad things. They just don’t want to.
Think about that and consider the cascading consequences you’d face for years in most states if you let your driver’s license expire and get pulled over.
Include any substantial shareholders, too. Say >= 25% ownership or >= $1,000,000 valuation.
Then recurse that if that shareholder is also corporate. Don't let them just bankrupt empty shell companies, hold the parent companies responsible too.
The situation we have now is companies setting targets that can only be met by breaking the law and then acting innocent when the employees do. I don't know how we fix this.
> The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them.
Which is funny because they spend ungodly amounts of money staffing and fielding the phone calls for cancelation.
The actual cost is literally hooking their almost certainly existing "cancel subscription" api up to a UX for the user. They've already done 99% of the work since these companies all support cancelation.
Pretty sure they directly stated it—the consumer is being coerced. Deceptive tactics to make it hard to stop paying for something you don't want is coercive and deceptive behavior.
You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Laws can be changed and definitions changed. Or use a different term. The essence of the point is clear. Why nitpick on whether or not “extortion” is the correct word?
> You are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws.
Extortion seems like hyperbole to me. Canceling on Disney+, Netflix, etc. is extremely easy. In fact I cancelled my D+ subscription juts the other day and even though they prompted me whether I’m sure I want to cancel, never did I feel they were trying to trick me with dark UX patterns or making it overly difficult.
So on a spectrum of easy -> misleading -> coerced -> extorted, I am happy to report it was easy.
The post you responded to was about situations in which companies make it hard to cancel. Clearly the person was expressing frustration that for many companies signing up is easy and canceling is hard. They want this situation to be rectified.
No one cares that you had an easy time cancelling a service. You telling us that cancelling D+ was easy is only meaningful if you think this is the case in all situations for all companies and you argue that this is so. As it stand it’s a pointless anecdote.
> You telling us that cancelling D+ was easy is only meaningful if you think this is the case in all situations for all companies and you argue that this is so.
Look, I understand that not all companies are customer centric and I can see you and others feel that you’ve been extorted by some conapnies.
I argued in good faith given the article is literally about D+ and Netflix and the person I responded to said “The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them.”
Why would I think they’re not referring to the companies in the article?
The article is about the FTC requiring companies to make it easy to cancel. The article specifically stated that Disney and Netflix are in opposition to this. A person wrote a comment stating that they think companies should face legal consequences for not making cancelling easy. You write that “extort” is the wrong word. Then you say that cancelling D+ was easy for you. None of your posts on this topic are relevant.
They are multinational companies. The fact that one of them behaved correctly in your country does not say anything about how it or the others behave in other countries.
Because this is HN and it's more important to launch definition critiques than to discuss substance ever. I think half of HN came from the horrible world of high school policy debate
Remember, you're talking about a community composed largely of software developers, whose livelihoods are built on their ability to find a missing negative sign in 100,000 lines of code. When faced with a large paragraph of text full of complexity and nuance, they're naturally going to find that one word that's wrong and pedantically nit-pick it to death, ignoring the overall point and substance being conveyed.
Lol this even fits with how they do PR reviews and code critiques. When I submit a long PR for review, I know that none of the comments will be substantive or useful. They'll just be meta-critiques about how the headers aren't alphabetized or private members need to come after public. Not about the actual content.
if you can't even clean the basic stuff up to whatever formal or informal coding standard there is, then why should anyone look deeper?
yes, that stuff is unimportant to function. however, if you are getting such comments it means that there is an established standard, and willfully (or sloppily) ignoring it is the problem.
there's also the problem of bike-shedding. but then again if you take the time to be meticulous, there won't be nits to pick and your "helpful" colleagues will have to find something more substantive to pick at.
Yeah like the thread yesterday about the teenager that was detained by the airlines -- only legally he was likely never "detained" but we have no good word for the not-legally-detained-but-taken-to-a-room-and-interrogated action that actually happened to him. Since we have no good word for that it becomes trivial for pedants to think they've won an argument while they piss everyone else off arguing over definitions.
I wasted too much of my time arguing that crap. This site is full of book-smart people that are not as smart as they think they are. They just happen to find a bunch of neckbeards who also haven't touched grass in the last week.
Why doesn't my credit card statement list subscriptions separately?
How come I can't cancel through my credit card?
It's great that the FTC is cracking down on this; but it seems like the credit card companies also should have some involvement too in making it easy to see what subscriptions you have, and making it easy to cancel subscriptions in a single location.
"but it seems like the credit card companies also should have some involvement..."
If we want that, we need laws to make it happen. It seems a lot of people want companies to act in certain ways out of the goodness of their heart, when what we need are good laws that support consumers. Back before credit card reform under Obama, credit card companies were among the most aggressive actors when it came to late charges and fees and just generally ruining people's lives. They still would be, except now there is a law.
Apple gets a cut of the payments made through them and yet they provide this option to the consumers.
The FTC or the govt can force (?. I'm not a US resident and know nothing of US regulatory bodies' powers) card networks and banks to make this possible. This is exactly how things work in India, as I mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36709947.
Strange to see Netflix on the list, because here in the UK it's extremely easy to cancel. You just click once and it's done, and you still get to watch for the rest of the month.
I'm sure it can't be because of UK law, because we have plenty of other companies here who make cancellations awkward.
Same, here in California I just tried it. Account > (big button at top) Cancel Membership > Finish Cancellation. That's about as perfect as I'd want it. I don't want a cancel button on my main screen and I do want a confirm field when I make destructive actions.
Finish Cancellation button is highlighted in Blue and obvious default. Below that is a "downgrade plan" option. There is also a note above Finish Cancellation that says "If you resubscribe within 10 months, your profile and watched shows will remain" or something like that.
The very fact that they have different cancel paths in different locales says that they are doing the one that is most advantageous to netflix according to the laws of that locale.
It sounds like we all should 'lose' our credit cards once a year. It's a hassle to give the new number to the companies we want to keep but probably worth it for the ones we don't.
Then you get all sorts of late payment charges and charges are then sent to debt collection agencies, which then dent your credit score.
T-mobile charged me $7 for being 1d late on payment because my credit card expired. No late payment notice. Just a charge on next bill.
Verizon is even worse. They have 30 day free trial from the time you sign, not when the equipment is delivered. So if they misdeliver to wrong address, you're on hook for $280 even if you don't have the equipment.
US policies and politicians in general are very corporate friendly.
Not really surprising when its become clear streaming isnt the money maker they all thought it would be. With the exception of Netflix they've all lost billions with zero sign of that changing.
A proposal, seriously? Like, proposing to vampires they might hold off on sucking too much blood? This has to be a law, with penalties that really hurt for a change.
If some service is worried that people will cancel in error, they can always send an email or several saying, "Did you cancel in error? Click <here> to reinstate!"
This is your regular reminder to use a temporary credit card to subscribe to things. If they make it too difficult to cancel the regular way, you can cancel the credit card (and of course, don't use the subscription anymore).
If you're really worried about the impact of that on your credit rating (a non-issue, by the way), you can send a registered letter to the company canceling, and then monitor your credit report. If that does show up (which it won't), you have proof that you canceled the service.
But really, credit cards become invalid all the time, for all sorts of innocent reasons.
Netflix is such a crook. I had cancelled my subscription a while ago. They gave me the rest of the month to watch (since i already paid that month). Well, I had cancelled because I don't watch anymore. Guess what? Since it was a family plan, my father end up watching on his house, in another city. So Netflix renew the subscription. Fun right? I get a message everytime my card gets charged, that's why I noticed I was still being charged for Netflix. End up hoping in a chat with the support and they told me about this "feature" of automatic renewal.
UPDATE
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36708881 - ReclameAqui is a Brazilian website where customers can file complaints about companies. Netflix seems to be doing that to a lot of customers...
Do you know the details of what happened here? Unless you know otherwise, it sounds like your father probably ended up clicking the "renew subscription now" button when prompted, not that simply logging in triggered the charge.
I'm ready to believe that the renewal prompt was heavily geared towards making it easy to renew, and Netflix should be required to make it equally easy to cancel, but unless you know he didn't click a button to confirm the charge (with dollar amount listed), I'd hesitate to label the re-onboarding process as crooked.
I had more or less the exact same thing. I certainly didn't like the idea that my "authorized users" (who are in my home) could simply click on a show to watch it, or even "renew" without giving a password and restart a cancelled--not suspended--account. It's bad treatment and only makes me want to never do business with Netflix, but... okay, it's kinda sorta "my" fault.
But when I had my customer service interaction, they said they could not tell me that that's what happened, or if it did, when and on what device. That to me is inexcusable. If you're going to charge me money you need to be able to justify why and for what.
Secondly, I could not use Netflix's interface to remove or deauthorize my payment method. Also unconscionable. The customer service agent needed to "block" my card (how do I know that they even did it? I have no way to verify as the payment method remains associated with the account).
It's not on me to "know" someone "didn't" do something--it's incumbent on Netflix to actually know and have a record that that's what happened. If they don't do that--then yeah, crooked.
Did customer support confirm that that is the feature they were talking about—watching something after renewal triggers the charge? Or is it possible you were talking past each other? The only documentation on Netflix for this doesn't mention this 'feature' [0], and I can't find any discussion of similar cases (which I would expect for something like this). Also, this kind of behavior would unambiguously violate several existing laws, while most dark patterns are arguably legal (though they shouldn't be).
I'm not saying your dad was lying—it's very possible for someone to click on a button like that (or even two—renew and confirm) and not remember it at all. My dad had a freaky call with what he believed to be Paypal customer support about a scam email, in which they wanted him to give them remote access to his computer. He swore up and down that he didn't call the number in the sketchy email, that he'd looked up the number, but on further investigation he definitely did call the scam number. My dad is a perfectly healthy middle-aged adult, but still misremembered what happened.
I ran in to this "feature" in the US as well. I was the only party with my password and opening Netflix on a new device triggered a twice-over auto renewal, which their customer support confirmed is intended behavior. I had to charge back the prior month's renewal as well, as their support was unwilling to refund a charge from more than 7 days ago.
Of course their cancellation numbers are low after the password sharing change - it's very easy to keep that revenue flowing if you're willing to borderline commit fraud to keep your customers.
I'm trying to access the chat history, but I realized I'm a fool that did not took any screenshots. The conversation is probably stored in a internal chat of theirs instead of in my email.
As someone who's done tech support in previous lives... I can say with 100% confidence users will always claim they "didn't do anything" when there is no other possible cause for the situation.
"I didn't click anything!" usually means 1) They're embarrassed to admit they clicked something or 2) They are embarrasses to admit they didn't read some prompt before clicking through it.
Even if the user doesn't remember clicking something, or doesn't remember what that something said before they clicked it - they still clicked it.
Think about it for a second. Think about how software works, how billing works, and how the law works. What you propose, a hidden re-billing mechanism, would invite so many lawsuits it wouldn't be worth it. Not to mention the fraud allegations, bad PR, etc.
Your dad signed in, was prompted with something saying he needed to re-activate billing to use Netflix, and he agreed. It's that simple.
When I was a teenager I was charged for watching porn at a German hotel just by switching channels and watching the porn channel for too long, maybe two minutes. I think those kind of scams are quite common when they already have your credit card.
To make the story more relevant for your point my father payed the bill at the checkout and I denied watching porn at all. He got mad at the hotel and wrote legal complaints to the HQ to get the porn money back ... dunno if he succeeded.
That's like saying "but I only opened the mini-bar bottles for a little bit".
You were certainly warned what would happen, and likely had some sort of parental advisory warning you clicked through. IDK German law regarding these things, but in the US you usually have to manually opt-into "adult" channels when at a hotel.
The fact that you denied watching it at all really serves to make my point, though. Users deny deny deny... but they still did it, didn't they?
It was in like 2002 so I dunno how the TV reported what channel was viewed technically.
I remember that I knew it was a pay channel, but I thought it would go dark after a sneak peak unless I called some pay number for a code or something, like the pay TV channels on the satellite TV at home.
I just went through something similar. When I canceled my Netflix a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that it would be very easy to restart the subscription for anyone who was still logged in, so I logged out all devices and attempted to remove the credit card. Interestingly, they won't let you remove your credit card unless you have another payment on file even if you don't have an active subscription. I just changed the password so nobody who I previously shared it with could accidentally log back in.
The most ridiculous thing is that about a year ago I specifically bumped up my plan to the more expensive one because we were sharing with some family members. As a result of them enforcing this sharing rule, we ended up canceling and they get nothing from us now.
Not that I am accusing Netflix of anything, but at least one time I deliberately told the company to never store my credit card number. Despite repeated requests on their part. One month I altered something in my account and they immediately dinged my supposedly-not-saved credit card information.
I would love to test this because I'm pretty sure that simply using netflix after you canceled will not start the subscription again without any prompt. What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?
Were you and your father using two separate usernames/passwords? Or a shared login? If it was a shared login then Netflix would have reasonably assumed that you authorized the charge. If it was a separate account, you have a point—only the plan owner should be able to renew the plan.
If Netflix is going to charge me money, they need to prove that I incurred the charge. They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't.
In my case they refunded the erroneously renewed subscription as a "one time courtesy". Like they're doing me a favor. Yeah, it's "one time" because I'd have to be a fool to do business with a company that treats me this way.
> They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't.
Most likely they do, and decided it wasn't worth fighting over this issue.
OP's dad, using OP's account, consented to billing. There's really no other option, unless we're just going to say things non-technies think, like the computer decided on it's own or something.
Netflix cannot just randomly decide to charge people for things. That would obviously be fraud, and Netflix wouldn't still be a company today if they depended on fraud for billings. Think about it...
Yes, you're right, it's not possible for "a company" to commit fraud and still be a company, right? If the world worked like that, you would expect to find many examples of companies committing fraud.
And you'd never find a bank like Wells Fargo committing fraud for money, right? Because surely they wouldn't be a bank?
And you'd never find a company violating its own user privacy rules, like Facebook, because they'd surely be out of business, right?
And you'd never find a major phone company billing people for things they didn't have the right to do, because surely AT&T would be out of business, right?
The fact is: "most likely" and "probably" and your uninformed best guess about what happened is not knowing.
I'm not sure why you would think that the only reason that I would think that Netflix restarted my subscription in error is that I'm a "non-techie" (and ugh, what an odious way to try to dismiss someone) who thinks "the computer decided on it's [sic] own." It tells me a lot about your understanding that you can't imagine many scenarios where the interaction of a complex, mostly non-technical system of product design, business decisionmakers, microservice integrations, several apps on hundreds of distinct platforms might behave in an unexpected way that treats consumers unfairly, with varying levels of intention or neglect at different layers.
As the consumer, I'm getting charged the money and I'm the one who needs the justification to indicate that it was authorized. I disagree with your perspective that "Well, they're a 'company', therefore they must have a good reason to charge me, I better pay it".
I do, in fact, think it's "most likely" that someone did... something... on a logged-in device that restarted the subscription. However, I think it's very unlikely that that involved presenting a new billing agreement that they agreed to, or providing the password to my account (remember, this is a subscription that was cancelled, not suspended or paused or frozen or any other kind of seemingly-temporary measure--since Netflix doesn't offer a way to remove accounts, it's the strongest thing I can do to sever my business relationship with them). If the logic is unintentional: an edge case of a logged-in device where that particular app on that platform sent the wrong cookie when starting a stream, etc., then Netflix not caring to investigate and solve it is because they're happy to collect revenue from erroneous and unjustified subscriptions in the hope that consumers won't notice or fight it; which is gross. If the logic is intentional: to obscure the fact that whatever action the user takes results in a re-subscription; then it's gross and possibly illegal (dunno, not a lawyer, and my definition of "crooked" might include things that aren't yet against the law). Either way, they are likely to keep doing it until forced to stop, because your naïve perspective that companies can never do anything wrong is absolutely incorrect.
I looked into this a bit. If your subscription is inactive you can reactivate it at anytime. If you log into Netflix through an app and you don't have an active subscription because it was canceled normally it will prompt you with something like "Re-activate account" or "Re-activate subscription".
I do want to correct something I said. You said that Netflix doesn't really know it's you. My response was that you gave your dad access but I realize I was wrong about that because people in your own house have access to logged in devices which is allowed normally.
---------
The difference between authentication (your account) and authorization (your streaming plan) is the first issue here they are separate and for good reason. There actually is a way is a way to delete your account [2]. Even if you don't do this it is automatically deleted after 10 months. Why don't they delete your account when you cancel the subscription?
Think of how annoying it would be if your subscription and account were one in the same, considering your account holds viewer data, watchlists, profiles, etc. Here's some scenarios:
1. Payment fails because you went over the limit on your credit card or it expired.
2. You want to cancel for two months and then reactivate (I knew someone who did this every few months to save money)
3. You change your mind after canceling
4. Canceled by accident
5. Someone else who has access cancels
Why not lock the account?
How do you unlock it? Calling them is time consuming and expensive for everyone. They could require the password to be reentered but many people who share Netflix accounts give out the password as well so that's not really a global solution (I assume you didn't). Maybe a support email? or chat support system? Both are time consuming and also money for them.
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The fault is 40% you, 50% your dad, and 10% Netflix keeping it easy for business reasons.
- You should have told your family that you were canceling Netflix, wouldn't they have bothered you anyway if it suddenly didn't work? (assuming Netflix did wipe everything)
- Your dad should have contacted you when he was prompted. I know mine would if he saw something about a subscription being reactivated.
- You could have changed the password of the account
- You could have invalidated all the existing sessions (assuming he didn't have the password)
- Finally, delete the account as well per their instructions
Those last three are all stated in their FAQ about preventing reactivation of accounts and how to delete your account.
Is it fraud on their part? No, nor is it deception just because they only asked your dad to reactivate a subscription instead of also saying "This will incur costs of $19.99 a month.." I will agree with you they could have automatically invalidated all the sessions when you cancel a subscription but you had options.
Finally you were refunded after contacting them. Did they hassle you? How long did it take? You said "...then Netflix not caring to investigate " was the reason they refunded you quickly. They didn't investigate it because they have good customer service. As a subscription service they want you to be happy and, even if you cancel, you might consider coming back. Starting an investigation for one months fee isn't worth it.
On Hackernews we often discuss services where it's difficult to cancel. There are even some where you have to call like the NY times. This isn't the case for both the Netflix subscription AND the Netflix account. Both can be deleted using the app without interacting with a person.
It was the same person as viewed by Netflix because he had your account. Asking to renew using stored data is something you can object to but it's not insane
> By simply watching after the final date they gave us…
Yeah if I stay in my apartment after my lease expires my landlord is gonna charge me rent. Obviously, Netflix shouldn’t have let you in, but…
> I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything.
I learned long ago not to trust technological recollections coming from my parents.
Ironically, Netflix was actually right about password sharing: someone else with your login credentials can do whatever they want. For all you know your dad is mad that he’s losing Netflix and hit the renew button.
Of course, it would be nice if Netflix would create a family sharing mechanism like Apple and Google have.
If you cancel your lease and then stay in your apartment until the lease expiration date, they aren't going to renew your lease. You paid for the entire month, you're allowed to stay for the entire month.
“After the final date” is a key phrase in the comment I replied to. The word “after” is there.
If you stay a day past your lease your landlord can charge you the next month’s rent.
If you take a wrong turn and accidentally enter a toll highway you’ll get charged a toll, automatically in many places.
If you forget to turn your faucet off you’ll pay for water and sewer usage even if you said you didn’t need the water.
I’m not defending Netflix for willingly making the process this way, but at the same time individuals also have the responsibility to follow some basic instructions and stop using things that they want to cancel.
Do my words have to change for my intentions to change?
If I say “that’s so hot” I can be talking about sexual intercourse or my microwaved hot pocket.
Same words, different intent, different meaning.
Netflix being wrong and the customer being wrong are not mutually exclusive. At some point it has to be acknowledged that adults are responsible for navigating the world and paying attention.
I cancelled Amazon prime a couple years ago and ran into the same issue. It was absurd frankly.
I went through the cancellation process got a cancellation confirmation email and then still got billed at the end of the month. I called and they did reverse the charges and told me it had happened because a behind the scenes box was checked for automatic payments - I scoured the page to see if that was a user facing option and it was nowhere. Cancelling but continuing payments simply makes no sense.
He almost certainly did click renew sub — esp. if that is in the flow? User researchers know very well people's recollection of their use is not reliable data.
We should not enable and allow companies to do shitty things via dark patterns just to make a quick buck.
For one I don’t want to spend my life dealing with every underhanded attempt to take my money and two kids elderly and the vulnerable are the ones who fall prey to it and usually the least able to absorb the financial cost.
My point is that we don't know if it was a landmine or a very clearly labeled bit of C4 with a lever next to it labeled "explode".
I've logged into a cancelled Netflix account before, and while they definitely want you to renew, there's a very clearly marked button that includes the renewal price. If OP's dad absent-mindedly clicked that button, that's a very different story than if simply logging in and navigating to a movie issued a new charge.
Take AliExpress for instance, they have my credit card stored. But even if I login and try to buy something, they still ask for the security code on the back of my card.
How come Netflix would allow anyone other than me use my credit card to subscribe (or renew the subscription) without even asking that?
My father don't have access to my card, neither other members of my family. If Netflix was being honest they would ask at least that. The security code of your card to prove it is the card holder making a purchase.
Password sharing means that they assume everyone using your account is you. I notice you ignored my question about whether your father had a separate account, so I'm assuming he did not.
I had a new card issued, and I intentionally did not go online to update with them or any other website expecting to receive email notifications from any and all sites that needed me to update my payment method. Netflix did not. It took me calling them to find out, but they have an agreement with card issuers where they can find out that you have been issued a new card and automatically be granted authorization to start billing against that new card without you providing them the information. "It's a courtesy service to avoid interruptions in your service" is how it was explained to me. Sounds like card fraud to me.
Netflix doesn't have a special agreement with card issuers. Like most businesses today, Netflix uses issuer tokens instead of saving your credit card information [0]. This is a good thing—aside from reducing accidental interruptions (not a big deal for you and Netflix, but a huge deal for you and your power company), it's much more secure.
Netflix should make it easy to cancel your subscription, but using an issuer token isn't card fraud, it's good business and an overall benefit to 99% of customers.
Yes, I updated my comment a few seconds ago to include my source for Netflix's specific implementation.
And regardless of the mechanism for the credit card updates, it's not fraud. Customers, Visa, banks, and merchants all benefit from removing the arbitrary hassle of keeping track of expiration dates and stolen card numbers.
I'm suggesting that the reps on the phone and your bank were talking about issuer tokens. Source [0].
Besides, regardless of the means by which card updates are handled, it isn't fraud. You authorized Netflix to charge an account, not a particular physical card. If you want to revoke that authorization, you need to revoke the authorization, not get mad at them when they work with Visa to streamline the process of charging the authorized account.
We absolutely do need to improve transparency and require companies like this to make canceling easy, but hyperbole but like yours isn't helping us get there—it makes those of us fighting bad behavior seem irrational and uninformed.
> We absolutely do need to improve transparency and require companies like this to make canceling easy, but hyperbole but like yours isn't helping us get there
What ever this service of providing a token that you seem to feel superior for knowing the details is just a way for these SaaS type systems to continue to drain money from people. Netflix or any streaming platform is not a life or death service that users need. if they fail (intentionally or not) to keep the service updated with payment information, suspending the service is not going to cause anything but a bit of inconvenience. if you're so spoiled that you get upset at the suspension, then that's on you (royal you not lolinder). instead, we've built this system that makes it easier for the SaaS providers to continue using their dark patterns to siphon money which ensures the card companies their monthly fees as well. so while you may disagree with me calling it fraud, it does feel a lot like collusion between these parties rather than being a service for the consumer.
So since we cannot win against the dark patterns, they've now removed the sure fire way people had to protect themselves. But hey, it sure makes it convenient for them
Um, no, fraud is a crime that carries with it fines and prison sentences. We try to have such things be very well defined and as objective as humanly possible.
That's messed up. I remember a bit more than a decade ago, when I was receiving DVDs as well as the streaming had started a couple years earlier. I had cancelled as I was just too busy to use the service. No muss, no fuss, just two clicks and done. They didn't inundate me with email messages either, like some other services (about one a quarter). I was happy to re-join six months later because of that smooth experience.
Contrast to when I was a happy user of XM radio... I had sold one of my cars, and just wanted to remove one of 4 radios on the account. I get placed in a 40 minute hold queue, and when the rep couldn't talk me out of it, I was suddenly dropped from the call... mysterious eh. Well, the third time I was so pissed off I cancelled everything. I've had rather visceral feelings towards them ever since. If you ever deal with them, my own suggestion would be to use a one-time only card to setup the account. Of course, you're better off if you have good cell coverage just using spotify, youtube music or similar.
I was going to mention this dark pattern too. So many sites have no way of removing a payment method. It should really be illegal, but until then I will use virtual card numbers.
Otherwise, in cases where you have a very pernicious party that will absolutely not stop charging your card, you can contact your bank and have them cancel that card. When they do, there is often a convenience feature that allows pre-existing subscriptions to continue to bill using the old card info. You need to make sure you tell the bank that you do not want that to happen for this card. They have a way to shut that feature off and that will remove the ability for the company to abuse that feature. You can still end up accruing a debt with them that they may try to collect on eventually so this is not a suggested method to get out of a subscription, but when you have tried everything else, it does seem to work in my experience.
After not being able to find any email or conversation with the support I was able to log back in Netflix and get a history of charges to my credit cards, which is still stored in their system.
It looks like it renewed automatically on the 17th every month, and then... it was reactivated on the 20th? I think this lends credibility to the idea that someone on the account tried to watch something 3 days after the subscription ended, couldn't without resubscribing, and simply clicked to restart the subscription. Obviously, it could be as you described it as well.
A simple test would be to see what happens if you try to, today, try to watch something on Netflix. Does it allow you to start watching shows? Or does it ask you to do something like restart a subscription? What do you see today?
Netflix is doing what every business does - using and abusing the rules as much as they can to maximize their own gain. It is how business works, how it has always worked and how it always will work.
If you want something different, don't yell at some company that is only acting the way all companies act. Yell at your government for failing to make laws that protoize us, actual people, over business interests. Most businesses follow the laws most of the time, so if they are acting shitty it is because your government has shitty laws.
>Sirius XM wrote in its comments that one proposed requirement — that companies maintain records of phone calls with customers — would cost the company "several million" dollars a year to comply with
Can companies be held accountable for lying like this, on record? They're already tracking.
if you're really concerned about this stuff you can use citibank virtual credit cards (a free feature) to just disable the card if you can't easily/properly cancel the service
A really wonderful way to "fight click to cancel" would be providing better content and a better experience and charging less. You know - all the things that would make someone want to stay.
Instead, they use legal borderline-fraud to chase profits.
Apple has control over which apps they allow. Even with alternate payment methods they can still enforce 1 click cancel, they just don't want to because money.
You are right, and of course there is not always a surcharge. I myself am a big fan of easy it is to cancel when using Apple Subscriptions. However, there are tons of online services that WILL charge your a significantly higher subscription fee, when using Apple Pay (Tinder is a prominent one).
When I'm signing up for some streaming service to watch one or two shows and know I'll be done in a few months, I have no problem with the 30% surcharge. It's paying a little bit more now to make things easier on myself in the future.
Clickbait/ragebait headline. These companies are voicing serious concerns. As usual, those who don't click the archive.is link will be clueless and uninformed.
One click to cancel would actually be too easy. I once had subscribed to encylcopedia brittanica. They also sent email messages. I replied to one and said “please ubsubscribe me”.
They cancelled my brittanica and refunded me! I wanted the emails to stop. Now to sign up I’d need to enter my payment info again; I just stayed unsubscribed.
I will sometimes check how cancellation works by looking at the cancel area. Would not expect a single click to terminate my account.
Easy cancelling is a great idea. “Click” to cancel sounds abrupt.
The only stuff I’ve ever had trouble cancelling were newspaper subscriptions. Definitely support making that easier.
I can’t read the article due to the paywall. Precisely how easy and instant is the cancellation process required to be under this proposal: a button that says cancel, you click it, and you are cancelled?
I suspect that would surprise a lot of people and make them frustrated. Cancelling shouldn’t be easier to do accidentally than signup.
So i should be require to entire my payment information and verify an email to cancel a service? Are you mad? I click the red cancel button, it says "Are you sure" and boom I'm cancelled. That's how everyone else on the planet wants it.
