FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

Nice. I canceled a service recently and I had to "continue to cancel" and click on other such "confirmations" such that I think I proceeded through 7-8 pages before my subscription was actually canceled. Truly manipulative and obtuse. That was Spotify btw. I should have recorded the process, as it was nearly comedic (if it weren't so hostile).

Amazon is the worst in this regard.

Yeah Spotify removed one of my family members from my 5-person subscription (only using 3 slots) so I immediately cancelled my subscription and had to deal with a lot of manipulative tactics to not cancel. This kind of behaviour 1, shouldn't be legal and 2, shouldn't be rewarded. I have plenty of Spotify alternatives, so this kind of behavior ultimately signals a floundering company resorting to hacks.

You should try cancelling the New York Times, Bon Appetite, or Planet Fitness

What about Adobe?

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...

every single time you buy something it's a minefield to avoid subscribing to prime.

Cancelling The Economist was pretty terrible too.

Not sure why you're downvoted they have multiple beg screens and manipulative language. There might be worse overall like NYT making you contact support but Amazon is for sure "worst in class" in the category of services that can be cancelled online.

At least they didn't make you make a phone call and have a rep try to prevent you from doing so for an hour (looking at you NYT).

Services like this are the reason I prefer to pay thru google play. It is much easier to just cancel it

[ ] Tick if you don't not unapprove of getting a free Prime trial when you purchase goods without checking the above box for not being completed. /s

I went through the cancellation process for NYT once before.

Which is the entire reason I am not a subscriber at my current address. It's too bad, I'd pay for it otherwise.

I still receive (paper!) letters semi regularly about subscribing after I cancelled. It was so hard to do too, cancelling my NYT subscription was a breeze in comparison.

They took me for a year of student-prime during a brief time period (UI bug?) where there was a button that only asked if I wanted free shipping on the current order and didn't have any of the other normal language/links/... suggesting that I was subscribing to a service in the process. I don't think it's an accident that the default payment period was 1yr either.

I cancelled in May with their chatbox and not only was it hassle-free but instead of refunding the remaining pro rata portion of the year I got the entire year's subscription fee refunded without even asking for it.

As much as I used to hate them, I've now gained an appreciation for PayPal for this kind of stuff. For when I don't want to give my credit card to yet another vendor to possibly be compromised, or manage a sketchy subscription, PayPal is a pretty good solution. I do prefer Apple, but not every subscription can be bought that way.

The NYT was the worst. Had to call them on the phone. The guy I was talking to offered progressively better deals, until he basically offered me a year for next to nothing. I was angry at that point and determined to cancel, and said "No, JUST CANCEL" and he laughed out loud at me. Instant, permanent never-a-NYT-customer again.

I often wonder how these companies predict the expected permanent loss of customers over time due to their tactics and factor that against the expected gain of wearing people down until they just keep paying.

I'm so butthurt about NYT's treatment of me when I wanted to cancel that I won't even consider it through their iOS app, which would be a subscription controlled by Apple (and therefore trivial to cancel).

The phone rep is almost easier, because all they can do is withhold their confirmation. So, I told the Sirius guy who I was and that they were no longer authorized to charge my card, hung up, and wrote a note in my files. Sirius charged me again, and I submitted a chargeback. Quick and easy.

NYT has had click to cancel for a few years at this point. Were they later than they should be? Yes. Are they bad now? No.

Don't you pay more if you use Apple instead of Paypal?

I don't know how NYT has been handling cancellations in other states, but California has required companies to allow cancellations in the same form as sign ups for a few years (Sign up online requires the ability to cancel online too).

Sometimes, but not always. As long as the difference is not too significant, the control over the subscription is worth it to me. Some people don't like 'em, I get it, but when you stay primarily inside their ecosystem it does work pretty seamlessly for most things.

AAA also makes you cancel over the phone during business hours.

Ahh, okay, glad to see they've updated the process. Previously you had to call and find your way through a maze of disinterested people putting you on hold.

Sirius were obnoxious when I didn't convert from free to paid, on a service I wasn't using. The number of times I got phone calls and emails from them ended up with me repeating to them that their behaviour was guaranteeing I would never use them, and would tell friends not to either.

Plus it's wild they staff an entire agency to handle these types of calls. Talk about a loser's mindset.

Yeah, I would happily subscribe for a month to read an article I'm interested in if it weren't so hard to cancel.

This is basically what I do with The Guardian where I donate after reading.

having to go in physically to cancel for Planet Fitness was absurd and infuriating. but it worked, i delayed it for months out of procrastination

I cancelled through the “sound very angry and know what charge back means” when I wrote to their customer service. That was years ago. I would likely resub when I can do so through Apple Store.

It wasn’t clear to me that this sort of thing is explicitly forbidden under this regulation?

Planet Fitness pisses me off just in that they require giving them your checking account number to sign up instead of accepting credit cards. The only excuse I've heard for why that's a legitimate decision is that "some people are rude and will cancel a credit card instead of just saying they want to cancel their membership." But given that Planet Fitness can immediately shut off access for that person's app/QR code the instant a payment gets rejected, I simply do not believe the number of cancelled credit cards they'd have to deal with justifies the security risk and hassle (and lock-in, like you said) that their solution causes.

The fact that even with the Black Card (any location) membership, you still have to be tied to one "home" location and can only manage your plan at that one location is also predatory. I've read stories of people calling into Planet Fitness corporate and eventually getting a customer service rep to cancel their plan (when the location refused to do so remotely), so it's not a limitation of their system and it's not a legal restriction, it's just another way they make it difficult to cancel.

I will mention, one loophole for at least getting around a bad Planet Fitness location (e.g. a manager pretending they're not receiving the cancellation form in the mail) is going to another location, having them transfer your membership there, and then cancelling with them. I've done the store-and-back thing for changing plans before, and the managers oftentimes don't care/are happy to help with it.

Unless you're on hold >1 hour since they have no one staffing the call center.

Even worse when their crappy VOIP software insta hangs up when you're up in the queue and you get kicked to the back to wait longer.

Yeah PayPal is pretty good here. There's a page that lists all your billing subscriptions and you can cancel them right there.

It's a shame credit cards don't offer the same thing (Chase is able to list them all but provides no contact information or ability to revoke authorization)

The two banks I use provide information about your subscriptions and allow you to cancel any of them with a click of a button. I'm not in the US though (relatively poor "global South"); sometimes it pays to get technology with a significant delay.

One of them can also create zero-cost virtual Visa Golds in a couple of minutes. If I need to use a really sketchy service, I simply create a throwaway card, put a bit of cash there, pay for what I need, and then delete the card.

Not bad now? Yeah, right. They're still barely complying with the law.

I hope this new law comes with domain cancellation and registration blocking penalties.

I recommend privacy.com. It's bulletproof. Single use card? Check. Merchant-locked? Check. You are in control. It costs $0.

I was on phone support for a SaaS based company that did something similar. Massive pricing restructuring increasing 90% of accounts bill and they made you call in and wait on hold to cancel. This was 10 years ago, but the ruling is a welcome pro-consumer addition.

Between their reporting and these billing stories I'm never trusting NYT with anything again.

Oh wow lol, is it not? That would be pretty disappointing. It was really frustrating how many pages of crap I had to navigate my way through, basically deciphering all possible permutations of "cancel", "continue to cancel" "yes I'm sure", all surrounded by extraneous crap I'm not interested in. How difficult the cancellation process is gives me even more motivation to refine my alternatives to their service, so I never have to subject myself to that crap again.

Perhaps they've changed their process, but I canceled my New York times subscription about 2 weeks ago was able to do it online with absolutely no problem. It was a very easy process. They did offer me much better deal when I tried to cancel but I still went through with it.