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1737 points pseudolus | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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TheAceOfHearts ◴[] No.41859989[source]
It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them.

One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it. For example: if I go a full monthly billing cycle without watching Netflix then my subscription should automatically pause and allow me to resume it next time I log-in. There's a ton of money that gets siphoned off to parasitic companies just because people forget to cancel their subscriptions or because they're too busy dealing with life. It might not be viable for all companies, but there's definitely a lot of services where such a thing would be possible, given the huge number of customer analytics they collect. Maybe give people the option to disable such a pause feature if they're really determined to keep paying for a service. But a default where subscriptions automatically pause if you're not using them makes a lot of sense from a user perspective. Of course businesses would probably hate such a ruling because it means they can't scam as much easy money.

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_jab ◴[] No.41860117[source]
> One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services should automatically pause if you stop using it.

Cool idea, but probably tough to enforce what “using it” means. I could see companies start sending newsletters to customers and calling that engagement

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1. Spivak ◴[] No.41860782[source]
This wouldn't survive the courts so approximately one company would get away with it for a time.