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

(www.ftc.gov)
1737 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ajkjk ◴[16 Oct 24 14:37 UTC] No.41859541[source]▶
There are so many things like this that have needed fixing for such a long time. The fact that something is happening, even slowly, is so heartening.

If your reaction is wondering if this is legal then you should be interested in the passing of new laws that make it unequivocally legal. Society should be able to govern itself.

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rachofsunshine ◴[16 Oct 24 15:11 UTC] No.41860003[source]▶
This feels like one of those things that could be solved on the payment end with something like a unique payment ID for each subscription, rather than giving a CC number. Then you just enable or disable payment IDs (perhaps for a limited time, e.g., "create a payment ID that works for Netflix for the next three months but not after that"), rather than relying on vendors to decide whether they feel like charging you or not.
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1. 620gelato ◴[16 Oct 24 17:20 UTC] No.41861481[source]▶
India basically has this - when creating subscriptions, merchants typically create "mandates" which specify max amount permitted per month, frequency, and duration.

Afterwards, 1) if per month amount is greater than a regulated threshold, manual confirmation is needed. [ This is friction ] , 2) cancelling can be as simple as going to your bank's website and deleting the "mandate".

In all honesty, this is probably a really balanced approach, but the roll out was a real pain, with banks and merchants collaborating on who supports whom, etc. International payments got screwed completely - to this day, I can't subscribe to nytimes, after almost 2.5 years of this.

(A good summary - https://support.stripe.com/questions/rbi-e-mandate-regulatio... )