US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

I've used a learning platform called Brilliant in the past. The cancellation process was so convoluted that it was impossible to cancel the account. Dark patterns and confusing language.

They refused to refund me and after I thought I'd cancelled and I had to run a charge back from my bank.

This is nefarious behaviour on their part and consumers need to be protected from it.

Do you mean brilliant.org ?

In contrast in EU, I sent an email to my service to cancel and they forgot to cancel. I just sent them another email with proof of email and they realised they missed the old one and canceled retroactively and refunded money to my account.

I call bullshit. https://help.brilliant.org/en/articles/741701-how-can-i-canc...

What happens when you click the link in that article?

“You can cancel your subscription at any time by clicking the "cancel" button on your subscription settings page, here.“

It leads to a 404. With the benefit of the doubt, I’m not logged in — but it shouldn’t lead to a 404.

i only subscribe to services through app store on my iphone. even if costs me premium.

I use privacy dot com cards I can turn off in a single click

doesn't stop it from being sent to collections.

wtf are ppl downvoting this. i had it happen to me.

I guess not; but I also use Privacy.com cards and have never ended up in collections when I pause a card to cancel a service.

This has not been my experience cancelling eu services.

That service doesn’t exist in Europe unfortunately, I have to use Revolut for that

once something is in collections, you can negotiate to pay a fraction of the original price. it's actually harder to do so before then.

or, you can just not pay even through collections. rarely does it impact credit score (much). lots of kinds of debt even legally can't (eg <$500 medical debt)

I learned the hard way that they also bill annually by default. As soon as my family's week long trial was up, they billed me for an entire year. Yes, it's on me for not reading the T&C (I was hastily trying to find an activity for my kid which was somewhat constructive ...) but I just don't understand this race-to-the-bottom/rent-seeking behavior. There was once a possibility that I'd renew our membership and recommend it to other families because we got so much out of the service but that's not happening now -- quite the opposite, in fact.

Care to expand beyond a meaningless statement? What has your experience been?

I am in the EU.

It's not really on you though.. they word things in a way that'd makes it less than obvious what you're signing up for. Then they make cancelling difficult.

It all done in bad faith and an instant black mark against any company.

Yes

> you can negotiate to pay a fraction of the original price.

what gives you the negotiating power ? they can simply dock you on your credit report. thats what comcast did to me. they didn't care about negotiating

Their help says on thing while Their app another. At least that was my experience.

They refused to refund me when it was clear I'd tried to cancel.

I'd even gotten an onscreen message saying something like "your subscription will be cancelled".

I saw a Brilliant job posting the other day. I was thinking of applying to work there. I randomly saw this comment, and now I won’t. So thanks for the heads up.

For example, in Switzerland you cannot cancel your landline or mobile phone subscription (at the two largest providers) without calling or chatting to customer support. They excluded "cancellation by mail/e-mail" explicitly in their terms of use.

I recently tried to cancel my landline and first they told me I could only cancel within 1 to 3 months up to the expiration, not earlier (which is clearly against any existing law).

I think that is how collections work. When a business can't get you to pay they sell the right to collect it to another "collections" business (let's call it Y). Y pays a fraction of the amount owed for the right so even if they can get you to pay like 25%, they are still making a profit.

this assumes you're using it for a service that has your name/address/birthdate/social.

i use it for stuff like scammy dark pattern photoshop trials, and i can use a fake name and address.

i wouldn't use it for stuff like utilities or gym memberships that absolutely send stuff to collections and they deliberately collect your information to be able to do so

by that logic i should let every bill go to collections?