Streaming Services Beware: A Crackdown Is Coming on “Cancellation Trickery”
Streaming Services Beware: A Crackdown Is Coming on “Cancellation Trickery”
As the feds take on Amazon Prime, they’re also evaluating 50-year-old rules governing recurring subscriptions, which could impact the major streamers.
Cancelling anything should be just as easy as signing up.
Agree. If I’m honest, it should probably be easier. When signing up for a service, I’m having to create a profile and input a bunch of user info. If canceling, the service already has all that. It should be a simple button click, with maybe a second confirmation click.
Start of article, because I misunderstood what the title was saying
From long hold times on the phone because there’s no way to cancel online, to high-pressure pitches from customer service reps, or having to click through a labyrinth of discount offers and “are you sure?” messages, each year thousands of people complain to the Federal Trade Commission that they can’t get out of a recurring subscription service they want to cancel — or, even worse, one they didn’t realize they’d signed up for.
“Subscription models have proliferated in recent years, especially during the pandemic. In the age of lockdowns, work-from-home and goods shortages, ordering a product or service online via auto-renewal was an easy and painless way for consumers to get the items they need,” says David Nahmias, an attorney with the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law. “Businesses learned quickly that they could use deceptive and manipulative techniques to keep consumers hooked. Our research found examples of such techniques across a wide range of industries, from the well-known like cable and satellite radio, to the more niche like businesses that send new athletic clothes or kids toys every month. One study we cited found that consumers spend an average of $133 a month on subscriptions they no longer want
As with most cases, regulations are needed to make things easier for the average (and not so average) customer; they should all be cancelable from your bank's side of things.
Multiple groups, including the The Internet & Television Association, also argue that corporations’ free speech rights could be implicated by a restriction on saves.
If we cited 1A half as often for protecting citizen speech as we did for marketing companies attempting to bully their way into lying to people, it would be a godsend.
This is why I will only sign up to subscription services through Google Pay. Yeah, I know that Google gets a cut, but I want to pay through a service that will let me stop payment at any time as easy as it is to sign up.