Some of the companies involved that are mentioned in the article:
- Service providers (Comcast, Charter, Cox)
- Entertainment (Disney, AMC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery
- Those connected to advertising (Google, Netflix, Amazon, Meta, Vizio, the NFL)
- Home security (ADT)
It’s so fucking stupid. If you can sign up with a click, you should be able to cancel with a click. There’s no justifiable argument against that other than corporate greed.
I do remember one of my most satisfying cancelation calls though. I just kept saying, “No.” Just “no”. No added explanation. No added reasoning. It frustrated the retention employee so much. They were like “but WHY?” They couldn’t try to convince me not to quit since I didn’t give them any reasons for why I didn’t want it, just that I didn’t want it.
Oh look, a list of shitty companies everyone should avoid.
How nice of them to make it for us.
That absolutely no one will avoid.
Hard to avoid the local cable monopoly for internet.
I’d love to see the USPS bring back basic banking and then double down by providing internet AS A SERVICE.
It would bring in two solid revenue streams for the Post Office, and cut a lot of cancer from our economy.
Without even looking at the list I know Amazon, Disney and Netflix will be on it.
They know exactly how much they take every month from account that barely use them and they’d like to keep it.
I think they should go one further with the rule. Anybody not using the service for a month gets to have it cancelled automatically, and only resumed when they use it again.
Amazon
For as awful as Amazon is, I’ll give them this one.
Cancelling prime is shockingly easy compared to what most places drag you through: account settings, prime, cancel, yes I’m sure, done.
Requiring that from everyone would be a huge step forward. Also let’s make sure it forces gyms to do it, too.
I was subbed to Humble Choice for a while.
Trying to skip a month was a minefield of dark patterns. At least three confirmation screens, buttons swapping places and colours…
I’m not ready to give Amazon any credit here. They use a lot of scummy dark patterns like swapping accept/deny buttons and making accept super easy and friendly to click while decline is small plain text.
Gym memberships should definitely be easier to cancel
Electronics Security Association Interactive Advertising Bureau NCTA The Internet and Television Association
I’m picking up qhat you’re putting down about shitty companies but the problem with your guess is that almost 100% of the shitty companies using shitty marketing techniques you encounter in the average week are all outsourced to marketing firms like the three petitioning the lawsuit.
No intention of this being “HAHA YOU WERE WRONG!” Just wanted to let you know there weren’t only 3 petitioning companies named in the court document. Unless they list more further into the document than fuckin page 60 cuz that’s where I threw in the towel lol.
Companies fight back to make subscription services easy to cancel
Maybe I’m misreading, but that seems backwards in the title. Companies are fighting to make subscriptions harder to cancel.
California already has a law like this, so the companies have already implemented this workflow. They just need to remove the geogating.
How to cancel 750$/week subscription service in 2069 (easiest method):
- Pay 69,420$ for cancellation fee
- Write long 10K word essay
- Give or your goverment-issued docuemnts as well as your relatives’ ID
- Give your DNA sample
- Insert Neurolink to read your mind
- Let our 69,420 partners to track your activity for “personalized ads” (Basicly manipulating you to buy crappy stuff you don’t needed)
You didn’t drink the verification can though… Now you would have to dance (and sing) the next three ads and start again.
FTC is interfering with corpo’s constitutional right to fuck the peasants!
NOT IN MY AMERICA!!!
