Slashdot Mirror
Hiding Your Choices And Saying You Made Them
An anonymous reader writes "Lawmeme's Paul Szynol describes how during installation RealPlayer hides checkboxes that elect that the user receives spam, making it look like the user chose to make the selections when in fact he probably just didn't see the options. "This is essentially a cheap and dirty marketing tactic which creates an illusion of informed acceptance by the user where no such acceptance really exists." Other people have posted similar examples from other applications. Is this illegal, or just annoying?"
While I don't know the laws on minimum text size, I am sure that a company cannot make you sign something in .001pt Times New Roman. This is probably very illegal for them to do, and they will probably get away with it...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
This has always bugged me about Real Player. Their newest player installs a lame little executable, that isn't easy to get rid of, that starts up their little message center in the system tray. It was bad enough with their old version which loaded RealPlayer every time you booted, but at least you could turn it off.
These days, if it is encoded in Real it isn't worth my time to watch. I make sure everyone I know is aware of this too.
I noticed that quite a while back when I installed RealPlayer. I say it's annoying just because I have to remember to disable those checkboxes. I also say it's gotta hurt them, because it makes me place my feelings about Real (the company) at a very low level. I don't think it's illegal, and I know they're out to make money like everyone else. However, I say don't screw over your customers, and they'll come back. Piss them off, and you will certainly regret it later. And yes, I know the RealPlayer I download is the free version, and I'm not technically a customer, but if they pull that stuff with me on the free products, I can only imaging the "features" they'll put in the big version I pay for. Again, my opinion of them is quite low because of their tactics.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Around 2 years ago I purchased the real RealPlayer, because I was going to do some video development with it. I bought it online, and the purchase process was horrendous. After I clicked buy it, I was taken to a screen with a ton of things checked off for me, including signing up for their monthly subscription for realplayer maintenance - the gold package I think it was. I unchecked everything, but when I clicked next, there was another screen with different things and the gold player was checked on again. I unchecked everything again. Third screen, same thing.
Since I'm in tech, I would like to think I have some idea what's going on and not get tripped up by this stuff. But I can't imagine how the average user gets through this. Anyway, on the next months credit card bill, there it was, 11 and change charge for RealPlayer maintenence. I swear I unchecked everything. I wish I had taken screen shots to prove it. So I go on their web site to try and cancel. To get to my user account was very difficult (of course I wasn't aware I really had one so I had to figure it out) Under subscription maintenence, I finally found the option to cancel. I click cancel. Up pops a phone number to call to actually get it canceled. I was very busy, lots to do, and I think they counted on that. I had planned to cancel when I got home, but of course I forgot. I kept thinking about it at work, but when I got home I would forget again. Three more months went by, before I finally remembered on the weekend to sit down and take care of it. I had to go through the online process again to get the number, which I finally called and got it cancelled, which of course the guy tried to sell me real player again! Never, never, never again!!!