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Companies Must Let Customers Cancel Subscriptions Online, California Law Says (cnet.com)
A California law that went into effect July 1 is aimed at making it easier for customers to cancel their subscriptions online. From a report: The law states that customers who accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online must be able to cancel the service online. That could include a pre-written "termination email" provided by the company that can be sent by the consumer without the need for more information. The law means you won't have to make anymore phone calls to obscure customer service hotlines to cancel services like news subscriptions, music streaming or meal plans, for example. One person tweeted about trying to cancel a New York Times subscription on the phone and being put on hold for 15 minutes -- twice.
It's too difficult to cancel services. Anything that makes it easier is good.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Compliance with California law seems to force businesses to improve service for the rest of the country, too. I'd like California courts to rule that APK spam is illegal and put an end to that bullshit once and for all.
I had Vonage for 3 years and used it like maybe 5 times. Because the only way you could cancel was to call them and sit on hold for 2 hours. Those bastards should rot in hell.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
It's actually a good law. I had to cancel my internet connection (moving to a different area without their service) and their phone menu specifically gives you an option. Had to wait over an hour...
In the UK, they like to force you to cancel via phone (or other interactive method) so they can push you to their retention department to offer you a deal to stay. Many people take advantage of this to get a better deal - I guess this makes it easier for the people who have decided to definitely leave to get out without jumping thorough the hoops.
I imagine (like many things) we got this from the US - presumably this is how it works in California also?
send a letter (paper mail) to the managing director/CEO at their registered head office; then cancel the continuous-authority/direct-debit with your bank. Most companies hate this as they don't like dealing with paper; however you have given them legal notice. I will do that if they make it hard to cancel, I have better things to do than waste my time trying to talk to someone in a call center.
The Subscription Termination Server is temporarily unavailable to service your request due to capacity problems. Please try again later.
Good luck with cancelling online. Chances are that doing so will fail due to some javascript nonsense involving umpteen different locations involved in any attempt.
They upped my rates, so I switched to another company. When I called my previous insurance to cancel, they said I should have called them first, since they would have given me a discount. My policy - Your offer should be your best and only offer. Otherwise, I don't deal with you.
Does Comcast/Xfinity have a presence in California? They are notoriously difficult to cancel service from.
The rushed law allows companies to charge you extra for privacy.
I do like if people are able to do cancelation online if they did the acceptation online as well.
When I look at the example that is given about the 2 times 15 minute calls. I wonder about two things:
1) I never knew that the New Yor Times was based in California.
2) The answer was agiven after the question:
"Please send me your newspaper cancellation horror stories." So that seems a bit biassed, I would say.
And without any extra explanation, we have NO idea why that happened or what number was called. I see cancelation of our services coming in wrong all the time. The best ones are "Hi, I am Don, I would like to stop." No email that is known. No other information and it comes in with a fax without the return number showing.
Then 3 months later we get a complaint from Ronald Somelastname and he is angry we did not cancel the service.
I am all for automated cancelations. Doing retention at that moment is way to late and too much work. People have already made up their mind. Automated cancelation would be so much cheaper. But then I live in a Communist country (Belgium) where customers have some rights, the bastards. Automated cancelation would avoid the 50% or more where it is not (legally) clear what the customer wants exactly. Saying "I am interetsed in canceling" is NOT the sasme as "I am canceling". If you have multiple accounts, which one do you want to cancel? And if you send an email to NoReply@example.com or to SomeRandomAdress@example.com does not mean you did it correctly and your cancelation will be honoured.
But again: automated cancelation if the subscription is done online is a good thing. Should not matter if it is a newsletter or a credit card or whatever.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sam's club renewed our subscription for $50 after closing the store. Phone support said they can't refund and we have to drive an hour to another location.
TiVo is another example of this bad behavior. The only way to remove a device is to call customer support. There is no online option and you cannot do it over chat. You have to do over the phone. If a company provides online activation they should provide online deactivation.
Where possible I use PayPal as the payment method for an automatic renewal service.
Then I cancel the payment agreement on PayPal, which is very easy to do.
Haha you hate california so much you'd actually rather companies fuck you over?
Jesus christ you're a fucking lost cause.
I recently changed jobs, and my previous employer's life insurance company tried to pull a fast one on me.
I did not need to continue the LI policy from the last job, I have one with my new job. the previous one was trying to be 'helpful' by giving me the option to continue it. that's fine, but...
they didn't phrase it that way, and that caused me to waste time with them. they sent me a 'bill' and it was hard to tell it was not a real bill. it looked like they auto-subscribed me to a continued service without my permission. I did not want to deal with a collections agency and all THAT hassle, when I never signed up for such service to begin with.
I called the LI company and asked what this was about. at first, they tried to snow me into believing I had to mail them some kind of letter or fax something to cancel this service. I asked what would happen if I just ignored the 'bill' and they finally admitted that the 'policy' would be void and there would be no charge.
so, why make me mail in some stupid shit and waste time when I could just ignore it and not have to spend time on a thing I never authorized?
reason: they hope to snag enough dumb fish and I bet they do, since they are still in business (and likely they make a lot from false 'renewals').
companies *think* they need to resort to low-handed tactics to be profitable, but its just pure greed. this is not - and should never be - part of a business plan. harassing past customers is not a sound business strat.
they are now on my 'never do business with' list. but I'm just one person, and their behavior will never change.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If companies applied a little bit of common sense we wouldn't need laws. The laws only come about because consumers get fucked. Enough of them complain to their state or federal congress critters; since congress critters only know how to do one thing, we get a law.
Comcast added TV service to my Broadband-only subscription. (Grandfathered from when resellers sold unbundled services.) I called them, their rep lied and claimed someone at my address authorized it. I told the rep: no, I'm the only one at this address that could have authorized it, and I didn't. Then they lied again and claimed that someone would have to be at home when the technician came to remove it. I said I thought that was pretty funny, since nobody needed to be here when it was added. I told them nobody would be here, remove it and refund the unauthorized charges. Perhaps amazingly they did, without much further ado.
Not sure whether this law would apply to the above situation or not, but it should, IMO.
This is what we've come to, needing a law to force easy cancellation of a service. Sigh. It's disgraceful that companies have sunk so low in how they treat their customers.
I remember back in the days of working for a dial-up ISP, I developed an on-line-cancellation process, to complement the online registration systems.
Go to customer accounts web site.
Pass the usual authentication credentials
Click on cancel service.
Choose which service you want to cancel
Confirm.
If the user is currently connected via that service, disconnect the session immediately, flag the service account closed on the authentication server, remove DNS entries, deny incoming email, remove associated web hosting, get the billing system to record the service closure and associated billing product pro-rated refund calculated, and if it was the last billable service on that account, the refund to go through automatically to their usual payment source.
End-to-end, it would take minutes.
If user is not currently connected via that service, it would require a human to vet authentication, and call them back to confirm.
It was never deployed. DSL came along, and with it supplier contracts with a 12 month mininum contract term per customer line, which made the cancellation process tougher to automate.
Citicard made a goof and created a "service" allowing these companies to bill me even after the expiry date has gone. One was the ISP 1an1. One would think such an on line ISP will have an easy way to cancel the subscription or change the service level. It was a nightmare. They somehow got their bill posted to my account and charged. Disputed the charge, argued with Citi, sent them numerous emails saying, "the whole point of using virtual number is point less if you let them bill me with expired numbers". Citi was claiming it is a service to its customers who might have forgotten to update the numbers and they will get uninterrupted service. My guess is, Citi is charging the merchants a fee for this. Anyway, never give on line companies regular credit card numbers.
I have seen people claiming it is a good idea to buy the 100$ or 200$ gift cards that act like credit cards and use them for these services. Once the money is drained there is nothing they can do.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have been through some extremely difficult cancellation procedures.
Difficult cancellation processes is why I refuse to sign up for most monthly billed services. I once received a complimentary XM Radio service for a few months, as part of an auto dealership service promotion. I liked the service, and wanted to extend it, but once I realized that I would have to be billed month-to-month via credit card, and would have to cancel via phone call, I decided it was not worth it.
It was easier when you had to pay for things by check through the postal service. For example, if you decided to stop taking a magazine, all you had to do was ignore the resubscription mail, and the magazines would stop coming. If you wanted to start it up again, all you had to do was send in a check with one of those "We want you back!" mailings they inevitably sent you.
The consumer had much more control.
I hope this leads to the consumer having more control again.
All make you talk with "customer retention" rep.
Sometimes, that is what you want,if you just want a lower price. Sometimes you are done and just want to get the equipment returned/picked up.
I'm about to switch from 1 evil company to another to get 40x more bandwidth for 30% less cost. That's the theory, at least. They dug up the yard last week for fiber.
When I tried to cancel The Wall Street Journal last year, I got offered a discounted rate and free Amazon Prime for a year. Now that's a deal!
Goodbye, Slashdot!
While the New York Times does have sections for local New York state and city news it is a nationally distributed newspaper. Since they do business in California they're stuck with California law when dealing with California customers.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
How do you figure? The interstate commerce clause says the Washington politicians can make laws about selling things been states. It doesn't say states can't regulate business in their own state, as long as they don't try to undo federal law on the particular subject (the supremacy clause). Sale of fireworks is an example many of us are conscious of today - different states allow different types of fireworks to be sold, with different regulations on how they sold. The federal government (US DOT) regulates how the fireworks are transported between states on federally-funded roads.
If there were a federal law saying "cancellations may be sent by certified mail", and California says online signups require the option of online cancellations, then BOTH methods would have to be accepted.
There would only be a problem if federal law said cancelling online is illegal, or explicitly said "companies do not have to allow cancellation online".
If this includes cancelling credit cards, it would be a godsend. No card company will let you do that online.
All that is needed is a generic law that states that canceling must be just as seamless and effortless as subscribing/renewing. And that the onus to make that happen lies with the company.
Add some progressive fines for non-compliance, enforce it, and you are pretty much there.
You read WSJ so that you can soak in a little bit of financial jargon to use in your Serious Business role playing sessions. A guy who has to save for a month in order to get a $100 video card shouldn't be spending $10-$20 a month for content you could pirate right along with whatever you keep on your NAS.
You could similarly save money by ditching your 60/mo iphone through sprint. iPhones have barely changed in the past 3 generations so you could switch your plan to Boost since you rarely commute off bus lines where your signal is likely to be good anyhow. You could be paying like $14/mo for phone service and you'd never run out of data if you pre-load your large content over wifi and use a mobile accelerator like google, opera, and other companies offer for free.
Wow an extra 70 dollars a month just like that! You could use that to buy an electric moka pot, electric timer, sugar free vanilla flavoring and a can of condensed milk and always have coffee first thing in the morning. Saving yourself the daily time and money you dump at starbucks. 20 extra minutes in bed and another easy 80 dollars.
Now if you dump that extra 150 into your credit cards you'll save thousands in the upcoming years! But the best would be selling off underperforming investments right now!!! You can then re-invest whatever the principal payment was on your credit card, pocket the interest payment and still come out ahead on your investments. The interest is at least another easy 20 dollars a month for doing nothing.
Imagine!! 170 extra dollars of spending cash a month! Nearly 6 dollars a day! 2040 dollars a year! It's half your bonus from last year.
Now that your credit cards are paid off you can probably qualify for at least a 1% cash back rewards card to put all of your purchases on , and a high interest savings account that is only used to store your direct deposit, hold at least one emergency paycheck, and pay off the entire monthly balance of your credit card! Now you're looking at 2500 extra dollars a year not even counting all the extra monthly investments that would normally be going to the principal on your credit cards.
208 extra dollars a month!
If you post all your bills I'll be happy to do it for everything. I know how you could probably slash your bill with dreamhost in half. I can probably reduce most of your bills in some way or another. Come on dude it's free help and it's up to you to decide what is worthwhile. I wouldn't be surprised if I could save you 400 a month. I'll write you up a whole budget with current expenses, reasonable alternatives and the lowest possible alternative and how it will change your expenses.
It's fun I have it all wired up for myself I'll research your expenses and make one for you.
I hope they get targeted with this - they make cancelling online impossible
California passes a LOT of DUMB laws.
This is not one of them. Very well done.
AT&T wireless is so fucked, and so are their "retention specialists".
Deny any sale to anyone living in California.
Easiest way by far is to go to one of their retail outlets, with any equipment that you need to return (ideally in original packaging) and a bill to make account IDing easy.
Presuming there's an outlet convenient for you of course...
The XM contract I was offered made it clear that phone call was the only avenue to cancel. No thanks.
Try the normal way.
If it's inconvenient or you keep being passed to "retentions" against your will, hang up. The words "No, I'm cancelling. No I don't need to sit through any advert. I'm cancelling. This is me cancelling. This is my notification that I've canceled. Am I cancelled now?" are how you do it.
If they don't listen, you then hang up and write them a letter. State your request to cancel. Demand proof of receipt.
On the deadline date in your letter, cancel the credit card / bank payment if they do not respond. They'll write back if you have made an error in your calculations or if you have to give X months notice, etc.
Almost nothing in the world exists for an ordinary consumer that can't be solved with a single recorded-delivery letter.
And in the list I include things like "Insurance company retro-actively cancels my insurance in a post-dated letter (so technically IMPOSSIBLE for me to have been notified in time) because of non-payment, when my bank has record of payment and I hold a letter that says "Your account is up to date" dated the same day as the one that say "We're cancelling your insurance" - and still threatens me with lawsuits, to report me for being uninsured, non-payment, etc. etc.
One recorded-delivery letter later, and they were grovelling on the floor for me not to report them to their industry ombudsman, offering compensation,...
As soon as it's more difficult to cancel than writing a letter and putting a stamp on it, hang up.
XM doesn't allow cancellation by anything but phone call
https://m.siriusxm.com/pdf/siriusxm_customeragreement_eng.pdf
I can sign up for a gym membership and subsequently cancel it a year later without ever setting foot in the gym.
It's usually easier to just have my CC company issue charge backs.
Kindly post the appropriate legalese from one of your "any number of letters confirming just that" so we can see what law is in the argument.