Hacker News Reader

Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

Say you sign up for a gym. The agreement is for $50/month with a year commitment. You give them a credit card to pay.

6 months in, you cancel your credit card (or it expires or whatever).

The fact that they can't bill you doesn't change that you agreed to the plan and that you owe the second 6 months anyway. That's a debt and the gym can (and some do!) choose to go after you for it in whatever legal way they feel. That's collection agencies, and direct lawsuits.

An open ended agreement ($10/month for a newspaper) often will have this same style - you agree to pay $10/month for access, they give you access. Valid until cancelled. If you simply ghost - is that cancellation? Probably not, and it's up to the contract. Of course, most consumer things just drop it and shrug, but that is not a given.

View on HN

Well explained. Privacy.com gives the illusion of control in this regard (and I love the service) but to enable full user control like this you have to be untraceable after ghosting, which means signing up with a "fake" (I prefer "per-use") identity.

--amend yes it's (close to) fraud so be careful. Lots of things were illegal before they weren't; union strikes come to mind.

Signing a contract under a false identity sounds legally very questionable

That is fraud. Do not use fake identities to buy things so you can then get out of contracts by not paying.

This is true, but only in regards to actual commitments like a yearly gym membership. If your intent is to mitigate dark patterns that frustrate the cancellation of a pay-as-you-go relationship, it's better described as shielding yourself from fraud and extortion.

Still, everybody should routinely use nyms when interacting with parties that needlessly ask for them - if for nothing else than to hinder the surveillance society.

Contracts can be yearly, with or without your will, with the possibility to cancel or not. That could become debt if not paid but not necessarily, there are consumer protection laws against abusive subscriptions, but maybe not in the US.

Services that care about cancellation and charge backs always charge the full duration upfront at the reduced price. Not month to month.

The gym, the newspapers or tinder will charge you ahead for the next month. If they can't charge you, they terminate your access and it ends the contract. You stop paying and you stop being able to use the service.

> The gym, the newspapers or tinder will charge you ahead for the next month. If they can't charge you, they terminate your access and it ends the contract. You stop paying and you stop being able to use the service

Maybe it's different in the UK but many people have got caught out assuming this is the case for gyms.

If you sign a contract saying you will pay £X each month until you cancel then just stop paying, you still owe the money.

What if the service agreement is simply per month, and not a contract? Then privacy.com regular use is fine, no?

As in, suppose a service advertises it open endedly as you stated, but I only needed 3 months of the service, then forgot about it or was traveling, is that considered illegal?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com