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Comment by heroic | Hacker News Reader

Yes. We first contact the user if they don't pay despite calls/emails/push notification/sms for 45 days. Then we warn them for 15 days that their contacts will be asked to remind them of the bill, as per the terms. Finally we contact the contacts.

We do this to prevent having to file legal cases against the users as those can drag on for very long in India and are a pain for both parties

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Telling your customers' friends and family about their financial problems seems like a pretty terrible thing to do.

Edit: And doing so in the hope that they shame or pressure your customers is awful. I agree with ccmcarey upthread: This is disgusting. Stop it.

We do understand that some people may have a financial problem. When user's approach us and tell us that they are not paying due to such issues, we are more than happy to accommodate them in every possible way.

One such example of that is that we told our users that we won't be charging them any late fee during the lockdown as we understand they have issues. We did this even before our government came up with such an option.

Such issues? Accommodate them? What are you even saying, you purposefully cause those issues. People should contact you AFTER it happened to ask "please do not contact my contacts" or what?

I suspect that kind of innovation is frowned upon by Google. It's not the same context as WhatsApp at all

Here's what Google is telling us:

Your app is uploading users' [Contact] information to [URL] without a prominent disclosure. Prior to the collection and transmission, it must prominently highlight how the user data will be used, describe the type of data being collected and have the user provide affirmative consent for such use.

I think that’s pretty clear. Google are telling you that you must explicitly outline what you’ll do with peoples contacts (i.e. you’ll harass them if the debtor does pay).

Your current tick box doesn’t say that at all. They probably want you have a nice big tick box that says:

“I agree for [company] to harass my phone contacts if I don’t repay”

That might be part of your issue. You are solicitating their friend and familly as well as sharing with them financial information without their consent.

Why such a weird practice and not simply consider repeated failed payment as a form of cancelation?

Public-shaming people is not a socially acceptable solution to this problem

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