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There need to be laws that you cannot advertise anything as "free" or "introductory price" if it's amortized into a longer contract. A common tactic in Canada is to say "$4/mo for the first three months" but when you sign a contract for $12/mo over a year commitment. This should be treated as straight-up fraud. The price is clearly $10/mo and they're just deferring some payments.

I don't mind too much if the continuing price is obvious. But most of the time the ongoing price is in the fine print or completely missing. I wouldn't mind a law that says the continuing prices needs to be at least as visible as the promotional price.

Really it should be required that the most visible number is the minimum amount you will pay in total if you cancel right away.

Quebec has separate civil law from the rest of Canada and our consumer protection act prohibits this kind of behaviour (with very clear case law and precedence siding against companies).

As a result though there are a fair amount of companies that will have these trial offers everywhere except Quebec. Spotify is one that comes to mind.

Indeed, yet it sometimes gets annoying; you see a nice promotion somewhere only to find out "not available in Québec" :(

Which often means that there was some dark pattern in the offer which violated Quebec's law (or possibly they did not want to bother dealing with Quebec's language law...all content must also be available in French...which can be a deterrent as well)

If other states/provinces in North America had the same law, those companies would be forced to propose really free trials.

Some big companies (Amazon or Apple) breaks the law by offering a free month of Prime or Apple Music in Quebec.

What if it’s $4 for three months and then $12 in perpetuity, with no commitment.

Then it's not lying and I have no problem with it, as long as the continuing price is clearly presented at the time of sale.

I agree with you on all points, I would just like to point out that Apple does not follow the same trial rules as they do for everyone else, unless something changed. When I first was trying out Apple Music with the trial period, there was a notice that access to Apple Music would end immediately. I don’t think they do this same thing if you were outside the trial period.

So while I applaud Apple for standardizing the subscription rules for most apps, I would love if they applied it to themselves and their apps the same way.

Yes, Apple Music or Arcade cuts access the moment you end the trial. Apple gives developers API to detect cancellations too but I'm not sure if the developers are allowed to cut access, haven't looked at it. I know some apps that do cut access though.

>That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks

If you don't cancel a three day trial before the end of the second day, you are automatically billed. That's not a three day trial, that's a two day trial. A full 33% less than what you are explicitly promised[0]:

>If you signed up for a free or discounted trial subscription and you don't want to renew it, cancel it at least 24 hours before the trial ends.

>If you cancel during a free trial period, you might lose access to the subscription immediately.

(Note: Although it says you "might" lose access immediately, in my experience you always loose access immediately)

That means it's basically impossible to "trial" software for the period Apple advertises. No matter if the period is 3 days, 7 days or 3 months. It's a dark pattern, a dirty trick that is blatantly consumer hostile.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039

Yes it happens but you get the refund easily. You also get an e-mail before that happens.

Well you don't get the refund at all if you try to cancel less than 24 hours out. As technical users, you and I both know there is no technical reason for this. None. It's designed to catch users off guard, plain and simple.

There's also this (emphasis mine): "3 months free. Apple TV+ is included for three months when you purchase an Apple device and redeem the offer within 90 days"[0].

What does included mean in this context to you? It means included in the purchase of the device. Right? As in, we are giving you a bonus incentive over and above what you would normally get.

Sorry, no. If you cancel or decline autorenewal, nothing is in fact "included". It's a deception. It's conditionally included.

Sure, it's all covered in the fine print, and everybody is doing it but come on. Apple is engaging in dirty trick after dirty trick.

[0] https://www.apple.com/ca/apple-tv-plus/

For the record, I use Apple devices exclusively and happily pay for many services (including AppleTV+) but this stuff still needs to be called out.

I got a refund and I know my friends who got theır refunds when they forget to cancel subscriptions in time. It's also well known policy of Apple to refund you right away.

I'm having hard time understanding why are you so bitter about. I got 3 months of Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade trial with my purchase and Apple keeps reminding me to active it because the offer is valid within the 90 days of the decice activation. So what? Where's the deception?

The cancellation policy is not in the fine print at all, it's right there next to the cancel button. Where exactly it needs to be?

Just return the device if this doesn't work for you.

>I got a refund and I know my friends who got theır refunds when they forget to cancel subscriptions in time. It's also well known policy of Apple to refund you right away.

That doesn't excuse deceptive tricks used to prematurely start subscriptions. Many people don't bother chasing refunds. Anyways, you didn't address the issue: Apple says it's a three day trial, but the fine print says it's effectively a two day trial. Is that not an accurate assessment?

>I'm having hard time understanding why are you so bitter about

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The page I linked previously[0] says "3 months free. Apple TV+ is included for three months when you purchase an Apple device"[1]

Now, let me ask. When referring to purchasing products or services what does the word "included" mean to you? If english was your second language, what would you take "included" to mean in this context? Maybe you'd look the world up in the dictionary? Let's see -

Google says 'comprise or contain as part of a whole' and gives the example "the price includes dinner, bed, and breakfast". Merriam-Webster has a similar definition and gives this example: "The price of dinner includes dessert." Cambridge gives this example "The fee covers everything, babysitter included."

And so on. See the problem?

>The cancellation policy is not in the fine print at all, it's right there next to the cancel button. Where exactly it needs to be?

Again, refer to the page I linked with the ad copy regarding AppleTV+. I'm not sure what page you're referring to(?)

>Just return the device if this doesn't work for you.

That's not the point. The topic was (generally) about dark patterns and misleading wording. I'm just giving two examples which counter the notion that Apple isn't also guilty of it. I'm not "bitter", and as I mentioned I generally love Apple's products and services.

[0] https://www.apple.com/ca/apple-tv-plus/ [1] https://imgur.com/a/jwAJANz

I don't know what to say really, go buy something else. I have no issue reading the offer details and IMHO the terms are clear and easy to understand but if that's not the case for you get a refund and buy from somewhere else.

In my opinion, the wording is not intended for deception but for mood uplift. It answers the following question: Interesting device but what I'm going to watch on this? Answer: No worries it comes with this service so you can start using it right away, go to the bottom of the page for the details.

> That's one of the things that's great about Apple's iAP and Apple being the handler of transactions. There's no tricks, it's standart on every app

And that is exactly what user-hostile companies and devs want to undermine.

Just look up Match.com (parent of Tinder and part of the “coalition” against Apple) and the shit they pull against people, as an example (like charging certain demographics differently for the same service and using artificial matches to bait new subscribers)

If you get screwed by such a scummy actor via Apple’s IAP, Apple will give you a refund without asking any questions, almost immediately. That’s what they want to sidestep, it was never about the users.

Sorry, but I need to point this out: The word is "trial", not "trail". The consistent misspelling really hindered reading flow for me.

The main reason why I used Netflix (despite not having most of the content I want to watch) is how straightforward the cancelling is!!

Recently subscribed to a free seven day trial. Wrongly assumed that I could cancel up to the seventh day. Unfortunately, the Trial required cancellation to occur before the seventh day.

a local streaming platform

You should name and shame, so that others don't fall into the same trap.

Maybe it was their marketing department screwing up with the wording.

I also torrent their shows, so...

> I really hope that if Apple is forced into allowing 3rd party payments, we end up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently on Apple's platforms but with an option to choose the alternative payment method(in the same screen but a different card or account kind of thing, like choosing a card in Apple Pay).

If they are forced to unbundle payments, they should be made to unbundle them fully. So not only third-party payment processors in Apple's App Store, but third-party app stores like Cydia (or even Google Play and Microsoft Store) should also be able to use (for a fee) the same payment system as Apple's App Store. If we go by Apple's current 27%-3% split, it could compete against alternatives such as Stripe even on other platforms.

> we en up getting a standardised interface like the one we have currently

Of course you won't. Apple will do everything in their power to make third party payments as painful as possible for both the consumer and the merchant. They'll do things like preventing those apps from auto-filling credit card numbers, and denying them camera permission to scan cards. They'll insist credit card data is sent to an in-country server owned by the same company as the app (for privacy reasons obviously, but knowing that for a small app developer hosting certified credit card processing servers in every country their app sells in is very hard).

So, if that's Apple fault on Android it must be really good, right? How is the Android side of things going?

BTW, there's this thing called MasterPass. It's MasterCard's payment system that applications can request you to authorise the use the cards in the MasterPass wallet.

It's quite good experience, they are also very aggressive to collect all your cards in there so if you don't already have a MasterPass there's a option(on by default) in the CC entering screen to add the current card in the MasterPass wallet. There's no explicit account creation step or anything like that, if you tick that option the next time you encounter a payment you will have a MasterPass(At least that's how I remember). I think they must be using some kind of keychain magic to make it possible because it's almost as frictionless as Apple's. You only enter the SMS code if you choose to give access to an app.

The only problem is, there's no easy way to manage your payments and cards in the MasterPass. The payments are credited to your cards so it's good as your bank UI. There's a website that claims to be an UI for MasterPass for managing your cards but it's not on the main mastercard.com domain, therefore I never tried to use it as I can't tell if it's a phishing attempt or a legit one. I guess if I call them they can tell me but I would have expected to see at least a link to that website from my bank website or mastercard website.

He not talk about android. Why are you bring that up?

Because Android is the free alternative where we can observe how "If Apple allowed that" theories will pan out?

People really don't realize how much of a clusterfuck is prevented by Apple's platform lockdown, like, my god its another level of quality in my experience and I was an Android user for most of my life. Even those things that can be annoying to a Web Dev like Apple's control of full-screen video content is so much better than gambling on any ol' web video player's UI being non-ridiculous with hard to hit elements, etc.

Not sure why you are bringing in android into this, but things are fairly okay in android-land thank you very much.

Have been scammed twice, both times on App Store.

(Funny enough, best support experience was on Microsoft store when I wanted to return something, but maybe that time was an outlier)

> Not sure why you are bringing in android into this

Because Android has fewer restrictions and can act as a guinea pig.