Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

We need to fix this.

We should take this completely out of companies' hands. The incentives are too perverse and too prevalent for anything good to come out of playing dark pattern whack-a-mole through legislation or, worse, "promoting dark pattern awareness" or some other brand of blame-dodging hogwash. Companies are stealing money and getting away with it. We have the technology to stop them. We should stop them.

I suspect the easiest way to do it would be to give credit card company cancellation buttons legal bite: unless someone signs physical papers and does credit checks (e.g. for housing and utilities), nonpayment must be respected as a request to cancel and not creatively misinterpreted as an invitation to extend credit, charge fees, and accumulate interest.

View on HN

I've never had issues requesting a chargeback if a service auto-charged me that I didn't desire to use or be charged for.

I've done this to the NHL, Comcast, Sirius, Uber, etc. Considering some places don't even offer a way to contact support (Uber), chargebacks are the only way to handle this sometimes.

I have lost every single chargeback against Sirius - calls are recorded and even amex sides against the consumer.

I’d love to hear your strategy.

I want the world to allow this!

> "But I already do it" (paraphrasing)

Not legally. If you hit "Agree" on a contract that says you will pay until cancel and then you stop paying without canceling, you're still legally on the hook for the payment. Technically. Most companies won't actually send you to collections. But they can, and sometimes they do, which is why credit card companies can't make GUIs to bring your subscriptions front and center with nice user friendly "cancel" buttons. Sometimes they still try to do this, but behind the scenes someone has to cancel on your behalf so it isn't reliable.

Upgrading your strategy from "technically illegal" to "legal and normal" is how we bring it to the masses :)

> Companies are stealing money and getting away with it.

Are they? I think that those companies misunderstand how easy it is to lose trust and how difficult it is to gain it. Humans are extremely good at remembering who can be trusted.

I think the easiest way would be to make it legal for consumers to block subscription payments, nothing - and demand companies just deal with it. That it means nothing more than that the subscription ends. Nothing more, nothing less.

What is the technology to stop them?

Non-payment by credit card networks

But they'll never take that leap of faith absent a law mandating it. There's not enough competition between the major issuing networks.

Nah, CC providers would love to provide subscription management and cancellation services. They implement dumber and more expensive gimmick services all the time. They'd implement this one in a heartbeat if they could.

Right now, they can't, because they have no privileged way to cancel a service on the user's behalf. They can withhold payment, yes, but under current consumer contract law withholding payment doesn't imply cancellation. We should change the law so that it does. Once the law changes, they would implement "cancel buttons" and "subscription management" so fast your head would spin -- and then they would flood TV and youtube with ads about it, and they would bug you every time you logged into your CC statement for the next year.

The self-interest on the credit card company's part requires they have a financial incentive. I don't think they care about customer satisfaction enough.

... the way to do it would be to disincentivize subscription companies from having credit card companies involved in cancellations.

(1) Pass laws to empower credit card companies to cancel services on a user's behalf, if the user so requests + (2) Allow CC companies to collect a fee from the subscription service when they do so.

CC companies will implement the feature as a profit source, but subscription services will also be incentivized to flow cancellations through themselves (because it's cheaper) thus leading to more streamlined cancellation.

It could also become a competitive / marketing advantage for the card that implements it first, so I don’t even think it’s needs to be made into a profit source.

I can cancel any subscription on paypal web site. Banking system should adopt that: list every subscription on bank website and allow one-click cancel.

It's not the Banking system's choice. It's a matter of contract law between the customer and the service. Once the contract law is changed, the Banking system can implement the feature.

This problem doesn't require a technological solution. A legal solution is perfectly adequate. In Sweden, for example, you can inform a company of your wish to cancel a service by email or letter or phone call or...probably there are more options I'm unaware of. Given such a right, you never need to play the games that companies want you to play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com