California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online

People without an ADA issue should send their cancellation notice to the registered corporate agent, return receipt, which sets the date of cancellation and gets their (expensive) lawyer involved. Threaten to sue them under your deceptive trade practices statutes if they continue to bill your account. Lawyers shed these kind of nuisance things quickly and cut through the bureaucracy. Your file will be stamped "service terminated" posthaste. There is no better way to communicate your desire to terminate service than to notify their registered agent in writing.

Have you tried using the NATO alphabet? I don't know if that would be easier or more difficult for you to say, but it's worth a shot, since it'd be less ambiguous over the phone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Often hitting # repeatedly did the trick. But lot always.

I'm currently 3 for 3 but I guess you have a lot more attempts than I do.

If your goal is to just end your contract (as permitted), I should not have to jump through any more hoops than telling them we're done.

If you saw that a soda machine always dispensed a Coke when you pressed the Dr. Pepper button would you feel bad pressing that button to get the Coke you wanted?

There are times when it's moral to lie, other times when it's immoral to lie, and still other times when morality hardly has anything to do with it at all (such as the above scenario.) We tell small children that it's immoral to lie because we don't trust their moral judgement and would prefer they always tell us the truth.

This is a utility-maximizing lie. You're saving both yourself and the other person time. Unless you subscribe to some belief-system that holds truth-telling to be some sort of moral good in and of itself, everyone is better off.

And that's aside from the fact that the patter you'll hear trying to keep you paying is going to be full of, at the very least, deceptive statements lacking any objective truth or falsity.

It’s like the squares/grid stuff used by car salespeople to get you to get a car loan instead of buying the car with cash.

You can take that as "not at all guilty".

Also chargebacks penalize the merchants both in fines/fees but if they rack of enough, they'll pay higher processing fees.

Every. Single. Day.

I would like to give executives the option to stop this or go to prison for this never ending nonsense. I think most would choose to stop.

You are missing the "as". Please listen closely, as our menu options have changed. I know it by heart and can hear the same voice over and over again in my head. Crap!

My brain tried really hard to read "IVR gauntlets" as a description of wearables, like AR goggles, before I realised what you meant.

I don't understand — how does stopping payments verify your identity?

I suspect that Privacy.com uses gift cards as proxies, and some merchants reject payments made with gift cards. If so, this could be why I experienced the above.

If someone knows better than I do, please correct me. Genuinely curious how the service works under the hood.

It also allows instant wire transfers between accounts in different banks using a phone number, and to withdraw cash at virtually any national ATM.

And then there are services where people sign up but only a very small percentage would voluntarily come back no matter how good or bad your service is because they sign up out of impulse. Gyms are good examples for those — people sign up because they want to lose weight/stay fitter, etc but only a small percentage actually goes there after the first few times. This of course sucks for the regular customers who want to pause their membership because they are too busy for a few months or move, etc (but on the other hand, those no-goes also subsidies the regular goers because the gym can offer a lower price for everyone).

For those companies, we need laws that make it equally as easy to cancel as to sign up.

> 1. Interception, oral communications prohibited. Except as otherwise specifically provided in this section any person who? willfully commits an interception, attempts to commit an interception, or procures any other person to commit an interception or to attempt to commit an interception of any wire or oral communication shall be fined not more than ten thousand dollars, or imprisoned in the state prison for not more than five years, or imprisoned in a jail or house of correction for not more than two and one half years, or both so fined and given one such imprisonment.

and defines interception as

> 4. The term 'interception' means to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person given prior authority by all parties to such communication;...

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...

Certain keywords like "lawsuit" can break the strictly regimented conversation tree too.

But you're not exactly right.. you can record phone conversations in the US provided you let them know before you push the 'record' button.

And If you are cancelling multiple subscriptions per month with regularity, then you may want to reflect and consider if you actually are committing fraud.

I honestly wonder what legal theory my bank or financial service is using to justify transferring my money or incurring debt under my name to pay someone I explicitly tell them not to simply because a guy at a call center making a snap judgement believes there is a valid contract and that the other party has honored it.

Not only that, but the business will get an additional chargeback fee before losing the chargeback.

I didn't realize PayPal could dip into my checking account any time they wanted to. I thought it required my manual action. No more PayPal for me.

This is a standard procedure for many merchants these days: Offer an attractive initial price, then add fine print that states your account will autorenew at "then current" rates, and you have to make a phone call (where you have to hold for 20 to 30 minutes for the next available representative) if you want to cancel.

I am glad California is taking action. They still have a for-the-people government in California.

It's my favorite answer, because it normally creates enough awkwardness on the call to make the other party want it over as quickly as possible.

And getting them on your side is always step 1.

Bonus points if they ask "I hope it's nothing we did" and you respond with an extra long pause and "I think it's best for everyone involved if we get this cancelled as quickly as possible."

The way it works (cause I tried) is that you call (or in bank to dispute membership) and guess what? they made you wait on the line/ in the branch until they contact ABC customer support that knows exactly what membership you have when you have it etc. They were even able to fax over my photo (!!) to the banker to prove it wasn't a fraud. I was actually quite happy because I need that kind of chargeback service for my companies when anyone can call (and does) and usually says "my child ordered this". Unfortunately banks will only work this way with merchants pushing hundreds of millions of dollars in memberships, as I was told by a friend of mine who works for Bank of America.

I don't know in Canada, but in USA most membership programs are continue to be a cancer on our society (despite the fact its easier to dispute transaction than it was years ago) and most banks will help in this bad behavior because they don't want too many disputes for credit card companies they underwrite and represent.

They had me sign over my direct withdrawal banking details the day I signed up. I regret doing that.

Example: on the Vegas strip they always have people selling strip clubs and pestering you. I'll say "can't do that tonight but do you have any (insert legit magician) tickets?"

They'll go oh man sorry don't have those tonight. Was going to get some, oh shoot. Have a nice night and take care!!!!

It's like the sale that got away. You're still cool to them so they back off.

I do this with the CD artists - don't have a CD player, you streaming? Nah man.

So always be a buyer of whatever they don't have to sell haha.

Why waste any of your precious time with some scheming/sleezy salesman of that level?

That first visit ended with my berating the staffer for being useless and working for a shitty company.

I was not proud of that moment, but what I said was not untrue.

They really had me in their grips... if I just stopped paying without formally ending the contract with the agreed upon "cancellation appointment" (that I apparently agreed to in the original contract) then they would have dinged my credit score for not paying my bills on time essentially.

My appointment was for 2pm... when the rep showed up at 3pm... his first response was literally "oh hey... you're actually 30 minutes late for our 2:30pm appointment so I'm going to have to cancel.."

I told him I had been waiting there since 2pm (and he had seen me waiting there since 2pm) and then he began to take my fraudulent cancellation data of my moving to another country.

This has not been true for years now. I have a Planet Fitness account happily billed to my credit card right now. I actually go 2 times a week, though, and the one time that I did have to cancel it, the process was painless and quick.

That's exactly how they got me iirc.

I could have paid a few dollars more per month to be pay as you go... but I was "gonna do this" and I was going to "stick to my gym habits" and keep at this for years so why not sign my life away???

Lesson learned.

I now happily badmouth Goodlife Fitness whenever I get a chance like this.

As long as it's reliable and intelligent enough, I don't think people will mind. I know I wouldn't.

GDPR also has no relevance for US interstate commerce.

South Dakota vs. Wayfair overturned the Quill decision, and, the Quill decision would have been the controlling precedent in any constitutional challenge, based on physical nexus. However, that all changed with Wayfair.

One of the key arguments in the overturn of Quill were that Quill created, rather than resolved market distortions. Essentially, Quill (according to the ruling in SD v Wayfair,) created a tax shelter for businesses that limit their physical presence in a state. The problem with Quill is that it disadvantaged economically identical actors for arbitrary reasons -- a small shop with a few items in a warehouse in a state would have to pay taxes on everything they sold in the state, while a large business (such as Wayfair) with no physical presence in the state would be advantaged by not having to charge a tax on the exact same items. Helping customers evade a lawful tax unfairly shifts an increased share of the taxes to those consumers who buy from competitors with a physical presence in the State.

"Quill’s physical presence rule has limited States’ ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field."

So now, we look at the California law requiring online cancellations. It would be an extremely difficult argument to cite SD vs. Wayfair since the online cancellation requirement isn't creating a disadvantage on market participants or the states themselves. Lost economic development due to the imbalance created by Quill was cited repeatedly as a flaw in Quill. An online cancellation requirement is going to be very difficult to prove as having a deleterious effect on economic activity/growth/development as was clearly demonstrated in the majority opinion for Wayfair. Wayfair was essentially about tax shelters. The California law doesn't correct any particular economic harm.

However, that being said, any constitutional challenge to the California Law would likely fall short because the Supreme Court interpretation of the Commerce Clause essentially says that laws ought not present an "undue burden" on interstate trade. Allowing for online cancellation, would be, to say the least, a stretch to argue that it places an undue burden on doing business with people within the state. That's why, if this law were to go to court, it would be upheld since someone like the New York Times would have a hard time proving an "undue burden." Ironically (to me,) being required to collect sales tax in all 50 states as well as the thousands of individual jurisdictions (including multiple jurisdictions even within cities, thanks to economic reinvestment zones) -- that to me, seems like a massively undue burden. However, as the court rules in Wayfair, that burden is less important than the economic discrimination that was happening (i.e. a local online shop vs. an out of state online shop being burdened unequally despite selling the exact same product.)

As an aside, I might argue that a business without a physical presence in the state isn't availing themselves to the infrastructure or public services of that state, however they are being asked to pay for those infrastructure and services. Shipping companies actually do the deliveries and they, of course, are paying the taxes for their locality. But that's another debate. Incidentally, justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer joined Roberts's Wayfair dissent, in which he stated that Congress ought to be making the laws and not the courts. I never thought I'd agree with Kagan and Sotomayor on anything, but it is strange times in which we live.

In anyone's interested, Ginsburg, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, Kennedy were in the majority on the Wayfair case while Breyer, Sotomayor, Roberts and Kagan were in the dissent. http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/south-dakota-v-wa...

It was a 5-4 but not how you would have expected!

Anyway, to the point, Quill would have made a challenge to the California law rather easy, but now, the California law will likely pass a Constitutional challenge based on the "undue burden" test established by the courts.

They see how easy/optimized subscriptions are, and how hard/optimized cancellations are. They see the regulatory cat-and-mouse game. Conclude that "industry" is acting in bad faith, and suggest an FU rule like that.

Industry will respond (correctly) that this kind of a proposal puts a big burden on them, and makes managing subscriptions very hard and expensive.

I think it's a bad idea for the same reason you can't stop hyperinflation by yelling at retailers to stop their "greedy price gouging." Swimming directly into a persistant economic incentives current is hard. "Complying" becomes implementing the minimum standard which is still legal.

A better approach (IMO, I am not a policy maker) would be to (1) recognize the major economic incentives (2) avoid leaving low level decision making (implementation) in the hands of those whose economic incentives are opposed to your goals. (3) if you absolutely must force companies to act against their own interest, be extremely prescriptive. Leave nothing open ended and do as little of this as possible.

In this case, I don't think it's that hard. Regulate payment providers, particularly CCs. They already have a regulator, so no structural changes (or even legislation, possibly) is necessary.

(1) Make subscriptions an explicit type of thing. (2) Enforce a minimum amount of information that the payment provider must receive, in order to honour the subscription. (3) display this information to customers. Monthly paper statements are fine. (4) Enforce a standard whereby consumers can cancel recurring payments by contacting the payment provider.

A credit card service, bank, bitcoin wallet or whatever has no incentive to make cancelations clunky. Simply putting the onus on them is probably sufficient regulation. The better ones will probably give you a nice app/web view with extra user friendly features the regulator never even thought of. For example, they might alert you when "introductory price" periods end or keep track of "minimum durations" to let you know when your contract expires.

A have a similar view on cookie laws & parts of GDPR. Instead of leaving everything up to websites (who have an incentive to make you give up all your rights), regulate the data browsers & ISPs share with a website. They're not as vested in minimizing user rights.

LA Fitness is another that lets you sign up online, and cancel only via certified mail.

Of course the reason things are architected this way is so that more people can make money...

> you can write a “negotiable instrument,” bank talk for a valid check, on just about anything. According to the Uniform Commercial Code, the body of law that governs these things, all you have to include are the name of the payee, the dollar amount, the name of your bank, your signature, the date, and some suitable words of conveyance, such as “pay to the order of.” You don’t need the account number or the bank ID number you find on preprinted checks.

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/562/can-you-write-...

Insurance’s value is that any moment they are willing to pay out.

With subscription services, if you only use them occasionally, the smart thing is to let them expire and then resubscrive when you need their services. However the hassle in subscribing and unsubscribing is too high to make practical.

Edit: here is the phrase that may show up on your credit report: "Account information disputed by consumer, meets FCRA requirements"

I got calls from Comcast for weeks afterward telling me that I needed to return my equipment. I kept telling them that I did return the equipment and have a receipt. The only thing that made them stop calling is when I described the receipt to the person on the phone as having "that big stupid NBC peacock logo that you stole on the top of it."

I guess without the logo description, none of the other callers would believe me.