FTC Cracks Down on Impossible-to-Cancel Subscriptions

It would be an amazing thing if they got these to go away.

[danielmarek]

Around the time my wife and I get married she still had dial up internet. They made it all but impossible to cancel the service. She tried calling but was told that she needed to send them a fax, to an out of state long distance number. She did and they still didn't cancel her service. They said they didn't get the cancelation. This happened again and again, costing a few more months of fees. Finally I told her I have an idea. This was back when plain paper fax machines still were not out, and instead the machines used a roll of thermal paper. One oddity of those machines was they would keep printing a page, no matter how long the page was. So I had her type up the cancelation request again, in larger font, printed several copies. I taped each page to the next creating a long ribbon. Then we fed it into the Fax machine, and once the beginning came through the machine I taped it to the end. It sat there faxing around and around for over a half hour. We finally hung up. Then sent it again, and again and again. I think that her fax now was several hundred feet long, each of them, and likely were all over the floor of the room the Fax machine was in. She then called them the next business day, they weren't happy. She said I guess then you got my cancelation this time. Got Ya! She then said if they send her another bill this would become a nightly thing, and will continue till their machine becomes empty of paper. She never got another bill again ever. And so ended her internet dial up experience!

[nodak]

I ran into a situation where my Capital One credit card info was stolen and used to buy a Starz subscription. The credit card said they removed the charge, cancelled my old account number and gave me a new one. A month later the same fraudulent charge was back! I called them irate about how a new card I hadn't even activated yet, was fraudulently used. They said "Oh, well it was a recurring charge, so we always let the billing company know the new card number." They then said they couldn't do anything about it since it was their policy and that I would need to somehow get Starz to stop billing!

Needless to say, I went absolutely insane on the phone and tore them a new ass. I finally had to complain to the FTC before they fixed the problem. I promptly paid off the card and cancelled it. Ever since then I refuse to do business with Capital One.

[selkiemaine]

ADT forced me to pay an extra month when I cancelled - threatened to send me to the credit bureaus. It wasn't worth the fight over the twenty bucks, but they lost a customer for life - and I've told a LOT of my friends. 'nuff said.

[russlehman]

The only thing good about AOL was that in their early days, they were a great source of free floppy disks. Just tape over the write protect hole and format. Younger viewers probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

[SpynCycle]

This will be fully implemented right after robo-calls and spam-calls are blocked.

[TheLostBear]

I had one years ago, got something that took 3 months after cancellation for the charges to stop. 5/3 Bank REFUSED to stop the charges. I closed my account with them, including my debit card. Then I would get a notice at the end of the month, that I was overdrawn on my account. "A charge came in, so we reopened your debit account, and paid the money, and so you owe the money and a $30 courtesy fee." They did it twice more before I was screaming at the top of my lungs in their office, making a huge scene. I was getting scammed by the company and my damn bank was supporting the scam.

[Gypsy]

We signed up my mom to cable TV when she went into an assisted living apartment. After she passed, we tried to cancel the cable TV and kept getting the run around. Even getting the box back to the company wasn't going anywhere. We canceled the credit card and changed her address with the cable company to the cemetery she was laid to rest at. I was going to bury the box with her but we finally did get a return box to send it back.

[OliverOmenshade]

Some years back, I was a CSR for Frontier Communications and if someone called to cancel, we were required to talk them out of cancelling. If they were adamant about it, we had to transfer to a department that was able to give them a cheaper deal. Even if they refused the transfer we were required to cold transfer. If we didn't attempt these steps we were automatically written up. I hated working for them.

[JayBandersnatch]

kind of reminds me of the fact that you can subscribe to an email list instantly, yet for some reason it takes up to 10-days to unsubscribe to the same one.

[jamessickmore]

Health clubs are notorious for doing this, Takes them almost 50 years to act on this behavior

[Dervraka]

Personally I think any service or subscription that gives the ability to sign up online, should be legally required to have just as an easy and quick unsubscribe option. Sounds like this regulation might do that.

[valerielhw]

In the past, I have actually cancelled bank and credit cards because that was the ONLY means of cancelling certain unwanted subscriptions. That is outrageous!

I HOPE these new crackdowns work.

[JTBlotzer]

I had a subscription to Le Monde - a French Newspaper - for a few months. Their policies state that the only way to cancel is to submit the request in writing on their form. I didn't want to do that so I just "updated" my billing information so that the card expiration date was incorrect. When they went to bill me, it wouldn't go through and they cancelled for me.

[geraldfrost]

This is a corollary to the first Ferengi Law of Acquisition. "Once you have the money, you don't give it back!"
This corollary reads, "Once you have the subscription, you don't give it back!"

[Telcomvic]

OMG! Trying to cancel Sirus-XM was one of the hardest I ever had to do. It was worse than cancelling AOL and TWC combined!

[kiraward]

Auto renewal is the reason I do most of my online shopping with prepaid credit cards, and usually avoid subscription gifts.

[FractalPrism.]

when a sales contract changes terms it should require affirmative consent. its not acceptable to say "well you signed up xTime ago, so we have the 'right' to charge you the new amount"
eg:
its been $1 or Free but its going to change to $19 a month, it should demand the company gets an entirely NEW yes / no answer from the consumer before any charge happens.

[Mikeanglo]

When my mom passed I discovered Comcast had signed her up for "better service" when she called about potentially cancelling for a cheaper ISP. Six months after the new deal, she was paying even more for the "improved service" and they tried to pull the same thing when I tried to cancel. The worst part was she didn't even know she needed new equipment for the faster service, so for years she paid extra for a service that she couldn't even take advantage of because she didn't have the new hardware. Comcast told me it was "her responsibility" to take care of it and she never did. I was absolutely pissed.

Something similar was going on with AT&T when I tried to cancel her land line...I spent 2+ hours on the phone, and another 2 hours in a store with a customer rep and even he seemed frustrated over how hard it was to get somebody to terminate a landline because *NO EMPLOYEE* wanted to be the one to process the cancellation...props to the in store employee for helping me, but if you're trying to do it by phone it seems almost impossible.

[herculesrockefeller]

About ten years ago I belonged to a health club where, to cancel, you could not call them, you could not use their website, you had to send an actual letter to their headquarters.
I was amazed, but I did it anyway.

[dw]

I think the most difficult contract I've ever had to cancel was a gym contract mid pandemic, had to involve the state ATG to get them to cancel the contract and leave us alone... the owner was pretty angry after that, probably had something to do with the big fine the ATG hit them with.