23 ms·

Mastercard will stop free trials from automatically billing once they're over

• inanutshellus 8y ago
  Unless I'm misreading it, the title of the HN link and the article's meaning don't match. "Mastercard will stop free trials from automatically billing once they're over" is not the same as "merchants will be required to send the cardholder [a message] with explicit instructions on how to cancel a trial." The former implies you can't do recurring payments where the initial payment was a non-capturing authorization. The latter implies, well, mastercard expects you to get an email from your vendor (e.g. your newspaper or whatever). I suppose said email could be as obtuse as "See website for subscription information".
  • edoloughlin 8y ago
    From the article: "The rule change will require merchants to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing".
    • brandon272 8y ago
      But how?
      • xeromal 8y ago
        Asking the customer to confirm by call, text, or email
    • auiya 8y ago
      It will be interesting to see what kind of scandalous language/tactics merchants will use to trick you into offering approval.
• arthurcolle 8y ago
  they should get the Nobel Peace Prize for this.
• mc32 8y ago
  Hurray! This is stupendous! I wish other CC brands follow the lead here in slaying this nefarious anti-pattern. There are so many services which require _you_ to actively go and cancel when all you wanted was to trial something, but they required you to commit a CC knowing there'd be a large percentage of people who forget to cancel. Thank you MC for raising the bar for other CC brands.
  • petilon 8y ago
    A good example is SiriusXM. They give you a lowball initial offer, and the fine print says that at the end of the offer period the subscription will automatically renew at "then current" rates. To cancel you have to call their 800 number (which of course will put you on hold long enough to make you give up.) MasterCard is making an awesome first step here. The next step is to insist that companies must let you cancel subscriptions online, just like this California law: https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance...
    • hackits 8y ago
      Reason why I just using a 3rd party between the business and my credit card. Have no problem with a 3rd party taking a cut but standardizing the whole process through a single interface to cancel subscriptions services without needing to go through all the crap.
      • ekanes 8y ago
        Sounds pretty cool - what service do you use?
        • jacob019 8y ago
          privacy.com works well for this sort of thing
          • 8y ago
• sdan 8y ago
  I'm going to switch to Mastercard for this single reason alone.
  • rixrax 8y ago
    Came here to say the same. I may wait it out a bit to see/hear how it will work in real life, but assuming it will, I think I'll get one for using on-line. My second thought was that I hope sites won't stop accepting Master Cards because of this, but I can only assume that they have large enough market share to make this risk negligent.
  • omosubi 8y ago
    MasterCard sells your data to Google fyi, not sure if the same can be said of the other cc companies I just wish I didn't have two of them https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-08-30/googl...
    • kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      The same can be said of all CC companies. They've been playing this game for 50+ years.
• nell 8y ago
  Good to see the promise of free market competition at work, although it is happening within a duopoly bubble.
• joezydeco 8y ago
  Whatever happened to the one-time-use numbers that cards like Discover would generate on demand? Why wouldn’t that work for a trial-to-buy setup that’s programmed to fail once the trial is over?
  • cronix 8y ago
    Those can be determined by the CC number, and a lot of companies (and some processors) just won't accept them (they're used a lot for money laundering since you can buy them with cash). For instance, Stripe reports them as "prepaid" and you can reject them. https://stripe.com/docs/api/cards/object#card_object-funding https://stripe.com/docs/api/cards/object#card_object-funding
    • joezydeco 8y ago
      Didn't know they're now regarded as prepaid. Thanks for the tip.
  • StillBored 8y ago
    The discover ones weren't time/amount limited so they didn't solve the recurring transaction problem as long as it was the same merchant making the charge. The security with the discover ones were also their largest problem. The number was basically locked to the merchant account/service provider where the charge was initially made. So places like amazon that seem to use multiple CC processors (or just hand of the numbers to 3rd parties, not sure what they are actually doing) wouldn't work with them. My MC though has a similar service where I can select the expiration and max amount that can be charged. I've used them to buy services I didn't want to bother canceling in the past. Although again, they sometimes don't seem to work (probably because the numbers are listed as prepaid).
• tmp092 8y ago
  I can't recommend privacy.com enough for this very reason.
  • craigds 8y ago
    Looks awesome but as with all these services, only available in the US. So irritating
    • mnx 8y ago
      in the EU, you can use revolut - their paid plan seems to provide a service pretty similiar to privacy.com
• rahimnathwani 8y ago
  The first paragraph suggests you'll need to explicitly aurhorise the first payment. The third paragraph suggests you'll just receive cancellation instructions before the first payment. The former would be a massive improvement. The latter is similar to what most (sadly, not all) companies do already. Not sure which is the case. Anyone got a better source?
  • nobrains 8y ago
    Yes. This was my same thought. So what if they will send you instructions to cancel? As petilion (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=petilon https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=petilon) mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18927948) the instructions are designed to make you give up the cancellation process. The right mechanism should be to request explicit authorization.
    • sirn 8y ago
      The whole credit card payment system is built on another legacy system (we have emboss letter on credit card because of compatibility with a zip-zap machine!) so having explicit authorization consent for recurring payment is probably not going to be as easy as it seems. The last time payment industry tried to do something that resembles an explicit user consent, it resulted in the 3-D Secure system, which is horrendous and not even secure.
      • Silhouette 8y ago
        The last time payment industry tried to do something that resembles an explicit user consent, it resulted in the 3-D Secure system, which is horrendous and not even secure. Meanwhile, merchants in Europe are looking forward to the new Strong Customer Authentication rules under PSD2 that will come into effect later this year. At least it will be interesting to have hard data on how much damage that causes and whether the damage is worse than the cost of fraud it will supposedly prevent.
        • 8y ago
• greenyoda 8y ago
  Link to original source: https://newsroom.mastercard.com/2019/01/16/free-trials-without-the-hassle https://newsroom.mastercard.com/2019/01/16/free-trials-witho... HN Guidelines say: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • dang 8y ago
    OK, we've changed to that from https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/16/18185468/mastercard-free-trials-stop-automatic-billing-new-policy-rule https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/16/18185468/mastercard-free-.... Thanks!
• millstone 8y ago
  This is a lovely consumer-empowering move. Every service should be cancellable without going through a Rentention Specialist. I will plug a service I use (no other relation): privacy.com. It creates credit cards with pre-set spending limits, one-time or recurring. 1-800-hold-forever? No thanks, I'll just send the email and disengage the money hose. Hopefully this sort of service becomes widespread, and services become less dependent on high-friction in cancellation.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    Presumably, the merchant I'm dealing with gets enough information about me to identify me. Couldn't they maintain a "blacklist" of people who use Privacy cards?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • voltagex_ 8y ago
      Hell, I have enough trouble with my normal cards being rejected by US/UK services (I'm in Australia), let alone cards that may give me a higher "risk score" with merchants.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • igetspam 8y ago
      Privacy works by buying large blocks of gift card numbers and issuing them on demand. A vendor can (and some do) reject gift cards. For those that don't, you can use any billing name/address you'd like and the cards will verify. Privacy uses the car number + expiration + cvv2 code to validate the card. I've had a single merchant reject a purchase because I used "${merchant_name} Customer" as the billing name. I also us a blackhole mailing address to avoid the seemingly natural inclination of various vendors to send paper mailers that I don't want.
  • tomnipotent 8y ago
    I'll also point out Teampay.co that creates single-use CCs (with specific limits) through Slack similar to "I want to buy a MacBook Pro from Apple for $1,845.50". It's been an amazing tool. Also supports recurring weekly/monthly/annual charges and sends a Slack message every time the cards you approve are used.
• draw_down 8y ago
  Apps like Venmo and square cash have a “card” option you can turn on and off. I turn it on for a minute so the auth will work, then turn it back off.
• liamcardenas 8y ago
  I see these sort of free trials as subsidies for non-lazy people by lazy people. If you want to put in the effort -- you can get value, free of charge. If merchants can't use that method any longer, I fear this will no longer be an option for people willing to put the work in. Then again... I am definitely a lazy one.
• GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  ...and free trials stop accepting MasterCard, maybe?
  • brettz 8y ago
    Or $1 trials when it's a MasterCard CC, then no need for a text/email.
    • vageli 8y ago
      That sounds like it would be against the merchant agreement. Plus, unless you are your own payment processor, how would you know the card type?
      • brettz 8y ago
        All Visas start with 4 and MC start with 5. I think you're right though, I doubt they allow price changes based on card type.
        • vageli 8y ago
          How would you see the credit card number at all unless you are the payment processor? Payment processors show the interface into which the credit card number is entered.
  • dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    Possibly. Although this would mark a clear demarcation line between these services that offer a genuine trial period and those who just count on your forgetting to cancel or deliberately try to make cancelling difficult or time-consuming.
• ggm 8y ago
  Like the outcome, hate the process. 1) it should be an industry-wide, international norm 2) it should be an obligation on the card issuer, enforced. By financial regulation, worldwide. I'm not a fan of industry self-regulation. I'm not a fan of product differentiation by security model, in this space. Sure, there are different kinds of risk and mitigation, this feels like something which should be base-level norm.
  • noarchy 8y ago
    >it should be an obligation on the card issuer, enforced. By financial regulation, worldwide. Which worldwide financial body will make this happen? Mastercard did this without any prodding from a government, as far as I know. >I'm not a fan of industry self-regulation. This simply seems like a case of a company offering something that customers want. Is Mastercard working with these companies to the extent that we can really call it "self-regulation"?
    • adrianratnapala 8y ago
      > This simply seems like a case of a company offering something that customers want Part of the service that government regulation provides is dimensionality reduction. That is, when you buy X, you might weigh the price up against two to five observable qualities, but there are a hundred more that you can't observe until they bite you later. So capitalism needs some way collapsing those unobservables down. The mechanisms I can think of is: 1. Reputation of the vendor. 2. Other consumers observing what you can't. 3. Government regulation to pin them down to an enforced standard. 4. Other private business partners enforcing government-like rules (for whatever reason). ggm prefers mechanism 3 to 1,2 and 4. Personally I don't have much faith in any of these four mechanisms, though I am glad when any one of them actually does work. This seems to be a case are (2) has worked in that MC has decided to make an obscure quality improvement that only some users will notice though many will benefit from, and might become a case of (4) working if they really do cause vendors to improve their behaviour.
      • ggm 8y ago
• Silhouette 8y ago
  For each payment thereafter, the merchant will have to send a receipt to the cardholder for each transaction by email or text message with clear instructions on how to cancel the service if the consumer so desires. In addition, all charges that appear on the cardholder’s statement must now include the merchant website URL or the phone number of the store where the cardholder made the purchase. This looks like a significant change in policy. I wonder how merchants are supposed to know about it unless they happen to have read a source like HN today and found their way to the original MC article. I also wonder what the consequences will be for non-compliance and what will happen if a situation is misunderstood by a payment service like PayPal or Stripe. For example, if we have a regular subscriber who is changing to a new card, we will typically use the payment service's "trial period" facility to delay the first charge on that new card until their regular renewal date so they don't get double-charged for the period in between. That's not a trial period in the normal sense of the term; to the customer, it just means they carry on paying exactly as they have but payments start coming from their new card instead. But there's not necessarily any way for a payment service to know that.
  • swish_bob 8y ago
    The onus for communicating with the merchants will be put on the acquiring bank.
• brokenmachine 8y ago
  Will this help in any way with gyms that are easy to sign up for, but impossible to leave?
• 14 8y ago
  VISA sent Netflix my new card details. I thought since my card was new and they didn't have the numbers and happened to lose my job at the same time thought I was safe and was just going to quit Netflix. Instead visa sends them the new numbers so I don't have a "disruption of service". Not cool visa.
  • usaphp 8y ago
    Well for me it was the opposite, I had a lot of services attached to the same card and when I got a new card it was such a nice feeling that I did not have to go through the trouble of updating each of them with new card information.
    • modeless 8y ago
      When I got a new card they "helpfully" sent the new number to Redbox, who then charged me a late fee when the thieves who originally skimmed my card didn't return the movie they "rented".
    • hombre_fatal 8y ago
      It's UX failure. PayPal and Apple's Store show me a list of all services that are authorized to pull money from my account. CCs don't. You may have to do a nontrivial amount of research (or at least worrying) to ensure that everything is accounted for by the next charge cycle if you were to switch CC numbers without charge forwarding. If CCs did have a paradigm of services authorized to re-bill you, then we wouldn't have people changing CC numbers to "reset" their re-bills nor to avoid future pulls from their account. But since CCs offer a UX clusterfuck, people will often find the need to clean the slate.
  • Silhouette 8y ago
    This is absolutely routine in the card payments industry and has been for a long time. People don't like having legitimate recurring charges disrupted just because their card provider mails them some new plastic every few years. If you want to cancel a service, cancel it with the service provider. Do not rely on anything to do with any payment method that you happen to believe might cancel it. Those mechanisms are for exceptional situations like an abusive merchant who has made it unreasonably difficult to cancel through the proper channels, not for your convenience in avoiding payments you've agreed to make.
• sp527 8y ago
  Next they should require customer consent for recurring billing. That might be more legislative in nature though (fat chance...).
  • jsmeaton 8y ago
    What other consent do you propose? The customer is already providing their credit card details. The only secure way of providing recurring consent would be something like a separate CVC.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      You could have a checkbox on the 3D Secure gateway page.
      • jsmeaton 8y ago
        Again, that would need to be a new standard that all payment providers honour. Not to mention 3DS is an optional extension for providers. The dodgy ones aren't going to provide either 3DS or a secondary "are you SURE you are ok with recurring payments?". The legit operators are already making it obvious when something is a recurring payment. The only secure way of getting customers to affirmatively consent to recurring payments, that I can think of, is a separate CVC or similar that's printed on the card. Still, I don't think this is a major problem worth solving. Most customers signing up for recurring payments are aware of what they're doing.
    • pessimizer 8y ago
      Call the customer and ask.
• ryansmccoy 8y ago
  Get a prepaid credit card from walgreens/cvs/shiftcard, download the app, add instant transfer from bank account, then only use/add money to when needed for services that require credit card for trial.
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  Paypal has monthly subscriptions but you can cancel them from the PayPal site. It's a pretty nice feature.
• miguelrochefort 8y ago
  They're not doing this to help consumers. They're doing this to save money processing complains and refunds.
  • alkonaut 8y ago
    Isn't it possible for both things to be true at the same time?
  • Jonnax 8y ago
    It's beneficial to their customers and reduces their costs.
  • theonemind 8y ago
    Adam Smith's invisible hand strikes again?
• jeena 8y ago
  I wonder why this hasn't been solved by some kind of a law which would apply to not only Mastercard a long time ago?
  • sachindhar 8y ago
    Because people who care about these types of issues don't have the resources/will to run for political office.
    • alkonaut 8y ago
      Yeah but what about in places with functioning democracy, surely this must already be the law somewhere?
      • bryanlarsen 8y ago
        Québec has such a law
• black-tea 8y ago
  This won't even stop Amazon. If you forget to cancel your Prime subscription they'll try charging you by putting a hold on the money before it's time to pay. If that fails they'll try charging other cards and payment methods you might have registered.
• smsm42 8y ago
  That's a great service. I've been avoiding such free trials as a rule because I was concerned I'll forget to cancel or have to be subjected to a runaround when trying to do so. Of course, this may make some companies forgo free trials, as that was exactly what they counted on, but for me it would be net benefit as I'll be able to do trials with companies that really honestly want to show me their service and convince me to buy, without fear.
• acosmism 8y ago
  nice. classic gym model is - get your routing and checking # , understand that you are likely never to use the gym after you forget your new years resolution, and then make it impossible to cancel. try signing up to planet fitness without having to give them a void check. canceling requires visiting the location from which you signed up from in person with a hand written letter. im glad there is budding competition in this space (banking). keeps companies like MastC in check
  • jchw 8y ago
    Planet Fitness did this crap to me. I actually used it but I moved and now I have a closer gym. Luckily, I had just moved to California, which had just mandated that you must be able to cancel a service online if you signed up online (Senate Bill No. 313.) After honestly very empty legal threats it was confirmed that my account was closed. Of course, if you really want to cause trouble you can do an ACH chargeback, but that could backfire.
• wsc981 8y ago
  Porn sites are gonna hate this.
  • leroy_masochist 8y ago
    My first thought upon seeing the article title on HN was "hmmm what would be a good porn stock to short today"
• Hacker_Support 8y ago
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• yason 8y ago
  I welcome Mastercard's move at the issue. If you do give your c/c number for free trials then this is probably most useful. Aside from that, I don't think I've ever given my c/c number for any "trial period" offer. I've mostly ever used the usage of that scheme as a red flag to steer away from the business before even considering signing up for anything. This is not merely because I'm lazy and I don't want to even think about remembering to cancel but because I probably wouldn't want to use such a service at all. The shabbiest businesses are heavily infested with this sort of trickery, but even some good businesses have followed. It doesn't bring any value to the user except one more place where you c/c details can leak away, one more thing to remember and potentially an extra charge that will just upset you. Trial periods can be implemented without a credit card if you really want to.
  • ddebernardy 8y ago
    That's correct when you're a business but not when you're dealing with consumers. Some of the latter will have no qualms creating new email addresses to "renew" their trial periods, effectively giving you free riders and bunk operational stats.
    • tjoff 8y ago
      Requiring a cc for that is the wrong solution.
      • esolyt 8y ago
        What's a better solution?
      • ddebernardy 8y ago
        If you've anything better to offer, methinks a gazillion marketers, designers, and SaaS developers out there will be all ears open. Here's the dilemma in a nutshell: - If you don't give full access to what you're offering during the trial period, would-be users won't get a feel of what they might be losing out on when the trial runs out. - If you do give full access during the trial period, but don't require some kind of hard to get unique enough identifier, a non-negligible users will create new accounts ad nauseam. (Alternative unique identifiers could be SSNs or ID cards or physical mail addresses. But these are all non-starters. And phone numbers and emails are free for all practical intents.)
• camerondoll 8y ago
  When I worked at one company where we had such scheme about 10% never cancelled and never used the service after a day or so. They were billed for years. I can't see this going away.
• cmelbye 8y ago
  How will it be enforced?
  • tribby 8y ago
    that was my takeaway as well, I feel like I must be missing something
• iicc 8y ago
  >Free Trials Without The Hassle So all the free trials will become $0.01 instead.
  • allworknoplay 8y ago
    Read the article, it concerns subscription payments in general as well.
• sandyhatches 8y ago
  And ever forward we do march, the death of personal responsibility.
  • koala_man 8y ago
    >Well if you didn't want to be billed you should have waited on hold for 45 minutes and argued with a person whose bonus was unaffected by whether you agreed to continue or hung up in frustration No u
• jayalpha 8y ago
  This will make many billing departments cry. Another solution is to create a temporary virtual card.
• darylteo 8y ago
  So as a service operating a subscription model, what steps do I need to take now to accomodate this new payment flow? I am with Stripe. I'm assuming the simple answer is to simply not accept credit cards for free trials but I don't know if my clients will like this answer.
• richardknop 8y ago
  This is a good step but it should be a law that applies industry wide. The dark pattern of offering free trials and only mentioning it will start a recurring billing after the trial ends in tiny letters somewhere in the fine print or buried in T&C is outrageous. It should be illegal to do this. If you offer a 14 day free trial, you should stop service after 14 days and then require explicit consent from customer to start recurring billing (you can send email to the customer before the trial ends asking them to give consent to start billing after it ends but it should not be automatic).
• dwighttk 8y ago
  They call it “free trials without the hassle” and I’m glad they are doing it, but I bet there will be many fewer companies willing to offer free trials if the opt out rate at the end of trials is high enough
  • imtyler 8y ago
    If the cost of maintaining one's business practices requires subsidization by means of deception then really shouldn't matter. Even if you're one of the ones who are benefitting and not getting screwed.
• nathan_f77 8y ago
  I used to be guilty of this with FormAPI [1]. I heard that it was a good idea to collect the credit card information in the sign up form, and then charge the card automatically after the 7-day free trial. But then people would just forget about it and I would basically be stealing their money for a few months until they cancelled. I had to refund a few people who were angry about it. I removed the credit card field from the sign-up form. I was also thinking that this might reduce friction, but I think it actually lowered my "conversion rate". (In quotes because it doesn't really count if you "convert" people who just forgot about it.) Another way would be to keep the credit input on the sign up form, but require an explicit opt-in before I start the subscription. I don't know that would help. If someone actually needs the service then they're going to add a credit card. FormAPI isn't a "nice-to-have" service, it either solves your problem or it doesn't. [1] https://formapi.io https://formapi.io
• gregoriol 8y ago
  What if you make a service that wants to bill at the end of the term? How would Mastercard differentiate that from trial? Also, apps like Uber, Bird, ... don't have payments until some time when you use them, how will Mastercard know it is a usage vs a trial/renew payment?
  • tyfon 8y ago
    Via the MCC [1] (merchant category code) 5968. [1] https://fs.fldfs.com/iwpapps/pcard/docs/MCCs.pdf https://fs.fldfs.com/iwpapps/pcard/docs/MCCs.pdf
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• nchlswu 8y ago
  This reminds me vaguely of when a provider automatically unsubscribes users from newsletters they don't read. Does anyone remember which company this is? Twitch?
• EastSmith 8y ago
  Nice. Next they should fix the yearly renewals. It's been couple of times where I'd subscribe for a service for a year, use it couple of months, then stop using it and forget about it. Suddenly a year later they take $100 or whatever without any prior notice. An email like "You have an yearly subscription with us. We will charge you $100 again next week." should be a standard.
• accnumnplus1 8y ago
  Bad day for Bezos.
• sailfast 8y ago
  Cool service for consumers. From a business perspective, if you depend on subscriptions there are plenty of other payment methods that will likely work just fine for these recurring bills. Somewhat snarky question: Do you think they will do this for their own annual fees?
• hirundo 8y ago
  I've just implemented and rolled out a trial-to-recurring feature for about 100 websites. I wish this post was more clear about how I need to update this feature to be compatible with this change. > The rule change will require merchants to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing We get approval for the recurring charges at the start of the trial. Apparently this is now not enough for MC. This sentence makes it sound like the user will have to opt in at the end of the trial to get billed. But the next sentence is: > To help cardholders with that decision, merchants will be required to send the cardholder – either by email or text – the transaction amount, payment date, merchant name along with explicit instructions on how to cancel a trial. That sounds like we need to notify the user, but just to give them the opportunity to opt out, not requiring them to opt in. So which is it? Opt in or opt out at the end of the trial? I'll have to make changes one way or the other, but do I need to just send out the notification and point them to the cancellation page, or do I need to notify them and send them to a go-ahead-and-start-charging-me page before we can start charging them? Can anyone parse this?
  • stronglikedan 8y ago
    I agree that the wording is not clear, but just to be on the safe side, you should probably eliminate the very obvious dark pattern of collecting payment details for a "free" trial, and just ask them to enter their payment details at the end of the trial.
    • hirundo 8y ago
      Is it so dark if you shine a bright light on it at the start? We collect credit card info as part of the free trial signup, and clearly state the recurring terms -- start date, amount and interval -- in a prominent box right over the submit button. If the transaction succeeds they immediately get a thank you email with the recurring terms prominently repeated again. There's also a link to the cancellation button, which is available immediately. I've accepted this sort of deal as a user and think it's only nefarious if it's not clear or if cancellation is difficult.
      • 8y ago
• octosphere 8y ago
  A separate issue, but still annoying nonetheless: Stripe has some forms where $x service costs for example $50.00 per year. After entering my CC credentials, it charges my card, but then when the following year arrives, the payment processor (Stripe) proceeds to then charge me for another year, and there is no way to cancel. It just assumes that my card will be hooked up forever (which is actually impossible since my CC will expire at a set year and set month). This is why I am an advocate of disposable CC services like Privacy[1] that have a small window of time for the expiration and stops cards from being sneakily charged without your consent. When I am charged without consent it's like a dark pattern[2] [1] https://privacy.com https://privacy.com * [2] https://darkpatterns.org/ https://darkpatterns.org/ * Note: Privacy.com is a U.S only service
  • pc86 8y ago
    If you buy a yearly service and you get charged for a second year, you're not being "sneakily charged without your consent." You have to accept some level of responsibility to manage your own finances and know what you're going to be charged for.
    • aeharding 8y ago
      Meh. People forget pretty easily. I discovered this (wasn't trying to trick people -- I gave full refund when requested) and implemented an email sent 7 days before charging the user for an annual subscription. Very easy to do with Stripe, and now users blame themselves (and not me) when their card accidentally gets charged for another year (procrastination after receiving the warning email, usually).
      • pc86 8y ago
        Yes they do forget easily. Hence my point about taking a little bit of responsibility. And saying that you're "sneakily charged without consent" is pretty close to the exact opposite of "I am bad with my finances and/or forgetful but I'm going to make it sound like you're a bad person."
• pc86 8y ago
  I'm 100% in favor of this - if your business includes people paying you without realizing it, or making it difficult or costly to cancel, you shouldn't be in business. However, won't merchants simply stop using free trials and go to a "$1 for 14 days" or similarly impulse-driven model? Sure the conversions compared to free will be tiny but impulse buying is a real thing and dumping someone into a $50/mo subscription after their $1 two week trial would still be complying with this new rule.
  • snarf21 8y ago
    We really need better consumer protections. I know there has been more talk that the ability to cancel must be as easy and the same manner as sign up. I'm surprised but glad that Mastercard is helping in this way. It would be great if they also added that other protections that are designed to take advantage of poor and disadvantaged people like 20%+ interest rates and high late fees.
    • pc86 8y ago
      It's important to distinguish between things designed to take advantage of poor people, and completely reasonable penalties/structures that happen to affect poor people more because, not surprisingly, it's hard not to have money. 20% interest is not inherent a bad thing and shouldn't be outlawed out of hand. If you lend me $20 today and in exchange I pay you back plus buy you a beer on Saturday, that's an astronomical interest rate. I co-own a brick and mortar business and we charge the maximum late fees allowed by law because people paying lay absolutely destroys our cash flow. It's not because we actually want the late fees - we'd much rather have people pay on time and be able to accurately plan for less money than have an influx of onerous fees. It's not uncommon for a profitable business to fail because cash flow is a problem.
      • craftyguy 8y ago
        20% of $20 has a MUCH smaller impact on someone who is suffering financially than 20% of $1000 so your analogy is not really the same in terms of impact.
• moneywoes 8y ago
  Hopefully other CC companies follow suit even though it hurts their own revenue prospects.
• brandon272 8y ago
  > For each payment thereafter, the merchant will have to send a receipt to the cardholder for each transaction by email or text message with clear instructions on how to cancel the service if the consumer so desires. Does this mean that for any service offering a free trial, every subsequent post-trial payment must come with an email or text receipt? What if it's a recurring service but it didn't have a free trial? Is the email/text receipt still required as part of Mastercard's rules? If it only applies to free trials, it sounds like a lot of merchants will simply stop offering free trials. I'm curious to see by which mechanism merchants are to "gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing".
• pbreit 8y ago
  Current HN headline does not match source headline. HN: " Mastercard will stop free trials from automatically billing once they're over" Source: "Free Trials Without The Hassle" And the source posting provides no indication that Mastercard will actually stop any billing. But instead is requiring merchants to notify customers via email/text how to cancel and send a receipt on each re-bill.
• wdr1 8y ago
  A good step forward, although I wish they required explicit consent to continue. I.e., opt-in, not opt-out, for the renewal.