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Many years ago I added the feature to xbox.com to allow you to easily cancel your Xbox Live Gold subscription. We built a UX that was ideal for consumers - a co

• amelius 5y ago
  Why not fix it for everyone with an IP address that's not in your boss's area?
  • cvak 5y ago
    You think the boss even knew how to use that feature, or hell even had an Xbox? He just saw excel sheet with cancellation numbers, and asked someone what is happening.
  • AlexCoventry 5y ago
    Because subscriptions would keep dropping, the reasons would be investigated, and there's a high risk that the people responsible for the fraud would do time?
    • amelius 5y ago
      Jail time for refusing to implement a dark pattern?
      • AlexCoventry 5y ago
        No, for defrauding your employer. Having your heart in the right place is not a reliable legal defense.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• IngvarLynn 5y ago
  >we knew it wouldn't change anything. We'd just be replaced by someone that would. Ye goode olde self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • fridif 5y ago
    I think history has proven that there will always be someone willing to do what hundreds of millions of people wont
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • dwaltrip 5y ago
      Certain bad things that people used to do don't happen anymore. This must mean that, in general, actions really do matter -- even if it is very hard to know ahead of time which ones will have a significant impact.
  • newsclues 5y ago
    If I need a job, if the money is right my ethics are negotiable. This is the norm.
    • saurik 5y ago
      Sure; but then don't also try to justify the action by saying someone else would have done it in your place? "I need a job, even an unethical one, and refuse to feel bad about that" is a completely different argument than "I would have been replaced by someone who would have done the same, and so don't need to feel bad about it".
• suzzer99 5y ago
  There needs to be a law that any subscription that can be signed up for online should be cancelable online. I'm not in favor of just implementing new laws willy nilly. But it's clear that companies are never going to do this on their own.
  • neolog 5y ago
    California has that law
    • bilbo0s 5y ago
      Which is great for California, but what about everyone else? I think that was the point of the comment.
      • yumraj 5y ago
        > Which is great for California, but what about everyone else? Vote in the next election for people/party that are more consumer friendly than industry friendly. For all its flaws, CA had some of the most consumer and employee friendly (such as no non compete) laws.
        • tkojames 5y ago
          I feel the lack of non compete is one of the main reasons tech took off in CA. That and the weather. For as much as people say starting a business in CA is hard, and it can be. For tech it is so easy I can just quit my job and start my company.
      • ucm_edge 5y ago
        Often times if you change your address to be a CA address, websites will suddenly reveal an online cancel option. I swapped my parents' NYT account to be my CA address and suddenly "click here to cancel" was displayed on the website. While I agree it should be a default setting, it's a useful little trick.
• josefresco 5y ago
  > So we complied, but we all lost a little bit of our faith in Xbox that day. You mean shady subscription business models right? Because Microsoft is certainly not alone. Just the other day I had to CALL (as the only option) Network Solutions to cancel a security product.
  • serf 5y ago
    >You mean shady subscription business models right? Because Microsoft is certainly not alone. so what that Microsoft isn't alone, their (poster) experience allows them to know unequivocally that Microsoft and the employees that work there make decisions that don't align with their personal ethics -- so they take out their anger on Microsoft. the statement '...but we all lost a little bit of faith in shady subscription business models ' makes no sense -- the shady ones don't self identify, and it's not the methodology that is generally despised, it's the entities that that employ such methodologies against the public.
• macd 5y ago
  It's so short-sighted too. I signed up for America's Test Kitchen one time, because they had a nice program for learning the basics. Probably used it for a couple months, and then I was done with that content and wanted to cancel. Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled. I actually loved the content, and would probably have resubscribed for a month here and there. (Cook's Illustrated is part of the same group and their content is also great.) But I will never do it again because of this experience. How many people decided to get the new Playstation next time because of a frustrating experience cancelling their xbox subscription? You won't see those numbers in a spreadsheet.
  • boring_twenties 5y ago
    > Of course, even though you can sign up online, you have to cancel on the phone. On hold for 20-30 minutes during work hours, then talk to the rep, then listen to their retention offer, then it's successfully cancelled. I haven't been in this situation, but I always imagined that there is a simple way out: send them a certified letter instructing them to cancel your subscription. If they continue charging after that, it's chargeback time. Any opinions on whether or not this would work?
    • staticautomatic 5y ago
      The answer would be in the user agreement. If it does not enumerate permissible ways of cancelling, then yes. Otherwise idk but probably not. Contract language which limits methods of cancelling is likely enforceable unless there’s a statute prohibiting it.
    • jmtulloss 5y ago
      You can also just chargeback the charge on your credit card. You’ll probably win if they make it hard to cancel and they’ll get the message fast
    • codewithcheese 5y ago
      That has worked for me before. A company which explicitly said they do not process cancellations via support form or email. I sent an email saying I wish to cancel and I consider the email reasonable notification and I will chargeback any further charges. They cancelled the account.
• viro 5y ago
  dark patterns that require you to call the company should be illegal... like criminally illegal. Edit: how is this a controversial take
• api 5y ago
  Anything that makes me call to cancel never ever gets my business again.
  • viro 5y ago
    If you can sign up without a call you should be able to cancel without a call. Its the #1 reason Im pro-apple enforcing its IAP stuff.
• svnpenn 5y ago
  > We'd just be replaced by someone that would. IE, you're part of the problem. You're just rationalizing to make yourself feel better.
  • tpoacher 5y ago
    Only in the same sense that if you dodge a bullet, you're responsible for whatever person got killed instead of you.
    • saurik 5y ago
      Not that I think your analogy is a reasonable one anyway--as, if nothing else, you took the action here, picking up the gun and being told to fire it--but it doesn't work even if you pretend it makes sense: if no one ever tried to doge bullets then someone always gets shot... but if everyone tries (as they should) then maybe no one gets shot; it is simply incorrect to assume that someone else is going to get shot and so it may as well be you (god this analogy is weird ;P).
      • tpoacher 5y ago
        If you bypass the whole "attack only the points of the analogy which do not relate to the argument" and focus on the points of the "analogy" that make it a suitably demonstrative specialization of the more general argument (and thus a formally valid argument, which in general an analogy is not, and thus a neither is a strawman counterargument), then: General Premises: 1. Agent A enforces Action X onto Agent B 2. Action X hurts C with some probability. Not Action X hurts B with high probability. 3. For all persons D under A, the probability of Not Action X is vanishingly small. Reasonable Argument: 1. If B performs Action X bad things happen to C. This makes them partly responsible. However, under premise 3, B's counterfactual contribution is vanishingly small, whereas A's contribution is close to 100%. Unreasonable argument: 1. As the final link in this particular chain of events, B is wholly responsible for the harm done to C, because had they suffered harm with high probability, they would have ensured the reduction of the probability of non-harm to C by a vanishingly small amount.
  • 5y ago
• o8r3oFTZPE 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing this Microsoft story. One way to interpret it is that the only people who would hire you and your colleagues and compensate you the most were [insert unpleasant description]. I say that sincerely as someone who many years ago worked in the software industry then left to work in other industries. I was not a developer but was someone who worked with management on a daily basis. I saw a marked difference in character between people working in management in the software industry versus the others. It is worth considering why you could not all quit en masse. Who else would hire you? What would they pay you? To be fair, as far as "dark patterns" go, specifically, making cancelling subscriptions difficult, I think that existed long before software companies. However, it is food for thought to consider what kind of industry is employing and compensating you the most for your "work", and what other industries are not. None of this implies any "blame" targeted at anyone, it just highlights what monetary value society places on programming and the cast of characters who set that value. I worked alongside programmers in other industries besides software and we never asked them to anything unethical. Some of them arguably could have tried to work at Microsoft. They had freedom of choice.
  • nonameiguess 5y ago
    This really has nothing to do with software as a product sector. XBox subscriptions aren't even subscriptions to software, right? It's subscriptions to game content, which is no different from subscribing to any other form of media. The one I'm still hooked on, that this reminds me I've now given something like $3,000 dollars to over 3 years because I've been too lazy to make a phone call and wait on hold, is the YMCA. Even religious nonprofits are engaging in dark patterns.
• morelisp 5y ago
  > We'd just be replaced by someone that would. Unionize.
• bsd44 5y ago
  "We fantasized about telling the VP to stick it and quitting en masse, but we knew it wouldn't change anything. We'd just be replaced by someone that would." That's a very bad argument. If you guide yourself by that logic then you can't really blame anyone for doing anything, because everything is justified.
  • CardenB 5y ago
    He isn’t applying the logic to everything, he is applying it to one thing. It’s possible for the argument to be true in this context and false in another context.
  • mdgrech23 5y ago
    so I take it you don't have a mortgage or a family to support?
    • tedivm 5y ago
      It is actually possible to be an ethical person and pay the bills, it just takes a bit of effort.
    • saurik 5y ago
      But that is a different argument with a different justification: "we knew it was unethical, but we needed the money (and couldn't really personally afford taking this stance today as we didn't have alternative ethical jobs lined up that could pay as much; <- implied) and so, on the balance, we are OK with our decision" is simply not the same as "someone else would have done it anyway, so we can feel OK that we did it ourselves".
• hangonhn 5y ago
  Someone should make a website that rates services by ease of unsubscribing and include a link to the unsubscribe link if one exists. A few publications that I enjoy is on my "Never subscribe" list because of the difficulty of unsubscribing. On the other hand, unsubscribing from HBO Max (at least via Apple TV) was so easy that I don't hesitate to unsubscribe and resubscribe and have done so a couple of times.
• musicale 5y ago
  > Once word spread that you could do it on the web, huge numbers of customers, that had been stuck paying for an Xbox Live Gold subscription they weren't using, began cancelling. Unfortunately that's the allure of dark and customer-hostile patterns - they extract a lot of money from people, at least in the short term. If you're Microsoft/Xbox, though, you might want to think a bit about long term.
• ping_pong 5y ago
  Over a decade ago, I worked at well-known web site in one of the smaller properties. The site looked like it was from the mid-90s. A year-long effort was made to upgrade the site to something more modern, and it was beautiful. It went live, and almost immediately the number of ad clicks dropped significantly. It turned out that the older site was so hard to use that customers would inadvertently click on ads, bringing up the revenue. The new site was so much easier to use that customers clicked on less ads. The changes were almost immediately rolled back. I think eventually the new site was put back in, but only after they ensured that ad clicks wouldn't go down precipitiously, but I had after by then.
• a_f 5y ago
  > but we knew it wouldn't change anything Maybe the immediate threat of developers quiting wouldn't have, but I think something might have eventually. Probably change from the top. My recent experience with the xbox gamepass app on Windows let me cancel my subscription fairly easily on both the console and the pc (two different accounts) without ever having to call someone. I like to think the culture at xbox has changed, maybe not microsoft, but maybe it will trickel up eventually.
• ummonk 5y ago
  And this is why I find the apple walled garden to be pro-consumer. I’m happy to pay the Apple tax in exchange for being able to cancel subscriptions easily.
• ElViajero 5y ago
  > We fantasized about telling the VP to stick it and quitting en masse, but we knew it wouldn't change anything. We'd just be replaced by someone that would. I sympathize with you. If you have quit, you would have my admiration and gratitude. But, what you did is reasonable. Microsoft was not doing anything illegal. This is the reason why regulations exists. If companies are abusing consumers by making it difficult to cancel a service, developers cannot be the responsible to bring justice. Governments have that responsibility. > I ran the diff. Each file had the same change - they had added code that makes an ajax saveEmail() call onBlur. In other words, email addresses were being saved to the database when a user inputs an email and the input loses focus. e.g. The article situation is solved by the GDPR. This would completely break the GDPR as it requires informed consent before saving personal information like an e-mail. If your government is not solved this issues, it is time to get a better one. I wish people, including in this threat, stop blaming employees for the fault of the bad action corporations. Corporation morality is a good example when the total is less than the sum of its parts.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  A few years ago, I had an NYT subscription. I had to cancel it for some reason, and the cancellation flow was some of the worst UX I've ever experienced. You had to actually live DM with some poor sod who was being paid to try to get you to change your mind like half a dozen times. It was worse than old GoDaddy upsells...worse than cancelling Photoshop (which, by the way, fyi, Adobe will drop price at least twice if you keep trying to cancel, cable-company-style) I would have resubscribed shortly thereafter if the cancellation flow had been good, or even just average. But because of how bad it was, I have never resubscribed, and most likely never will. Their cancellation UX cost them 5+ years of subscription revenue from me. Not only that but I go around telling people about how bad it was
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Also, imagine being that VP's bf/gf and trying to break up with them
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  This is one of those things that needs to be straightforwardly and strictly regulated. Mandatory one-click unsubscribe
• mro_name 5y ago
  That's treating humans like thermodynamical particles: if one way is easier than the other, things will end up on the easy side eventually. That is human dignity from the sales point of view: that of a particle.