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> You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in > any way that is most comfortable to you. [0] > For example, you can: > * send them a letter > *

by _2d30 5y ago

> You are legally entitled to unsubscribe from any contract in > any way that is most comfortable to you. [0] > For example, you can: > * send them a letter > * send them an email > * call them and tell anyone who picks up the phone > * write it on a napkin and hand it to an employee This is bad, actually. Unnecessarily raises costs. The FTC's perspective is much improved over this.

mynameisvlad 5y ago
Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that.
- _2d30 5y ago
  > Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. No it shouldn't and that should be obvious. > Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that. Yes, this is good, but the FTC's ruling does this as well so it's better. Only way a company could get around offering click to cancel would be to not offer online signup. Best of luck to those companies succeeding!
  - another-dave 5y ago
    I imagine though that you'll still have companies trying to stretch the definition of "at least as easy as sign-up" to breaking point. You didn't just "click to sign up", you probably filled in a sign-up form to create an account, clicked on a link in your email to validate your account, then filled in another form to add payment info. I wouldn't be surprised to see companies saying we can have multiple, multi-page 'exit' forms and an "Are you sure?" email and still be FTC compliant.
  - mynameisvlad 5y ago
    > No it shouldn't and that should be obvious. Explain why that should be obvious. If you’re building a service for a customer, said customer should be your top priority.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - _2d30 5y ago
      The number of things that could increase the costs of providing a service beyond willingness to pay for the service is essentially unbounded.
      - mynameisvlad 5y ago
        Providing customer service, including cancellation requests, is a fundamental part of running any customer-facing service. If you can't manage that within the "willingness to pay for the service" then perhaps you shouldn't be running said service in the first place. Because soon enough your customers will have issues and nowhere to turn to, and then they won't be customers anymore (unless, you know, you make it a pain in their asses to leave).
        _2d30 5y ago
        Weird straw man. No one said that there shouldn’t be customer service on offer. The statement I originally made was that a company shouldn’t be legally bound to provide customer service in every single possible channel of communication (eg handwritten napkins). I said that it’s actually good to be required to provide cancellation through the same channel that the service was initiated from. I’m pro customer service, anti absurdist requirements. Feel free to build your straw men, though!
        mynameisvlad 5y ago
        Processing napkin cancellation requests requires just about as much work as any other form of "manual" request -- whether that's over email, phone, etc. There is nothing special about processing a "napkin cancellation" or whatever other form, the process is the same: find the account, do whatever verification needs to be done, and cancel it on the backend. In the end, you still have to have a manual cancellation pipeline powered by customer service. Whether that's because a customer can't find the button, wants human confirmation that it's been cancelled, whathaveyou. An automated system will never cover 100% of your customer base. There is no strawman. Manual cancellation requests, just like any other manual request, is a standard part of Customer Service. If you can't provide CS, then you shouldn't be operating a customer-facing service.
- dqv 5y ago
  >Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. This seems like a very shiftable goalpost, so I would have to understand what situations you think aren’t almost always. >Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that. This doesn’t work in places like the US, in my experience. I stopped letting people cancel by phone (which a lot of people think is the most convenient way to cancel despite what is said here) after a few incidents in my first years of doing business: one person calling anonymously without identifying themselves saying “Hi I need to cancel my account, thanks bye” and two others who called to cancel and later said they never called to cancel after we terminated their accounts. Oh and the other 10 or so people who said they called to cancel and that we just didn’t cancel their account. It’s extremely hard to prove the negative that they didn’t call. So nah I don’t care about those kinds of customers. Tangible forms of cancellation only: a written notice with your account number and intent or the online cancellation form.
detuur 5y ago
It provides regulatory pressure to make unsubscribing as easy as possible. Those costs are entirely absent if customers can click a button. Otherwise, if the regulation merely prescribes that there has to be a button, there is little consequence if the button doesn't work, or you have to jump through 50 hoops to find it like in cookie banners. The Swedish model ensures that if your button is unsatisfactory, you'll be legally obliged to pay heed to any random letter, phone call, email, or indeed even napkin that comes in. It's a simple incentive.
- _2d30 5y ago
  > Otherwise, if the regulation merely prescribes that there has to be a button, there is little consequence if the button doesn't work, This is a ridiculous strawman. The Swedish model also makes it such that sufficiently motivated ass holes can make a company's life very difficult. Much better to have sensible legislation like the FTC's where your mode of unsubbing is equivalent to your mode of subbing. Really, shockingly good stuff from the FTC here. Unsurprisingly crappy stuff from Sweden. Also, looks like the Swedish outcomes are pretty shit! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255702 Will be interesting to see how it goes in the US.
  - dguest 5y ago
    I don't think most companies are maliciously breaking unsubscribe buttons, but there are a lot of websites that don't work on some browsers, are badly maintained to the point of being unusable, are confusing, or simply don't work because the people that maintain them aren't professional web designers. When your website is broken and you continue to charge me money, I don't think the onus on me to report the broken website, help your (maybe non-existent) IT division to find the bug, wait around for them to come up with a fix, and then help them beta test it. I should be able to file a ticket and say "I don't want your services please stop taking my money".
    - _2d30 5y ago
      And how would this case work against you in the FTC’s legislation? Seems pretty clear that if it doesn’t work to unsubscribe but it would work to subscribe then it’s against the ruling. If the website can’t actually add subscriptions then good luck to that company surviving!
ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
Many things which make society a better place impose a nonzero cost. Those things will certainly seem bad if you're focusing only on the cost, and ignoring the improvements.

by _2d30 5y ago

mynameisvlad 5y ago

Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that.

_2d30 5y ago
> Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. No it shouldn't and that should be obvious. > Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that. Yes, this is good, but the FTC's ruling does this as well so it's better. Only way a company could get around offering click to cancel would be to not offer online signup. Best of luck to those companies succeeding!
- another-dave 5y ago
  I imagine though that you'll still have companies trying to stretch the definition of "at least as easy as sign-up" to breaking point. You didn't just "click to sign up", you probably filled in a sign-up form to create an account, clicked on a link in your email to validate your account, then filled in another form to add payment info. I wouldn't be surprised to see companies saying we can have multiple, multi-page 'exit' forms and an "Are you sure?" email and still be FTC compliant.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  > No it shouldn't and that should be obvious. Explain why that should be obvious. If you’re building a service for a customer, said customer should be your top priority.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - _2d30 5y ago
    The number of things that could increase the costs of providing a service beyond willingness to pay for the service is essentially unbounded.
    - mynameisvlad 5y ago
      Providing customer service, including cancellation requests, is a fundamental part of running any customer-facing service. If you can't manage that within the "willingness to pay for the service" then perhaps you shouldn't be running said service in the first place. Because soon enough your customers will have issues and nowhere to turn to, and then they won't be customers anymore (unless, you know, you make it a pain in their asses to leave).
      - _2d30 5y ago
        Weird straw man. No one said that there shouldn’t be customer service on offer. The statement I originally made was that a company shouldn’t be legally bound to provide customer service in every single possible channel of communication (eg handwritten napkins). I said that it’s actually good to be required to provide cancellation through the same channel that the service was initiated from. I’m pro customer service, anti absurdist requirements. Feel free to build your straw men, though!
        mynameisvlad 5y ago
        Processing napkin cancellation requests requires just about as much work as any other form of "manual" request -- whether that's over email, phone, etc. There is nothing special about processing a "napkin cancellation" or whatever other form, the process is the same: find the account, do whatever verification needs to be done, and cancel it on the backend. In the end, you still have to have a manual cancellation pipeline powered by customer service. Whether that's because a customer can't find the button, wants human confirmation that it's been cancelled, whathaveyou. An automated system will never cover 100% of your customer base. There is no strawman. Manual cancellation requests, just like any other manual request, is a standard part of Customer Service. If you can't provide CS, then you shouldn't be operating a customer-facing service.
dqv 5y ago
>Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. This seems like a very shiftable goalpost, so I would have to understand what situations you think aren’t almost always. >Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where they explain that the extreme openness just means that companies make it absurdly easy to do so they explicitly don’t have to deal with all that. This doesn’t work in places like the US, in my experience. I stopped letting people cancel by phone (which a lot of people think is the most convenient way to cancel despite what is said here) after a few incidents in my first years of doing business: one person calling anonymously without identifying themselves saying “Hi I need to cancel my account, thanks bye” and two others who called to cancel and later said they never called to cancel after we terminated their accounts. Oh and the other 10 or so people who said they called to cancel and that we just didn’t cancel their account. It’s extremely hard to prove the negative that they didn’t call. So nah I don’t care about those kinds of customers. Tangible forms of cancellation only: a written notice with your account number and intent or the online cancellation form.

detuur 5y ago

It provides regulatory pressure to make unsubscribing as easy as possible. Those costs are entirely absent if customers can click a button. Otherwise, if the regulation merely prescribes that there has to be a button, there is little consequence if the button doesn't work, or you have to jump through 50 hoops to find it like in cookie banners. The Swedish model ensures that if your button is unsatisfactory, you'll be legally obliged to pay heed to any random letter, phone call, email, or indeed even napkin that comes in. It's a simple incentive.

_2d30 5y ago
> Otherwise, if the regulation merely prescribes that there has to be a button, there is little consequence if the button doesn't work, This is a ridiculous strawman. The Swedish model also makes it such that sufficiently motivated ass holes can make a company's life very difficult. Much better to have sensible legislation like the FTC's where your mode of unsubbing is equivalent to your mode of subbing. Really, shockingly good stuff from the FTC here. Unsurprisingly crappy stuff from Sweden. Also, looks like the Swedish outcomes are pretty shit! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255702 Will be interesting to see how it goes in the US.
- dguest 5y ago
  I don't think most companies are maliciously breaking unsubscribe buttons, but there are a lot of websites that don't work on some browsers, are badly maintained to the point of being unusable, are confusing, or simply don't work because the people that maintain them aren't professional web designers. When your website is broken and you continue to charge me money, I don't think the onus on me to report the broken website, help your (maybe non-existent) IT division to find the bug, wait around for them to come up with a fix, and then help them beta test it. I should be able to file a ticket and say "I don't want your services please stop taking my money".
  - _2d30 5y ago
    And how would this case work against you in the FTC’s legislation? Seems pretty clear that if it doesn’t work to unsubscribe but it would work to subscribe then it’s against the ruling. If the website can’t actually add subscriptions then good luck to that company surviving!

ImPostingOnHN 5y ago

Many things which make society a better place impose a nonzero cost. Those things will certainly seem bad if you're focusing only on the cost, and ignoring the improvements.