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Customer choice and experience should almost always trump “increased costs”. Plus, this ignores practically the entirety of the rest of their comment, where th

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.

_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.