You Must Report Companies That Make It Harder to Cancel Than It Is to Register
Few companies make it difficult to sign up for their services. In fact, many make signing up too easy by offering potential customers free trials, discounts, and other enticing perks. However, what’s really mean is when those same companies make it nearly impossible to cancel your membership.
This is not just my opinion; The FTC agrees that if a company offers one way to subscribe to a service, it must also offer the same way to cancel. You shouldn’t be able to sign up for a platform with just a few clicks, but then you’ll have to sit on your phone for hours while a sales rep tries to convince you to stay. This is not true.
Many companies use this tactic in the United States, especially news outlets and publishing houses. According to the American Press Institute , only 41% of publishers surveyed offered an easy way to unsubscribe online. The New York Times is guilty of this practice, as are many local and national newspapers.
Fortunately, times are changing. Last year, the FTC announced that it would be cracking down on companies that find it harder to opt out of their services than to sign up for them. As Samuel Levine, director of the FTC Consumer Protection Bureau, says:
“Today’s enforcement policy statement makes it clear that tricking consumers into signing up for subscription programs or trapping them when they try to cancel is against the law… Firms that use dark templates and other dirty tricks should take note. .
With this announcement, the FTC makes it clear that companies must comply with three pillars:
- Clearly provide all relevant financial information, such as the total cost of the product being sold and cancellation deadlines, before the customer is charged.
- Make sure the customer has given consent before charging them for said service.
- Most importantly for this article, companies should provide customers with easy and simple cancellation steps. Cancellation methods should be as simple as product subscription methods.
Even with these rules in place, many companies still use fraudulent tactics to make it difficult to cancel services. When you encounter this behavior, you can do something about it: report the company to the FTC.
To do this, go to https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/ and fill out the report. Once you do this, the information will not only be shared with the Federal Trade Commission , but with more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
It is too early to tell how quickly and effectively these reports will change corporate behavior. It’s also unclear if the FTC will target certain industries while leaving others alone. Publishers are the clear offenders here, but many gyms offer simple subscription packages while trapping customers in memberships they can’t cancel. Let’s hope the FTC makes it easy to cancel all types of subscriptions and memberships like this, forcing companies to look for other (perhaps ethical ) methods to keep customers on board.