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Cable Firms to FTC: We Shouldn’t Have to Let Users Cancel Service With a Click (www.wired.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (7 children)

German consumer protection FTW

The Fair Consumer Contracts Act will in future introduce a mandatory 2-step termination process […]. Wherever the consumer can conclude a subscription contract against payment, the provider should also give the consumer the opportunity to terminate at the same point. […A] cancellation button should be included on such registration pages for memberships at the first stage (with the wording “Cancel contracts here”). This “first” cancellation button should then lead to a confirmation page on the second level, where the respective user is identified and the consumer can effectively send the cancellation (i.e. with the wording “Cancel now”).

The law (German): https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__312k.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Pretty sure this law applies to the whole EU though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

i really don't think so. i hope it will be so in the future

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I was pretty sure that there is something and a lot of searching finally led me to the "Unfair Commercial Practices Directive" from 2005. There also is a guidance to that directive from 2021 that is found here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021XC1229(05)

Section 4.2.7 (dark patterns) is what is interesting for this topic. In the paragraph at the end of the section it includes the sentence:

unsubscribing from a service should be as easy as subscribing to the service

So it appears that the EU intended it that way but because it's only a directive, implementation differs by country. I also didn't see anything about being able to cancel in the same way you subscribed(e.g. that they can't force you to call or send a letter if you subscribed online), but afaik german law has a ruling like this.

Edit: I took so long to write this and find the links that I forgot the german law was the reason for the comment I answered...

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