Why Is Illinois Only Concerned About Canceling Online Gaming Services?
from the a-bit-narrowly-focused,-don't-you-think? dept
An anonymous reader points us to the news that the state of Illinois has passed a law in response to the complaint of one individual that it was extremely difficult to cancel his online subscription to the game Final Fantasy XI. So, now it's been added to the state's consumer fraud law that any online game needs to offer an easy online way to cancel the service. That's all well and good, but I'm wondering why it's limited only to online games? If you're going to go that far, why not focus on any online subscription service?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: cancelation, illinois, online gaming
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Good question!
But I second "why not all subscriptions?" There's been a couple places where I've signed up for a free 7-day trial, and when I went about trying to cancel it, all the website had was "Call this number M-F, 8am-5pm"
If it takes less than a minute to sign up, it shouldn't take an hour on hold to cancel.
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Re: Good question!
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Re: Good question!
I recently tried to cancel with 24hr Fitness and it took me three bloody days (resulting in another month's charge). I never got the same answer twice. I was thrown around on the phone. Lied to about how to cancel. Hung up on. Given to several recorded messages which hung up on me. Just about everything they could possibly do to make things more difficult, they did. Eventually, I had to go into the gym where I'd originally signed up and force them to cancel my membership. The broad "helping" me would barely look and talk to me and gave me all sorts of attitude before I was finally able to finalize the deal.
The sad thing is that I had only planned to place my account on hold for a couple months while I found a new job (I'd recently been laid off.) but instead I ended up canceling my subscription forever.
So definitely, a general law like that mentioned in the above article would definitely be a welcomed one. It would save people a hell of a lot of grief. (I know I felt like bashing heads through walls going through all that.)
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Holy $&*%
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Re: Good question!
it's really ridiculous...I think someone can tell how unneeded a service is by how many hoops they make you jump through to cancel.
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Re: Re: Good question!
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Took me ages to track down the way to cancel it, since there was no way to do so from the site itself. I had to track down the payment service they used (which itself wasn't listed on the site), and cancel it from there.
I was too embarassed to be angry. Aside from that, it was a fairly good con. I was almost proud of them. Luckily, I'm older and considerably wiser now.
But yeah. That type of thing should probably be illegal, for people who aren't good at the internets.
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Governments involvement in cancellations
I think a better law would be to ban "auto renewals".
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Re: Governments involvement in cancellations
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nothing like bad customer service
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Cause of the Scared Mommy Brigade
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Auto Renewals
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Contest the Charges
The next month they tried to charge me again, I again contested the charges and they were removed, this time they issued me a new card.
A month later I received a call from this company. The guy said my account was past due and they were going to cancel my account . . .
I told him to F**k off, I had canceled the account, and hung up on them.
I refuse to use trial memberships for this reason.
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we don't need a new law, just don't buy from these companies
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Re: we don't need a new law, just don't buy from these companies
As a consumer, I shouldn't be punished for no longer being interested in a product I may have consumed in the past. When companies go out of their way to make you go out of your way for a simple account cancellation, they should be regulated to bring some sort of standardization to the process. It is a case of the free market apparently failing to provide a good solution to the problem in the first place.
Well done Illinois' legislature. It's about time.
I do agree with the author that this should be extended to ANY kind of account. As stated above, we shouldn't be punished because we no longer wish to be customers of a particular business. That's total BS.
-Alias
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Re: Re: we don't need a new law, just don't buy from these companies
Call up [Visa/Mastercard/Discover/et al] and say "Yes, I'm having difficulty with a merchant, they refuse to respond in a timely fashion about canceling a service I have with them. Could you please stop payment until I can resolve this dispute with them?"
Trust me, I've had to do it in the past.
In my case, due to an AOL charge they snuck in with an opt-out thing some years back.
Your credit card agencies will respond quickly, and merchants will respond even quicker. Too many complaints and CC companies will refuse to do business with them.
Just don't do that without due diligence in actually trying to deal with the problem by more conventional means.
Hmm. The Consumerist might also have some insights on the subject.
Seems that the market has provided several avenues of addressing this problem to me...
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Yes, this is a pain.
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