What I want to see them tackle is automatic renewals for subscriptions. It should be the law that when you sign up for a subscription service, you have to opt in if you want automatic renewal. What every service does is make you sign up for automatic renewal, and then you have to remember to cancel. And even though most sites will extend your subscription to the date you’ve paid thru so you can go cancel right away, that’s never stated clearly on their site.
I like what they recently did with the phone contracts here in Germany. The initial contract is 2 years and still renews automatically but you can cancel monthly after those 2 years.
Automatic renewal is fine if it’s not automatically renewed for a whole year or more imho as it’s usually just convenient
We have this in the Netherlands for almost all subscription products, except it is a initial contract period, (max 2 years )and then it becomes 30 day… not even month to month.
Exceptions are specific to insurance products and some other things but even most of these orgs now just go with 30 days after the initial contract.
And contracts must be able to be cancelled the same way it was started.
This was a couple years ago and it was a trial of the Hulu no ads plan. According to This help page they don’t even offer trials of the no ads plan anymore. The page you referenced also states that the Hulu + live TV trial ends immediately upon cancelation.
Still, your original comment was a bit misleading then. Ending something that wasn’t paid for immediately upon cancellation is OK in my book. Not great, but not bad, either.
What I want to see them tackle is automatic renewals for subscriptions. It should be the law that when you sign up for a subscription service, you have to opt in if you want automatic renewal. What every service does is make you sign up for automatic renewal, and then you have to remember to cancel. And even though most sites will extend your subscription to the date you’ve paid thru so you can go cancel right away, that’s never stated clearly on their site.
Not doing that is fraud/theft. It’s fine for free trials because the customer didn’t pay anything.
I like what they recently did with the phone contracts here in Germany. The initial contract is 2 years and still renews automatically but you can cancel monthly after those 2 years.
Automatic renewal is fine if it’s not automatically renewed for a whole year or more imho as it’s usually just convenient
We have this in the Netherlands for almost all subscription products, except it is a initial contract period, (max 2 years )and then it becomes 30 day… not even month to month.
Exceptions are specific to insurance products and some other things but even most of these orgs now just go with 30 days after the initial contract.
And contracts must be able to be cancelled the same way it was started.
I found out the hard way that Hulu ends your subscription immediately.
Edit: I was remembering a free trial, not paid subscription.
Is that even legal in the States? Or do you at least get a partial refund for the remainder of the month?
That’s not even true, it shows clearly on their website that is not the case
https://help.hulu.com/article/hulu-cancel-hulu-subscription
This was a couple years ago and it was a trial of the Hulu no ads plan. According to This help page they don’t even offer trials of the no ads plan anymore. The page you referenced also states that the Hulu + live TV trial ends immediately upon cancelation.
Still, your original comment was a bit misleading then. Ending something that wasn’t paid for immediately upon cancellation is OK in my book. Not great, but not bad, either.