If the transaction succeeds they immediately get a thank you email with the recurring terms prominently repeated again. There's also a link to the cancellation button, which is available immediately.
I've accepted this sort of deal as a user and think it's only nefarious if it's not clear or if cancellation is difficult.
Absolutely. A lot of dark patterns are prominent. They prey on an innate human fallibility. In this case, memory.
If you're going to offer a free trial, then you should not need payment information until the end of the trial. You could start sending out reminders to add the payment information towards the end of the trial, instead of an email with a cancellation button, and that would not be a dark pattern. Either practice is a means to the same end, but only the former eliminates the possibility of people paying for what they didn't intend to.
Your trial is about to end. To continue receiving services,
please make payment of {PAYMENT_AMOUNT} by {DATE}. You will
need to authorize recurring payments in the amount of
{PAYMENT_AMOUNT}. You can do that by clicking {PAYMENT_LINK}.
If you would like to cancel the trial click {CANCEL_LINK}.
Please note that if we do not hear back from you by {DATE},
we will have to temporarily discontinue the service/product
until you authorize recurring payments.
> The rule change will require merchants to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing
We get approval for the recurring charges at the start of the trial. Apparently this is now not enough for MC. This sentence makes it sound like the user will have to opt in at the end of the trial to get billed. But the next sentence is:
> To help cardholders with that decision, merchants will be required to send the cardholder – either by email or text – the transaction amount, payment date, merchant name along with explicit instructions on how to cancel a trial.
That sounds like we need to notify the user, but just to give them the opportunity to opt out, not requiring them to opt in. So which is it? Opt in or opt out at the end of the trial?
I'll have to make changes one way or the other, but do I need to just send out the notification and point them to the cancellation page, or do I need to notify them and send them to a go-ahead-and-start-charging-me page before we can start charging them? Can anyone parse this?