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A comment on Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel. Parent comment

Re:Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to c... by MarkSweep on Friday January 19, 2024 @09:39PM (#39064111)
It’s asymmetrical. On one side you have the consumer who wants to save $10 by canceling a service they don’t use. On the other side you have highly paid software engineers, data scientists, and product managers who have tens of thousands of dollars riding on meeting their metrics for subscriber retention. For example, Amazon implemented their “Iliad flow” to make it hard to cancel Prime.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/ftc-sues-amazon-...

I don’t think it is entirely fair to demand personal responsibility when the adversary has so much more resources and incentives for making it hard to cancel.

This personally affected my friend. English was not their first language and they were tricked by Amazon into signing up for Prime. The extra charges and difficulty of canceling caused much distress for their limited budget.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to c... by rixed on Friday January 19, 2024 @11:30PM (#39064683)
It's also asymmetrical because most often than not, subscribing is one click whereas unsubscribing is an obstacle course.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to c... by PeterisP on Saturday January 20, 2024 @03:27AM (#39065698)
This is one asymmetry which can and should be corrected by legal means; markets which require unsubscribing to be as easy as subscribing get a bit more 'healthy' for subscriptions than those that don't.
[ Parent | on HN ]