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My honest take is: in an ideal world it should become possible to unsubscribe through our bank. This also would prevent any dirty trick from companies trying t

by EZ-E 6mo ago

My honest take is: in an ideal world it should become possible to unsubscribe through our bank. This also would prevent any dirty trick from companies trying to obfuscate unsubscribing.

fontain 6mo ago
You can in Europe, e.g: https://wise.com/help/articles/1CoZht05rHDEJcycXU2RMh/what-are-recurring-wise-card-payments https://wise.com/help/articles/1CoZht05rHDEJcycXU2RMh/what-a...
- SkiFire13 6mo ago
  I don't think that's standardized, it probably only has some heuristic to detect a subscription's associated payments and rejects them. It will not integrate in any way with merchants to cancel the subscription on their side, and in fact they suggest to first trying to cancel the subscription on the merchant side.
- chrisjj 6mo ago
  Not quite. "If you'd like to block a merchant and their recurring payments — please go directly to the merchant and ask them to stop recurring charges to your Wise card. If you can't reach the merchant, or they haven't cancelled your subscription after you've asked, you can block future recurring charges to your Wise card through your Wise account."
londons_explore 6mo ago
This needs to be augmented with a new bit of contract law which enables a new type of 'subscription' where the terms are set by law. Those terms would include things like "payments are monthly, service automatically ends when payments end, etc." As things stand today, plenty of consumers end subscriptions by blocking payment, which practically works, but opens the doors to a scumbag company bulk chasing all those unpaid subscriptions through the courts and getting leins on millions of homes for $150 each and templated court cases.
chrisjj 6mo ago
We can already through PayPal, making it easy to unsub. But, guess what, service providers don't like that. Equally they'd not like a bank's solution. However the payment card companies could handle this by facilitating subscriber to generate a new virtual card for each sub, then to cancel sub, cancel card. They'd need to qualify the current T&Cs which pass a charge through regardless.
Gigachad 6mo ago
This is possible in Australia via the new PayTo system. But it’s quite new, doesn’t work for international payments and so far not much uses it.
xnorswap 6mo ago
In the UK you already can for anything done via "Direct Debit", which covers a lot of regular payments.
dominicrose 6mo ago
Is "not paying" effectively the same thing as unsubscribing? I guess they could keep providing you the service and keep track of the debt you "owe" them. Once it becomes high enough they would find ways to claim the money.
- EZ-E 6mo ago
  Indeed. I tried once with a particularly shady company that required phone calls to unsubscribe. The service after 1 month unpaid, but the money was still owed and ultimately they sold the "debt" to one of those companies that will try to scare you into paying via threatening emails.

by EZ-E 6mo ago

My honest take is: in an ideal world it should become possible to unsubscribe through our bank. This also would prevent any dirty trick from companies trying to obfuscate unsubscribing.

fontain 6mo ago

You can in Europe, e.g: https://wise.com/help/articles/1CoZht05rHDEJcycXU2RMh/what-are-recurring-wise-card-payments https://wise.com/help/articles/1CoZht05rHDEJcycXU2RMh/what-a...

SkiFire13 6mo ago
I don't think that's standardized, it probably only has some heuristic to detect a subscription's associated payments and rejects them. It will not integrate in any way with merchants to cancel the subscription on their side, and in fact they suggest to first trying to cancel the subscription on the merchant side.
chrisjj 6mo ago
Not quite. "If you'd like to block a merchant and their recurring payments — please go directly to the merchant and ask them to stop recurring charges to your Wise card. If you can't reach the merchant, or they haven't cancelled your subscription after you've asked, you can block future recurring charges to your Wise card through your Wise account."

londons_explore 6mo ago

This needs to be augmented with a new bit of contract law which enables a new type of 'subscription' where the terms are set by law. Those terms would include things like "payments are monthly, service automatically ends when payments end, etc." As things stand today, plenty of consumers end subscriptions by blocking payment, which practically works, but opens the doors to a scumbag company bulk chasing all those unpaid subscriptions through the courts and getting leins on millions of homes for $150 each and templated court cases.

chrisjj 6mo ago

We can already through PayPal, making it easy to unsub. But, guess what, service providers don't like that. Equally they'd not like a bank's solution. However the payment card companies could handle this by facilitating subscriber to generate a new virtual card for each sub, then to cancel sub, cancel card. They'd need to qualify the current T&Cs which pass a charge through regardless.

Gigachad 6mo ago

This is possible in Australia via the new PayTo system. But it’s quite new, doesn’t work for international payments and so far not much uses it.

xnorswap 6mo ago

In the UK you already can for anything done via "Direct Debit", which covers a lot of regular payments.

dominicrose 6mo ago

Is "not paying" effectively the same thing as unsubscribing? I guess they could keep providing you the service and keep track of the debt you "owe" them. Once it becomes high enough they would find ways to claim the money.

EZ-E 6mo ago
Indeed. I tried once with a particularly shady company that required phone calls to unsubscribe. The service after 1 month unpaid, but the money was still owed and ultimately they sold the "debt" to one of those companies that will try to scare you into paying via threatening emails.