Security Firms Fined Over Never-Ending Subscriptions 194
Barence writes "'Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers' subscriptions without their consent.' The two companies were reported to the New York Attorney General after people complained that their credit cards were being charged without their consent. The investigators found that information about the auto-renewals was hidden at the bottom of long web pages or buried in the EULA."
Re:Pathetic (Score:2, Interesting)
No doubt. That is simply cost-of-business to those crap-peddlers.
Sting those bastards with a charge back (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not immediately clear if the companies will be governed by the same rules in the UK.
The charge-back form from your bank, will most likely have this scenario as one of the generic reasons for issuing a charge back.
I caught sneaky virgin media dipping in for an extra month (before they turned super evil), but the money was back in my account within a few weeks.
They'll get a charge back fee for sure; though the companies size probably makes them immune from having their card processing facility revoked, for excessive charge backs. Shame.
Rebills? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this means they will also begin cracking down on people promoting rebills (crap online products that start with an initial buy in price of $2 but then charge you another $60 after a month). Which they try to claim they're legal because they bury it 4 pages in on the Terms and Conditions page which is link to in fine print on the bottom of the sales page.
Re:EULA not binding (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fine (Score:4, Interesting)
You ever see that crap on TV "Try your free sample now! 30 day sample, FREE!!!". They tell you to verify you are over 18, you need a credit card. What they don't tell you, and what most people find out the hard way, is tucked away in your free samples informational booklet that you will never read is that when you ordered this free sample, you agreed to a monthly, recurring renewal of this product.
Ever want to try out a gym like Bally's? You know, where they offer you an introductory rate at almost nothing for a month? Yeah, about that. If you don't pay attention, then you forfeit your trial status if you don't appear at the gym something like 5x a week for that month, or you automatically become a "standard member" with all fee's and penalties applicable.
Ever seen a Cici's pizza, where they advertise their buffet for "Five Dollars and some change"? That is actually $5.99, without a drink, and if you are using anything but cash, you get nailed by a $1 "fee" for using their debit/credit machine. By the time you figure this out, you already have your family at the register, ready to eat. A little hard to back out then.
Some of these are more obvious than others, but the point is, we gave them an inch, and they took more than a mile. It is total bullshit and it is only getting worse.
Re:Do I get some of that fine money? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it very. . . interesting, that on the McAfee website, you can turn ON the auto-renew yourself through the account management, but to get it turned OFF, you have to contact their customer service reps. What kind of BS is that? I'm getting my parents away from McAfee, and I myself left McAfee a couple years back. They used to be a good company to deal with. Now, I just don't trust them anymore. Setting up your website like that just screams out to me that they are trying to make it as hard as possible for people to get out of the auto-renew.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't rely on the CC expiring. Sony managed to bill my expired Visa debit card for a Stars Wars subscription once. Turbine didn't for similar services. Not sure how that works but naturally i would have wanted it to be the opposite :( Got the bank to reverse after convincing them they couldn't explain it to my satisfaction why they let them bill an expired card.
Back on topic...
yup, that is barely a blip as a cost of doing business for them i am sure. Millions in subs vs $375k in fines is probably only a percent or 2. I don't see that they agreed to stop, nor any of the other bazillion companies doing the same. Just a feel-good deal for an Attorney General while the companies rewrite a couple lines of the EULA in CAPS....
Credit card fee$ (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't comment on the quality of Cici's food, but I must say that $1 goes overboard. PayPal would ding me for 47 cents on a $5.99 payment [$0.30 plus (2.9% * payment_size)], and a large business probably gets better rates. [Paypal almost certainly has the leverage to be paying much less than 2.9%, that's where their profit comes from. :)]
So while I approve of (in principle) extending the credit card charge to customers *, Cici's is definitely ripping people off with the amount of the charge.
*
Hiding costs like CC transaction fees seems like a bad idea, especially if they can easily be avoided.
Maybe if the customer had to pay the fees, they'd consider using another payment method. If the merchant can't or doesn't pass the fees along, it becomes a Not My Problem(TM)-type situation. The credit card companies obviously don't like that possibility, so I suspect that's why they stress "can't pass the fees along" in their merchant contracts. (There are antitrust issues here, and with the credit card merchant fees in general)
Although I don't have a citation handy, I suspect that in some areas, it's written into the relevant law that the fees can't be passed along - although shielding the public from shenanigans like Cici's is a good idea, the credit card company lobbyists want such laws for the reasons mentioned earlier.
On small sales, the flat-rate portion of the fee is a big deal. On low-margin sales, the percentage charge is important, so no wonder the end-merchants want to do something about it
Selling online, credit card/PayPal are a different issues, because it avoids the aggravation, cost and time-delay of mailed in payments. As such, for physical stores, it's a different story.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fine (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, how dare the customer pay for the transaction fees in a transaction they start.