Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

<comment><USER2> This was particularly interesting:

"Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

<comment><USER3> Those diverse experiences are exactly the purpose of a "liberal arts education," something that's derided here as bad job training. A degree in Shakespeare won't help with cache invalidation, but it'll sure spice up the naming.

<comment><USER4> I think of the underlying faults with that point of view on liberal arts education, one stands above all others. As holder of an engineering bachelors, I'll anecdotally attest to the widely known problem that

 _Undergraduate engineering degrees actively discourage building communication skills._

This above all else is the heart of that linear thinking problem. Many graduating engineers in the US are communication challenged. They can't perform a principled arguments, write evocatively, perform convincing. They lack the skills to perform critical analysis of other communication, any sort of eye for subtlety, and flat out lack the appreciation of good writing.

It's often explained away as if there is this single choice people make when they're young that they'll either be good at math/science or literature/history. Once you've made that choice, you're stuck socially, psychologically, practically. _But that's okay,_ goes the argument, _specialization is necessary and everybody is one-sided, really_.

So despite wide knowledge of this problem, schools combat it by deliberately watered-down english classes designed to not damage engineering GPAs. My alma mater required two english classes, both of which I got near perfect grades in by skipping class and writing half-minded, fantastical leaps of literary analysis on books I'd skimmed. I got perfect scores and remarks like "This is the best paper I've ever read". Literally. It also required a single semester "technical communication" course where we were introduced to business letter etiquette and the definition of _genre_.

As a firm believer that writing something down is the fastest, most powerful method to clarifying your thoughts, I find it despicable that engineering colleges don't provide these challenges. I find it corrosive that the dominant societal perspective is that it's ok if you can't write because _you're an engineer_. I think this directly leads to the sort of creativity rot I saw, all the time, in classmates.

My experiences may be anecdotal and localized to my college, which is one of the top engineering colleges in the US. I hope it is, and that this disgust is misdirected, but really I think it's larger than that.

\---

tl;dr? I'm completely convinced that a dreadful number of engineers are missing something central to anyone who wants to deal in complex ideas entirely because it's considered a liberal arts speciality. They're weak at techniques to critically and clearly articulate or analyze ideas aloud or in writing, the art and science of human communication.

(I'll also note that so far a huge part of the advice of how to survive graduate school is learning to write. People tell me it with the look in their eyes that says they've seen so many people fail miserably because of this sudden, new expectation. I'm know my writing needs a lot of improvement, but I know that of many of the people in my graduating class, many would require a near complete literary reversal before they could actually publish.)

</rant>

( _Edit: made it more clear that I'm not arguing with what sudont said. Written communication is hard._ )

<comment><USER3> Um: _"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things". Tim Bray quoting Phil Karlton_

If you haven't heard that quote, hopefully it'll conceptually expand to where my post completely agrees with you. If it doesn't, I completely agree with you.

My arts degree helps me think laterally in the extreme.

<comment><USER4> Ah, cool. Hadn't heard the quote actually, hah, though I was pretty sure you weren't _completely hardline serious_ that you'd summed up the benefits of liberal arts education.

You just tipped off a complaint I had (and have) building up inside. We're in the same boat, argumentatively. I'm just speaking (yelling, crying) from the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool. Originally published in Feb 1996 for those who are curious (like I was).

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I realised it was old, but didn't bothering figuring out the date.

Personally I would like it if people put the publication year in the title when posting articles such as this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jobs was entirely wrong about the web, and continues to be. WebObject's big- company focus ($50,000 for a license) is precisely why it is now dead. Meanwhile Personal HomePage script (now known as PHP) powers the world's largest website -- the little guy's tools won.

<comment><USER8> What WebObjects would have allowed us to do today if it hadn't been left to bitrot was write an app's business logic once, customise the interfaces and have a webapp, Mac app and iPhone app all from the same codebase. They would connect to the same database, and sync seamlessly.

You can feel the lack of it every time an iOS developer complains there isn't an out-of-the-box syncing solution. They're all using CoreData (which is a simplified cut-down version of WebObject's EOF); it should be a simple matter just to sync to a Mac app, let alone to a web site.

Instead, devs have to learn three different stacks and join them all up manually. Frustrating to watch when you know we've had something better since 1995, and it's sitting neglected.

If you see WebObjects as competing with PHP then yes, it absolutely lost. If you see it as creating the cloud 15 years before its time, then it's actually the only contender that comes anywhere close.

<comment><USER9> "What WebObjects would have allowed us to do today if it hadn't been left to bitrot was write an app's business logic once, customise the interfaces and have a webapp, Mac app and iPhone app all from the same codebase. They would connect to the same database, and sync seamlessly."

I think this is pie-in-the-sky just the same way his prediction of being able to write an app in "20% of the time" was.

"Write an apps business logic once." I've been developing software for a while now, 10 years, and I've never seen true company-wide (let alone world-wide) code reuse on a massive scale.

Yes, there is a lot of code reuse. And yes django and zend framework and RoR are all examples of code reuse.

But I've worked with so many entrepreneurs and CEO's who have this same wish: Write it once, Use it everywhere.

It just doesn't work that way in practice.

<comment><USER8> Ever actually used WebObjects? Especially in the objective-C days this is exactly what it did. (What became) Cocoa has pervasive MVC all the way through. Turning a WO app into a NS app was a matter of working on the V, as it should be.

<comment><USER9> Just because that's what it CAN do doesn't mean it will ever be used that way in practice.

There are many existing technologies that would let you "write it once and use it over and over in different platforms" which is the generic version of what you described specifically using iPhone, etc, as examples.

But in practice writing code general enough to do that takes much longer and is much more difficult and required more elite developers.

Might work fine for the companies that are Mecca for grade-a development talent. But for the bread and butter companies wherein 90% of software in this world is written? Please.

<comment><USER8> Lets separate out here Job's utopian spin and focus on what I'm actually talking about, which is not "global level code-reuse" or whatever generic strawman you're aiming for.

But let's say I'm writing a web app, perhaps in RoR. I build an entire model for the backend and set up controllers to drive it. Have my HTML views and I'm good to go. Then I want an iPhone client. I have to reimplement that _exact same model_ in Objective-C, and a good portion of the controllers too.

With WO, all that wasted time vanished. The same models and controllers worked for both, right down to the NSString level and below.

Does that let you write once and expand to everything, everywhere? No. But does it take grade-A talent to work across its supported platforms? No.

<comment><USER9> The exact same model. This is textbook. In practice? There's going to be differences. The exact same database does not mean the exact same model.

Controllers? Night and day. A complete re-write would be necessary. The app will function entirely different.

Generic strawman? Chill, this isn't slashdot. But to say that the only thing stopping this awesome revolution in software development is that Web Objects wasn't successful seems to me to ignore the grim realities of most software development projects: There isn't the ability, talent, budget or planning to produce truly reusable code.

<comment><USER8> In practice? I've done this. The controllers change only as much as needed to accommodate the new views. If your model has differences you've coupled it too tightly.

"only thing stopping this awesome revolution in software development"

I thought you said this wasn't slashdot? Who is talking about an awesome revolution? I am talking about a smarter way of building software across different platforms, a way that worked then and would work now to solve real problems that we have.

The fact that the solution is in a space that has long been occupied by the type of wishful thinking that has clearly hurt you in the past doesn't mean you get to write the entire concept off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Jobs' endorsement of Miele washing machines. Where I grew up in Austria all everyone had was Miele. They were ridiculously expensive. Their slogan was "reliability for many years" which was an understatement as they actually ran for 20 or 30 years no problem.

Also him discussing the new washing machine with his family for 2 weeks! Fascinating. I don't think many Billionaires would do that.

<comment><USER11> My Miele never worked right, the plumber couldn't fix it. Finally I had it ripped out and replaced with a Maytag.

<comment><USER12> Just had called the Miele service themselves: they offer a 10 years guarantee plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was most taken by his ideas on education. The voucher system will never happen, of course, which is a shame. I also love the idea of small school springing up all over the place (I'm not a huge fan of the current education system, and I'd love to see it disrupted)

as for trying to teach computing in schools, well that's long been rant material of mine (ask anyone who's been unfortunate enough to mention to me how pleased they are that their school's spending money on a room full of new computers), so don't get me started...

<comment><USER14> Interestingly enough, many states attempted voucher programs, not to the extent Jobs suggested though. It did spur school upstarts. I know Florida had a Pre-K voucher program, and as a result, Pre-K schools popped up all around. This was sometime in 2006-2008. I'm not sure if they discontinued the program or not, but education levels were on par with public schools, with a per-child cost of about half.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this quote a case of iPad foreshadowing? :)

"On the client side, there's the browser software. In the sense of making money, it doesn't look like anybody is going to win on the browser software side, because it's going to be free. And then there's the typical hardware. It's possible that some people could come out with some very interesting Web terminals and sell some hardware."

</comment><comment><USER16> Though Web Objects didn't take off, I think the idea behind them did. We just call it SaaS.

In SaaS products, instead of building the same core ingredient over and over again for multiple companies, it is built once and then made available via the web to anybody who wants to use it.

That's what ViaWeb was, it's what WePay is, it's what Salesforce is -- it's what the web has become. You need software to do something, you Google it, you find a web-app and you start using it. Done.

Web Objects, Web Apps, tomato, tomatoe.

<comment><USER10> WebObjects was just a really well designed app server. It's obvious things would work that way - even though WO didn't, in the end, "win". Too lazy too look it up but WebObjects might have been designed around the same time as Java.

A predecessor to Ruby on Rails at a time when websites were making extensive use of the <blink> tag.

<comment><USER8> It also did things that have still really to be replicated for web developers in a joined-up way; things like proper developer tools (including Interface Builder for the web), a seriously nifty ORM, and the ability to write the back-end once and produce both a web app and a desktop app.

(I know Interface Builder doesn't appeal to the hardcore set, but at least it is an attempt at a different way of working. Our never-ending focus on creating interfaces programmatically makes me wonder what would have happened to desktop publishing if we'd said "what? We made you a postscript mode for emacs -- what more do you need?" and left it at that.)

<comment><USER3> There would be front-end developers for print design…

HTML really _is_ like postscript mode for emacs, as far as a designer is concerned.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I agree. That's why I think we should do better. Dreamweaver really doesn't come close to what we should be doing in terms of visual and coding tools to let designers and developers work together.

<comment><USER3> I'm not smart enough to think of a solution. Interface builder in Xcode works because everything's based on cartesian coordinates, but other than pages starting from top-left, HTML is really based around flowing and cascading.

Maybe it's possible, CSSEdit works great, but requires the HTML to be set up. Espresso's node layout works well to show hierarchy, but still requires manual HTML editing. One solution would be similar to creating nested NSViews, but turning off {position:absolute} by default. This would force the designer to think in a way that's similar to how web pages flow in the real world, instead of throwing absolutely positioned elements into a static frame.

I'd have to say some sort of blob state file would be the best bet. The designer works in a vector environment that emphasizes mutable viewports, elements and element amounts. Basically dashcode with vector built in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think these old articles provide valuable perspective. There's an interesting book from 1998 analyzing Apple's fall up to that point:

<http://amazon.com/dp/0887309658>

I'm partway through and so far it's good. The detailed analysis untainted by the company's current success is quite interesting. At that point Jobs had come back to be involved in the company but not yet officially taken over as CEO (publicly he said he wasn't up for it).

</comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating. I find it particularly interesting that Jobs, since moving back to Apple, has done nothing interesting with the Web, but so much with the desktop and hardware. Sure, iTunes delivers music over the Internet, but it is not a web application. On the other hand, he did create the iPad: "And then there's the typical hardware. It's possible that some people could come out with some very interesting Web terminals and sell some hardware."

</comment><comment><USER19> Offtopic: Please, stop this linking to print version nonsense.

 _Discussion about it here:<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1966724> _

Original: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs.html> Issue 4.02 | Feb 1996

<comment><USER20> the original story was split out into 8 pages and is bombarded with ads, i guess i can see why the print version was linked instead

<comment><USER21> I agree. There is no reason to spread a simple interview over 8 pages so that Wired can get additional ad impressions, and I upvoted the parent because I hate that crap.

<comment><USER22> The regular version is much more readable, since it sets the column size reasonably. The print version fits to the window size.

Furthermore, for those who prefer the print version, it is a single click away from the regular version. On the other hand, there is no link on the print version to go to the regular version. This alone is sufficient to make the regular version the correct version to link to.

<comment><USER23> > The regular version is much more readable, since it sets the column size > reasonably.

Perhaps if you're _really_ good at ignoring peripheral distractions, but for me, I'd rather have the column be too wide than the column be narrow and _a flashing GIF_ in the margin!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Prediction: Apple is going to move away from the notion of Hard Disks for their consumer-oriented mobile devices. The Flash chips in SSDs are already somewhat like dynamic RAM, though not quite as fast and with some extra requirements and limitations. One could easily give the illusion of a laptop with 256 Gigabytes of _orthogonally persistent_ RAM by using 8 Gigs or so of dynamic RAM as a cache into Flash RAM. No need for any notion of a separate persistent store like a Hard Drive. No need to even boot up! Laptops would only have "hibernate" and "sleep". (You'd need ECC, wear leveling, and ways of transparently "retiring" sections of Flash RAM that go bad.)

Go one step further, and use the cloud as a backing store with an always-on mobile broadband connection. The 256 Gigabytes of Flash RAM would act as a local cache to cloud storage.

<comment><USER25> It's not a "prediction" if they've already started doing it, dude(tte).

Prediction: Apple will do away with optical drives.

Prediction: Apple will bring iOS features into MacOS X.

Prediction: Apple will make their laptops smaller and slimmer.

Prediction: Apple will do away with floppy drives.

<comment><USER24> What do you mean "already started doing it?" Please point out the OS X or iOS device whose kernel has no notion of a "Hard Disk" or something like it. With what I'm talking about, the kernel would see nothing but RAM.

As far as I can see, they just started doing away with the _case_ of the hard drive mechanism in their laptops. As far as even their iOS devices go, they still have a notion of a separate persistent store with high latency characteristics completely separate from a non-persistent RAM.

What I'm talking about doing is making dynamic RAM, Flash RAM, and the cloud all just a part of the memory hierarchy with _orthogonal persistence._

This is going to entail a lot of engineering which isn't yet in evidence in any of their current products. Such devices would never have to boot-up! I'm not sure such devices would be capable of being booted up. They'd also need more sophisticated error correction than current devices have. (Current devices can just correct the rare memory corruption event by being rebooted.)

<comment><USER26> It's not an OSX or iOS device, but Apple recently removed the hard drive from the Apple TV.

<comment><USER24> AFAIK, the Apple TV's kernel still has a notion of a persistent store from which it boots up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Jobs: "The desktop computer industry is dead." And here we are, nearly 15 years later, with this statement seeming truer than ever, in part thanks to Jobs' iOS devices.

<comment><USER27> In case I was mistaken, I meant that as both a compliment to Jobs and as a reminder of how incredibly hard it is to know when something's truly dead or non-relevant.

<comment><USER28> I view it as a compliment to Jobs as a visionary.

From a business perspective, the desktop industry was still to peak and then shifted to a luggable version of the same ecosystem with laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He was right about the "idea" of objects on the web, that is, stuff that can be simply plugged and reused here and there. We call those APIs today.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Jobs's fundamental insight - that personal computers were destined to be connected to each other and live on networks - was just as accurate as his earlier prophecy that computers were destined to become personal appliances."

It's interesting that common sense becomes "prophecy" when you're Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER31> It's more that prophecies tend to become common sense 25 years in the future (Jobs first spoke of this in the early 80s).

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that saying something today that will be common sense 25 years in the future is the very definition of prophetic.

None of this was common sense back then, that's for sure. I got my first email account in 1995.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure it was so common as to be common sense, but it was a reasonably common prediction among tech people. The slogan "the network is the computer" was coined at Sun in 1984!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How funny the Web and Steve's "objects" has become one thing eventually (mashups/infrastructure-SAS/APIs)

</comment><comment><USER33> From the mouth of Steve: "And once you're in this Web-augmented space, you're going to see that democratization takes place."

Riiight, Steve. "App-Store" as Democracy.

<comment><USER34> It's still a 'democracy' in the way you're describing it. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet.

<comment><USER33> I do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Web Objects: yesterday's technology, tomorrow!

<comment><USER13> more accurately: yesterday's technology, the day before

<comment><USER35> I don't dispute that it was years ahead of its time. But it has stalled (five years ago?) and promised improvements are largely vaporware.</comment></comment></comment>


Arizona's mysterious rocks that tell the time - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180516-arizonas-mysterious-clock-of-ancient-times <comment><USER2> > When Zoll spoke to the Hopi, he learned that the panel appeared to mark > religious celebrations and important dates for farmers. On 21 April, a day > associated with the first planting, a shadow's bottom edge touches a carving > resembling a corn stalk. One of the most compelling findings comes on 8 > July, the end of a 16-day Hopi period of prayer and meditation. On that day, > the sun perfectly outlines a figure that appears to be dancing.

Does this not sound somewhat...coincidental? Like p-hacking using 365 days and a bunch of images?

<comment><USER3> I guess you didn't read the part where there have been multiple sites discovered, with the same degree of 'co-incidence' (pun!) discovered..

<comment><USER2> I did read that part. It seemed like more of the same ("in each of these places, there are some interesting light patterns on specific bits of art at different times").

If it's the _same_ coincidences (e.g. all of them light up the dancer on the same day) that's different. But since the article wants this to be interesting, the fact that they don't say this suggests it's not the case (or maybe the article is unclear).

<comment><USER3> The article does mention that at different sites around the area, at the same time of the year, the same symbols (concentric circles) are indicated .. which means, its not coincidence, but rather co-incidence. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


California law requires businesses to let you cancel your subscription online - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/07/thanks-to-california-a-news-site-or-other-business-now-has-to-let-you-cancel-your-subscription-online/ <comment><USER2> For places that require a phone call I came up with a trick to cancel via email. If they reply back via email and say I have to call them, I tell them I'm deaf and can't talk on the phone.

Works every time.

<comment><USER3> but would not that make you feel a little guilty as you are lying to the person just to cancel a subscription?

<comment><USER4> Despite what we teach small children, lying is not immoral. Lying is _amoral_. The circumstance and motivation of a lie determine whether that particular lie is moral or immoral.

There are times when it's moral to lie, other times when it's immoral to lie, and still other times when morality hardly has anything to do with it at all (such as the above scenario.) We tell small children that it's immoral to lie because we don't trust their moral judgement and would prefer they always tell us the truth.

<comment><USER5> I don't think people grow out of the need to follow moral rules as much as you imply. Sooner or later, there comes a time when it is overwhelmingly in a person's interest to lie (or some other transgression). If they are purely rational, they will do it. If they think deeply about morality, they will rationalize why it is right to do what is in their interest. The point of inculcating honesty and other virtues is so one is habituated to the point that dishonesty is preempted when it really counts. Reasoned moral judgement is not an unmitigated good, because it opens the way for bias and hinders the operation of trust needed for relationships.

<comment><USER6> Lying isn't bad. Hurting people is bad. There are many totally honest ways of hurting someone.

<comment><USER5> The way I see it, telling a "harmless" or "justified" lie can destroy trust, which can have substantial or even devastating consequences. Often one faces several choices, all of which _may_ hurt people, and moral rules are a heuristic method by which people avoid the harmful effects of cognitive biases due to self-interest or logical errors.

None of this should suggest I think it's obviously wrong to lie to a stranger about whether you're deaf in order to avoid a conversation - that might be permissible according to generally accepted social rules. My point is more that when you start talking about deciding _for yourself_ when to obey moral rules, you are on shaky ground, no matter how wise or logical you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was already required in the Visa Merchant agreement. If you signed up online. The merchant must provide an online way to cancel which could be email, webpage or chat. If they don't just call up your card issuer and file a "canceled recurring" dispute as the merchant doesn't provide a visa acceptable way to cancel the subscription.

[https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about- visa/15-April-2...](https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about- visa/15-April-2015-Visa-Rules-Public.pdf)

Section: 184.108.40.206

<comment><USER8> so the solution to having to call a merchant to cancel a subscription is to call your card issuer to cancel a subscription?

<comment><USER7> My bank doesn't make me sit on hold for 20 minutes and isn't staffed by min wage employees who are incentivized to retain you including lying to you or hanging up on you. I don't blame the employees, they are just trying to make rent.

Also chargebacks penalize the merchants both in fines/fees but if they rack of enough, they'll pay higher processing fees.

<comment><USER9> > My bank doesn't make me sit on hold for 20 minutes and isn't staffed by min > wage employees

Lucky you.

<comment><USER10> There are literally thousands of banks and credit unions in the United States. If your bank sucks, then you have no reason not to take your business to a different one.

Banks seem to occupy a weird space in the minds of consumers. You can open as many accounts as you want at as many banks as you want. If you're paying fees, switch to a bank that doesn't have those fees. If you can't get somebody on the phone, switch to a bank that staffs its call centers. If their website sucks, switch to a bank with a good website.

Try a few out. See what you like. It's just like any other consumer product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I recently had to cancel an ongoing subscription I had with Equifax, which requires you to call by phone. Unbelievably frustrating. I had to dial the service at least 10 times. Each time, the automated responder would make me go through a very slow menu selection process, only to randomly fail to acknowledge either my correct SSN or zipcode or street number, which I entered using a keypad. As a consumer, I've had to enter info via phone keypad for as long as I can remember, and I've never run into a system (not even small local businesses) that was so randomly buggy.

I thought maybe I had the wrong phone number for cancellation. Turns out, when you google "cancel Equifax phone number", there are several phone numbers listed by Equifax itself, on various sections of its "help" pages.

Took me about half an hour to finally reach a human operator. Surprisingly, the cancellation process was quick with her with no haggling. But I imagine the process is so frustrating overall that a good number of people just give up.

<comment><USER11> Please listen closely, our menu options have changed

<comment><USER12> We are experiencing higher than normal call volume.

Every. Single. Day.

I would like to give executives the option to stop this or go to prison for this never ending nonsense. I think most would choose to stop.

<comment><USER13> Relatedly, I've been flying a lot more than usual in the last couple of months.

Every single flight, the boarding announcements start with something along the lines of "this plane is going to be more full than usual, so we're going to need to check some of your carry-ons".

Well guess what, United? Maybe if you didn't cram passengers into the fuselage like sardines in a goddamn tin can, you'd have enough room for everyone's carry-on luggage in the bins.

<comment><USER14> I've learned that storage is rarely the issue - they do this to reduce boarding time to stay on schedule. I often board later in the line and there is still plenty of space. Really they should just ban carry-on rollers for non-elderly, able people, they're the ones people spend ages trying to jam in.

<comment><USER15> > Really they should just ban carry-on rollers for non-elderly, able people, > they're the ones people spend ages trying to jam in.

I would agree, but they charge for checked bags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I pay for recurring stuff with a CC for this very reason. I had an insurance company refuse to cancel my insurance unless I physically came into their office all the way across town (would have been about two hours of my time when it was all said and done) to show them proof that I had insurance through another agency. I declined that request and explained that they simply weren't getting paid any more. I called the number on my card and explained the situation to them and that I told them to stop billing me and they refused. The rep noted this issue on the account. Sure enough, they didn't stop billing me. I called the card company again to report that the insurance company had billed me again. They immediately reversed the charges and blocked all further charges from the company.

The insurance agent reported me to DMV (the relationship had soured pretty badly before this all happened) for not having insurance. It was a 2 minute call to my new insurance agent to let them to know to send proof of coverage to DMV. Problem solved in ~10 minutes of my time instead of 2 hours.

<comment><USER17> I don't have enough exposure to the product (not available in my region) but I really liked the _idea_ of privacy.com where you can create a credit card proxy for every subscription you have.

This seems extremely valuable for managing subscriptions, tracking your funds, and of course, some modicum of privacy where your original credit card is only shared with one party.

edit: Seems like privacy.com is a direct-to-bank connection instead of depending on a credit card for funding.

<comment><USER18> CapitalOne offers the same service on their credit cards with a browser plugin. It also disallows charges to the virtual card numbers from any source other than the site it's associated with.

<comment><USER19> You can do this with (the awesome) Citi 2% cash back card as well, just use their normal website to generate virtual numbers.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I only wish it was supported in the mobile app also!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of the philosophies at Netflix was that it should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up, because you should respect your customers enough not to annoy them into keeping your service.

Honestly, it always seemed to me that it was actually easier to cancel than the sign up.

<comment><USER7> Any company that generates value for a customer doesn't have retention issues. I used to run software engineering at two subscription commerce companies. One company allowed users to cancel and pause/skip online via webpage, chat, email and even social channels. The other forced customers to call up support to cancel. The first company sold for 10 figures, the other company just did a down round and layoffs. Screwing over customers is good for short-term gain, but eventually, you run out of new customers and you burned the bridge for re- aquiring former customers.

<comment><USER22> This is unfortunately only true in a competitive environment for non essential goods. If you provide services such as internet, or telephone where people can only choose between one or two providers, which are all equally bad, the customers don't have a choice.

And then there are services where people sign up but only a very small percentage would voluntarily come back no matter how good or bad your service is because they sign up out of impulse. Gyms are good examples for those — people sign up because they want to lose weight/stay fitter, etc but only a small percentage actually goes there after the first few times. This of course sucks for the regular customers who want to pause their membership because they are too busy for a few months or move, etc (but on the other hand, those no-goes also subsidies the regular goers because the gym can offer a lower price for everyone).

For those companies, we need laws that make it equally as easy to cancel as to sign up.

<comment><USER23> >This of course sucks for the regular customers who want to pause their membership because they are too busy for a few months or move

Yeah, I'd wanted to pause my gym membership for 3 months a couple years back because I was going to be traveling a lot, and wasn't going to be in town. Only option was to cancel, then pay a new "processing fee" to start again months later. Really pissed me off. I'd been a member for 2 years at that point, using regularly. no exceptions to their policy. i left. i _did_ go back a couple years later, when they had a 'sign up and we waive the processing fee!' promotion (closest/best combination of pool/gym - everything else is miles further). They'd have had my monthly money for another couple years with minimal use by me during that time, save for a stupid policy that "we can't change". ugh...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've only used this a couple of times but I think it works: "I'd like to cancel my service. I'm going to say this really clearly for the recording, in case I have to subpoena this for evidence. I want to cancel my service, effective [date]. When I hang up this phone, I want there to be no financial relationship between myself and your company of any kind. None. I don't want any further communication from you other than a final statement showing a zero balance due. Now we can make this call as long as you'd like. No. Financial. Relationship. We're done." Then go silent, and if they try to pitch you any products of any kind, interrupt and ask "Are you refusing to cancel my service? Speak clearly for the recording."

<comment><USER25> But recording phone conversations is illegal in most states, so unless you live in a state where it's legal, they might know that you are bluffing.

<comment><USER24> In some states only one party needs to know about the recording. In some state all parties need to know about it. If you tell them up front, they can refuse, but then it's just evidence that they're being difficult.

Certain keywords like "lawsuit" can break the strictly regimented conversation tree too.

<comment><USER26> Be a bit careful with the "l" word - many companies instruct their reps to immediately stop dealing with people that threaten legal proceedings over the phone and tell them to contact the company attorneys.

Remember that any company that doesn't empower the phone support people to help you probably didn't empower them enough to go off-script.

<comment><USER27> If I can contact the company attorneys via email, that would be preferred anyways.

<comment><USER28> Surely you don't want to speak to a company's attorney to cancel your gym membership, or to dispute a $5 purchase. I worked in retail, and people would threaten court over 10-20 euro purchases. We would immediately end the discussion, record their details and pass them on to our lawyers who would contact them within a few days, and presumably begin some arduous process.

If you had just been polite to me on the phone, I probably could have fixed your issue in 15 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Honestly, the best way to handle these things is to forget even bothering with the company and file a charge-back with your bank or Visa/Mastercard. You have every right to call up your bank and deny a charge for a service you're not using, and didn't ask to renew.

Plus it's guaranteed to get the charge removed immediately, and you'll be hurting the company by adding to their charge-back tally, increasing payment processing costs for them and potentially completely cutting them off.

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't advise telling people to do chargebacks often. They're meant to be used when venues of negotiation with the company are exhausted and you still believe they're in the wrong. If your bank suspects you're being too liberal with them, they will cut you off, as they'll suspect you're the fraudster.

<comment><USER31> I mean how often do you have to cancel gym memberships and newspapers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My trick to avoid the long retentions go around is to tell them I'm leaving their service area.

Why are you looking to cancel your phone plan?

Leaving the country.

They know they can't win me over and so they don't even try.

<comment><USER33> I've done this several times with Comcast, but it failed with Time Warner when I moved out of NYC. They demand to know why you are canceling and have some sort of way to extract money out of you for every scenario, including moving out of their service area. In that case, they transfer you to another phone system that helps you find a provider at your new address and, presumably, nets them a referral fee of some kind. Meanwhile, if you try any excuse to quit that they haven't accounted for, they tell you "yes sir" and redirect your call to that service as a fallback catch-all. Truly despicable.

<comment><USER34> Has anyone tried "none of your business" as an answer to why your are leaving?

<comment><USER35> Seriously. And if that doesn't work, try "I hate you"

<comment><USER36> My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, with some success.

Though nowadays, in the era of pervasive financing and Wall Street investors that care more about revenue than cash flow, I wonder if that would even work. Maybe "I'm being investigated by the Feds and all of my financial relationships are considered suspect, and so would prefer to have as few of them as possible"?

<comment><USER37> > _My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, > with some success._

I've tried telling the truth, I've tried assertively stating I'm not interested, I've tried so many things...

...at this point, when I pick up a call, I wait for the other side to introduce themselves, and if they call with an unsolicited offer, I just hang up without saying anything. Am I a bad person?

<comment><USER35> Not at all. My current method is to block all numbers not in my contact list.. if they are important, they'll leave a voicemail. Works surprisingly well, actually.

<comment><USER34> Effectively the phone equivalent of grey listing for emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thank god for that.

I made the mistake of joining a Goodlife gym in Canada many moons ago...

The place was disgusting. Always crowded. Mould growing in the bathrooms. Stunk very badly, etc...

So I stopped going regularly... and one day I was in the area I decided to stop in and cancel my membership.

"Oh sorry, you'll need to make an appointment with management in order to cancel."

"OK, is a manager in right now?"

"Yes, the manager is in but I was told not to disturb her right now."

"OK, well can you tell her a customer is waiting paitiently to cancel his account?"

"No, sorry, I am not allowed to disturb her. You're going to need to make an appointment and come back."

So I did that...

And about 3 weeks later I went in at the agreed upon time to cancel my subscription and I was just sitting... waiting... for over 1 hour...

Right beside a poor old lady that was trying to cancel her subscription as well!!!

She was overly polite and was dealing with this overagressive meathead trying to keep her locked into the service...

"I hate coming here... I never come... I never should have signed up... I just want to cancel..."

"But do you have any friends that might want to take on your subscription? It's at a discounted rate and you might be able to help them out by transferring it over to them."

"No, I do know know anyone who wants to come here."

"Ok, let me go talk to my manager about this."

And he left for like 20 minutes and came back and gave her the gears again.

When my turn came... I just said "I'm moving to england and I don't know a single person here who might want to absorb my contract".

It was a total lie... but it was the only answer that would get me out of there in under 10 minutes.

Companies abusing politeness really are terrible to society.

<comment><USER39> > When my turn came... I just said "I'm moving to england and I don't know a > single person here who might want to absorb my contract".

I actually came here to say the same thing. I realized "I'm moving" was the best way to get results in these situations when I was actually moving out of the country for a bit. It's like a magical incantation that immediately gets them to stop trying to upsell or retain you, no questions asked.

<comment><USER40> Recent renewal contract for LA Fitness has this cover. If you moving away you have to provide some sort of a proof, like new lease contract, job letter etc so that they still will try to find the gym within 15 miles and move you over. I was told in LA Fitness you cannot cancel without any sort of proof if you want to use "moving away" as a reason.

<comment><USER38> >If you moving away you have to provide some sort of a proof, like new lease contract, job letter etc so that they still will try to find the gym within 15 miles and move you over.

Just tell them you're moving to another continent then... or Antarctica!

<comment><USER41> Or, like, don't sign a long term contract at all. It's pretty easy to find an affordable monthly gym which has all the basics pretty much everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The New York Times doesn't allow you to cancel your subscription online.

<comment><USER43> Not only do they not allow you to cancel online, they autorenew your annual subscription to the tune of HUNDREDS of dollars. This happened to me and I'm certain I didn't explicitly opt-in to autorenewal, as I would never consciously opt-in to autorenewal of such a costly service. The told me the following: "by choosing to pay by credit card, you opted into autorenewal." !!??

I moved out out of the country, they autorenewed, I called them, and they refused to cancel the rest of my year's subscription! They insisted upon continuing to send papers to my old address for an entire year.

Completely scammy, I will never do business with them again.

<comment><USER44> you should issue a chargeback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There have been a few times where I didn't sign up for a service because I anticipated cancelling would be a pain. The fact that trials often autorenew makes me reluctant to even do a trial. I wonder how much business is lost this way vs. how much is gained from making cancelling hard.

<comment><USER46> Cable TV is a classic example. If you ask how much it'll cost after the promotion ends, they'll go on repeat, "It'll be $20 for the first three months".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There's this company that offers internet service on flights also claims to offer secure hotspots, (it's a gimmick) around cities all over the US they're based in Los Angeles: Boingo Wireless. The only way to cancel the service is to call in, that's their whole scheme. When you call in they treat that as if you were doing something extremely complicated and that takes time. One of the customer service representative told me that he would have to contact the engineering department to cancel my account...Like that would be necessary. I was getting impatient, on the phone for about 40 minutes. This new law will be the end of them.

</comment><comment><USER48> I canceled my LA Times subscription online last week. The website says you have to call to cancel. I thought I'd just give it a try online, fully expecting to fail, but to my surprise it all went through easily. They asked for the reason, and when I gave it (excessive ads+tracking) they canceled.

</comment><comment><USER49> Simply telling the merchant I will do a chargeback has worked every time for me (provided it's a credit card charge).

<comment><USER50> Some merchants have it in their contract (for subscriptions) that any chargebacks will go to a collection agency, which dings your credit.

<comment><USER51> It's probably disputable as in violation of their merchant agreement, but yeah most people will just suffer under the consequences instead of pushing back.

<comment><USER50> "However that doesn't stop them from trying to collect payment directly from consumers. A review of some merchant agreements found online were silent on the issue of whether they can subsequently try to collect from consumers. And when we asked the major card companies whether their merchant agreements restrict this practice, only American Express responded, saying in an email that, "American Express has an established charge dispute process in place that takes into account both the Card Member and the merchant perspectives. Our policies do not prohibit a merchant from seeking to collect payment from a Card Member for a transaction that is charged back to a merchant."

[http://blog.credit.com/2015/06/think-you-won-your-credit- car...](http://blog.credit.com/2015/06/think-you-won-your-credit-card-dispute- not-so-fast-118101/)

<comment><USER51> Interesting. I guess it doesn't violate the merchant agreement...

...which makes sense in that a valid debt can't be invalidated by a chargeback. But it doesn't turn an invalid debt into a valid one either.

And if you have a contract that you cancel in accordance with the contract (e.g. making the required request to the required phone number then limiting your call to a reasonable duration after doing so), charging back charges for periods after your payment obligation ends shouldn't give them a valid basis to send you to collections, contract or no contract.

They would be unable to prove a valid debt in that case, so a dispute with the debt collector and/or credit bureaus would get it off your credit.

<comment><USER50> Yes, if he merchant is not operating in good faith, it's easy to outmaneuver their collections efforts provided you've kept good documentation.

If they are operating in good faith, and your chargeback is not legitimate, expect a blemish on your credit until you settle the debt (if sent to collections).

<comment><USER51> Yup. And a smaller blemish even once paid, for something like 7 to 10 years after that. (That's the retention period for collections information on credit reports.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Last week I spent 1 hour and 20 minutes waiting for a Zipcar rep to answer my call. Creating my account was as simple as taking a photo of my license within the app and getting into a car. Companies that make signing up easy and cancellation difficult are the worst.

</comment><comment><USER53> OK now here's an excellent use for Google Duplex. Using a robot to fool a person: annoying. Using a robot to fool someone annoying: fine!

<comment><USER54> Google has since changed this. Google Duplex will not "fool" humans any more. They announce that they're the "Google Assistant" calling on behalf of a customer.

I think unfortunately what will happen is that people will just hang up on the google assistant because it's not a real human.

It'll be kind of like what happened to the "glassholes". Maybe not as mean though.

<comment><USER55> Why? If I were a business that took phone orders, why would I care what's on the other end?

As long as it's reliable and intelligent enough, I don't think people will mind. I know I wouldn't.

<comment><USER56> Because you want to make it difficult for customers to cancel.

<comment><USER55> > Because you want to make it difficult for customers to cancel.

Explain to me, in detail, how you arrived to this conclusion from my previous statement. If anything, a business accepting robocalls from customers would make canceling easier.

I await your explanation, s73v3r_.

<comment><USER56> Which is why you, as a business, would not accept those robocalls.

<comment><USER55> If I was a scummy business, sure but you're omitting the other side of the coin: making it easier for customers to do reservations. I still think that businesses would welcome robocall reservations (if they're reliable and efficient) just as they have the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> While I like the spirit of this law (rare for me with CA laws), I expect it to be ruled unconstitutional as attempting to regulate interstate commerce, whose so jurisdiction is under US Congress.

<comment><USER58> Not sure it would hold up in the Supreme Court. Provided the law is worded strictly to apply to CA citizens / only when corporations are serving CA citizens there is little to make an interstate regulation argument on. And there is also international precedence (EU GDPR) which could guide court opinion.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking but that's my $0.02.

<comment><USER59> GDPR isn't a relevant precedent as there isn't a precedent -- GDPR hasn't been challenged in court, not the least, a US court.

GDPR also has no relevance for US interstate commerce.

South Dakota vs. Wayfair overturned the Quill decision, and, the Quill decision would have been the controlling precedent in any constitutional challenge, based on physical nexus. However, that all changed with Wayfair.

One of the key arguments in the overturn of Quill were that Quill created, rather than resolved market distortions. Essentially, Quill (according to the ruling in SD v Wayfair,) created a tax shelter for businesses that limit their physical presence in a state. The problem with Quill is that it disadvantaged economically identical actors for arbitrary reasons -- a small shop with a few items in a warehouse in a state would have to pay taxes on everything they sold in the state, while a large business (such as Wayfair) with no physical presence in the state would be advantaged by not having to charge a tax on the exact same items. Helping customers evade a lawful tax unfairly shifts an increased share of the taxes to those consumers who buy from competitors with a physical presence in the State.

"Quill's physical presence rule has limited States' ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field."

So now, we look at the California law requiring online cancellations. It would be an extremely difficult argument to cite SD vs. Wayfair since the online cancellation requirement isn't creating a disadvantage on market participants or the states themselves. Lost economic development due to the imbalance created by Quill was cited repeatedly as a flaw in Quill. An online cancellation requirement is going to be very difficult to prove as having a deleterious effect on economic activity/growth/development as was clearly demonstrated in the majority opinion for Wayfair. Wayfair was essentially about tax shelters. The California law doesn't correct any particular economic harm.

However, that being said, any constitutional challenge to the California Law would likely fall short because the Supreme Court interpretation of the Commerce Clause essentially says that laws ought not present an "undue burden" on interstate trade. Allowing for online cancellation, would be, to say the least, a stretch to argue that it places an undue burden on doing business with people within the state. That's why, if this law were to go to court, it would be upheld since someone like the New York Times would have a hard time proving an "undue burden." Ironically (to me,) being required to collect sales tax in all 50 states as well as the thousands of individual jurisdictions (including multiple jurisdictions even within cities, thanks to economic reinvestment zones) -- that to me, seems like a massively undue burden. However, as the court rules in Wayfair, that burden is less important than the economic discrimination that was happening (i.e. a local online shop vs. an out of state online shop being burdened unequally despite selling the exact same product.)

As an aside, I might argue that a business without a physical presence in the state isn't availing themselves to the infrastructure or public services of that state, however they are being asked to pay for those infrastructure and services. Shipping companies actually do the deliveries and they, of course, are paying the taxes for their locality. But that's another debate. Incidentally, justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer joined Roberts's Wayfair dissent, in which he stated that Congress ought to be making the laws and not the courts. I never thought I'd agree with Kagan and Sotomayor on anything, but it is strange times in which we live.

In anyone's interested, Ginsburg, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, Kennedy were in the majority on the Wayfair case while Breyer, Sotomayor, Roberts and Kagan were in the dissent. [http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/south-dakota-v- wa...](http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/south-dakota-v-wayfair-inc/)

It was a 5-4 but not how you would have expected!

Anyway, to the point, Quill would have made a challenge to the California law rather easy, but now, the California law will likely pass a Constitutional challenge based on the "undue burden" test established by the courts.

<comment><USER58> This is a very detailed response! I appreciate your attention detail, but I did want to address initial comment reading my comment as proposing GDPR as legal precedence.

I never intended to forward the notion that the GDPR would serve as precedence. Indeed in a judicial context "precedence" has a very specific meaning and a piece of legislature from an international body of government would not be considered legal precedence in a U.S. court. I chose the phrasing "guide court opinion" carefully to specifically avoid confusion with the legal meaning of the term.

I agree with your analysis of SD v. Wayfair in that this is not likely a piece of legislation that would make it to the Supreme Court on interstate commerce grounds (at least in a post-Quill world). But _if_ it did I would speculate the argument would center around the need for online firms to alter their behavior in other States as a result of the California law. To which I made the leap to suggest that the GDPR, as a current event, and it's affect on altering firms behavior even outside of the EU would be something that would likely be referenced in a Court opinion. Although, if you wanted to find an example limited to the US, you could also refer to the current status of EPA car emission regulations to demonstrate a similar single state regulation altering firm behavior across state lines without running afoul of interstate commerce.

But at the end of the day you and I are in agreement, this would not have much of an interstate commerce leg to stand on.

P.S. For those interested in the South Dakota vs. Wayfair opinion here is a link:

[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf)

I found it interesting like /u/briandear and it is especially relevant for the tech sector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Recurring payments are implemented in the worst way possible. You cannot see a list of your subscriptions online, cannot see how much you have spent, cannot stop or cancel them. And even if you don't use some service anymore, they still can charge you. That is because systems like Visa earn money only when you spend and have no motivation to make cancelling easier.

<comment><USER61> That's why you need a virtual credit card solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why not just use Privacy [1] when you sign up? It allows you to generate virtual cards on a per-merchant basis anytime you want. You can simply shutoff the card(s) when you want to cancel. No phone calls, emails, or faking deafness required. I've been a big fan of it ever since I discovered them.

[1] [https://privacy.com](https://privacy.com)

</comment><comment><USER63> The EU's new data privacy law (GDPR) allows you to withdraw consent, and "it must be as easy to withdraw consent as to give it". A perfectly clear and powerful way to describe what is wanted.

"It must be as easy to cancel a subscription as to subscribe" would a similar, effective way to do it here.

</comment><comment><USER64> There are some built in problems when it comes to this sort of regulator-esque legislation.

If a company doesn't want to "do X," but is being forced to, the specific, legalistically deconstructed definition of 'X' gets very important. On the path between the kind of grand moral statements politicians trade in to the way corporate lawyers use language... a lot gets lost

A common 'X' is " _inform customers of something_ ": pharmaceutical side effects, the real interest rate on a loan, etc. This often leads to a cat and mouse game, where companies "inform" customers by way of 10,000 word small print documents they know no one reads. Then the regulator tries to stop it, saying this information must be part of all advertising. Then we get verbal small print. Etc.

This is why regulators exist, to play this cat and mouse game.

GDPR, cookie laws, and a lot of the laws which effectively govern business have these issues. Our legislative/political system just doesn't deal with this well. On one hand we have politics, that hates detail. On the other hand, a legal bureaucracy that hates principle. It also doesn't care for economics and isn't too worried about creating environments devoid of real competition, which is an unwanted side effect of getting "regulatory."

In any case, the _real_ underlying problem here, IMO, is that 3rd parties should not have this kind of control in their hands in the first place.

HNers will probably reach for blockchains and smart contracts, but this _could_ be build into credit cards or any payment method. It doesn't really matter.

Just put the ability to turn payments on/off in customer's hands. Send the service a notice. Done. We've built up all these "convenient" ways for customers to authorize repeat payment, without building in an off button. Now they're regulating the use of them instead They should have an off button. That's it.

<comment><USER65> Alternatively, don't force the company to accept/deny specific forms of communication; simply make it clear that any communication is sufficient to cancel a contract.

There's no point for a company to build a convoluted website if any customer knows they can send an email to email@example.com or a direct message or a text "I cancel my contract with you, my account number is 1234." and the only claim the company could make to counter that is that it didn't receive the e-mail/message. Not that it's internal processes didn't allow for the message to be received, but that its infrastructure never actually received it (in which case the user would have received an email bounce message). To be nice, request the company to acknowledge receipt of the notification and, if not received, repeat on multiple channels (including certified snail mail).

Oh, and make it illegal to hide surprising bits in terms and conditions due to the information asymmetry typically accompanying those :)

<comment><USER64> This is probably the type of suggection a regulatory "hawk" would make. Essentially, make your next cat-and-mouse move big. "Lets see you get around that one, industry.!"

They see how easy/optimized subscriptions are, and how hard/optimized cancellations are. They see the regulatory cat-and-mouse game. Conclude that "industry" is acting in bad faith, and suggest an FU rule like that.

Industry will respond (correctly) that this kind of a proposal puts a big burden on them, and makes managing subscriptions very hard and expensive.

I think it's a bad idea for the same reason you can't stop hyperinflation by yelling at retailers to stop their "greedy price gouging." Swimming directly into a persistant economic incentives current is hard. "Complying" becomes implementing the minimum standard which is still legal.

A better approach (IMO, I am not a policy maker) would be to (1) recognize the major economic incentives (2) avoid leaving low level decision making (implementation) in the hands of those whose economic incentives are opposed to your goals. (3) if you absolutely must force companies to act against their own interest, be extremely prescriptive. Leave nothing open ended and do as little of this as possible.

In this case, I don't think it's that hard. Regulate payment providers, particularly CCs. They already have a regulator, so no structural changes (or even legislation, possibly) is necessary.

(1) Make subscriptions an explicit type of thing. (2) Enforce a minimum amount of information that the payment provider must receive, in order to honour the subscription. (3) display this information to customers. Monthly paper statements are fine. (4) Enforce a standard whereby consumers can cancel recurring payments by contacting the payment provider.

A credit card service, bank, bitcoin wallet or whatever has no incentive to make cancelations clunky. Simply putting the onus on them is probably sufficient regulation. The better ones will probably give you a nice app/web view with extra user friendly features the regulator never even thought of. For example, they might alert you when "introductory price" periods end or keep track of "minimum durations" to let you know when your contract expires.

A have a similar view on cookie laws & parts of GDPR. Instead of leaving everything up to websites (who have an incentive to make you give up all your rights), regulate the data browsers & ISPs share with a website. They're not as vested in minimizing user rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm not sure there is a requirement to cancel subscriptions online as the article suggests. From the bill itself ([https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB313)):

> (b) A business that makes an automatic renewal offer or continuous service > offer shall provide a toll-free telephone number, electronic mail address, a > postal address if the seller directly bills the consumer, or it shall > provide another cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for > cancellation that shall be described in the acknowledgment specified in > paragraph (3) of subdivision (a).

I'm not a lawyer of course.

<comment><USER67> IANAL, but just after that:

        17602...
        (c) In addition to the requirements of subdivision (b), a consumer who accepts
        an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online shall be allowed to
        terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service exclusively online, which
        may include a termination email formatted and provided by the business that
        a consumer can send to the business without additional information.

though it seems to only apply if the agreement was made online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I can't begin to describe the number of companies that set me up for auto- renewal without any form of billing or invoice.

</comment><comment><USER69> I run a software business myself here in CA, and allowing users to manage their subscription easily was one of my first priorities. Nothing frustrates me more than companies that make this process difficult. If a user doesn't like your service and wants to cancel, they deserve an easy in-app/in-web experience to do it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Cancelling by phone sound bad? Planet Fitness will only let you cancel in person or by certified mail. I moved to California recently, and I still had a Planet Fitness subscription (it was the closest gym to me and it was open 24/7, I won't be doing it again) and now I'm curious if I can use this against them.

<comment><USER71> They'll likely find some loophole around not calling it a subscription. "You're timesharing with our gyms"

<comment><USER72> They already do. It's not a subscription, it's a membership.

LA Fitness is another that lets you sign up online, and cancel only via certified mail.

<comment><USER73> At least with LA Fitness, I said I wanted to cancel and the guy at the desk printed out the letter for me. It was pretty low hassle. There are other gyms that make it a more insane process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Tivo, based in California, is clearly in violation.

[https://www.tivo.com/contact-us](https://www.tivo.com/contact-us)

"Please note: At this time, it is not possible to use chat to cancel" ... and same for email, leaving phone as the only option.

</comment><comment><USER75> Very good! Businesses always say they focus on the customer but part of that is also to allow the customer to get rid of them. I still remember the impossibility of cancelling AOL. I had to do chargebacks on my amex for a few months until they got the message.

</comment><comment><USER76> We europeans better block every access from California due to this overreaching undemocratic GDPR style law. /s

<comment><USER77> European law is years beyond this. Consumer laws in some EU countries stipulate that a person can cancel a subscription simply by vocalizing this intention out their front door between the hours of 9am-3pm. "Heyy, I'm cancelling."

<comment><USER78> Hah, nice one.

Where i live (The Netherlands, Europe) you are allowed by law to cancel subscriptions in the same way you signed up. That seems fair... so if you sign up via internet then you can cancel via internet. No more cancel-bullying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Ring (the video doorbell) is exactly like this and I haven't gotten rid of my subscription because I keep forgetting and their hours are like 9 to 5pm. Hopefully this changes so that I can get rid of that crap.

<comment><USER80> I'm sorry, maybe it's my IoT-get-off-my-network/lawn hackles being raised here, but why does your doorbell need a subscription in the first place?

<comment><USER81> Basically because of NAT. Because the devices on your network can't all have public IP addressed, you have to have them all connect to a central public server. Public servers cost money->ring costs money.

Of course the reason things are architected this way is so that more people can make money...

<comment><USER82> Can this be solved by using IPv6 and addressing everything publicly?

<comment><USER81> Probably not:

1\. NAT provides a basic level of security for your network. The same could be achieved with a firewall, but it isnt the norm.

2\. Even without nat, there would still have to be _some_ computer that does the processing on the raw data from the IoT device. There is no reason that couldnt be your PC or Phone, but the precedent has been set that these tasks are performed on a managed device in the "cloud".

3\. The companies involved will make less money.

A better solution would be to have an IoT gateway device publicly accessible that proxies access to the individual IoT devices. This would create a better security story. If this device were standards based, then each IoT vendor could integrate with it, and router vendors could add the capability to their devices. Of course there is no financial incentive for things to work this way.

I guess I only bring up NAT because it is yet another example of the "server" lie. There is no such thing as a computer that is a "server". Programs act as servers. Computers might be "server-class", but all that means is that they are high quality. Driving a wedge between "servers" and normal PCs just pushes more control out of individual's hands.

<comment><USER83> 1\. It would be the norm with an IPv6 gateway. It's not like it takes anything special to replace NAT with a firewall: allow outbound, allow established/related inbound, and replace port forwarding in the UX with allow rules for (host, port).

2\. No argument, does seem odd that it wouldn't be the app though. Figure a door bell wouldn't be all that intensive.

3\. Yeah, recurring revenue is pretty much the gold standard.

A device that stands between your device and the public internet, provides security and access control, and is standards based... so a perimeter firewall? But with an API to allow internal devices to punch their own holes. Ehh don't get me wrong I like the spirit, but that would immediately get used by malware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I wish this applied to banks too.

I tried to pay off my mortgage this week and I had to go to a physical bank and handle them a check for seven hundred dollars. So stupid.

<comment><USER85> I had one of those 80-10-10 mortgages and was trying to pay off the 2nd mortgage. Had to go in person, give them a check, and then had to HANDWRITE A LETTER to be sent to corporate (I think?) saying that "yes, I really would like to close out the account that held this mortgage". No template and a "sign here" or anything. They just gave me printer paper and a "just write something" attitude. It was a very odd experience as I wasn't sure how formal it was suppose to be.

<comment><USER86> Reminds me of this arcane tidbit: you can write your own checks...

> you can write a "negotiable instrument," bank talk for a valid check, on > just about anything. According to the Uniform Commercial Code, the body of > law that governs these things, all you have to include are the name of the > payee, the dollar amount, the name of your bank, your signature, the date, > and some suitable words of conveyance, such as "pay to the order of." You > don't need the account number or the bank ID number you find on preprinted > checks.

[https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/562/can-you- write-...](https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/562/can-you-write-a- check-on-any-old-piece-of-paper/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> As a European, I ran into this with WSJ. Subscribing is easy and online, cancelling is only by phone. Their Dutch access number didn't work either, forcing me to use their international numbers at the cost of international phone call.

</comment><comment><USER47> There's this company that offers internet service on flights also claims to offer secure hotspots, (it's a gimmick) around cities all over the US they're based in Los Angeles: Boingo Wireless. The only way to cancel the service is to call in, that's their whole scheme. When you they treat that as if you were doing something extremely complicated and that takes time. One of the customer service representative told me that he would have to contact the engineering department to cancel my account...Like that would be necessary. I was getting impatient, on the phone for about 40 minutes. This new law will be the end of them.

<comment><USER47> [https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/boingo- wireless-c...](https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/boingo- wireless-c275982.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I hope this forces the NYTimes to allow online cancellations too.

<comment><USER43> Funny that NYT came up on two separate threads here. I know they made me go through hell to cancel, sounds like I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER89> Media outlets in general. I know they make the argument about GDPR and ad tracking that they need it because nobody pays for them, but maybe more people would pay if it wasn't so foolish to trust them with your payment details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Another consumer first law I would like to see is that if a service detects you haven't used it in the previous period, they refund your subscription fee.

There is so much wasted money on zombie subscriptions that people forget about.

<comment><USER91> I understand where you're coming from (though I would never legislate it), but compare it to insurance. Should your car insurance company have to refund your premiums if you don't "use" their service in some time period, i.e. you don't file a claim? Should a life insurance company return all your premiums if you don't die during the covered term? I'm going to say no. In the case of insurance, you're paying for someone else to take on a risk that you either can't afford to take on, or that it doesn't make financial sense for you to take on. In the case of a streaming subscription (for example), you're paying for the ability to, at any moment, start streaming whatever content the service is making available. Even if you never use that ability within a given month, you still had the option, and that's what you were paying for. In fact, you could frame that this way: you're paying to remove the "risk" that you'll want to stream something at some point and won't be able to because you don't have an active subscription.

And on a more personal level, I don't understand why people can't just manage their subscriptions better. Dark patterns that make canceling subscriptions difficult are one thing, but if a service makes it easy for you to cancel, and you just haven't done it, that's on you.

That said, if a service wants to refund subscribers for unused service periods, that would be a great feature. Or, as a middle ground, send an email saying, "You haven't logged in in X months; do you want to cancel your subscription?" X could even be configurable, and cancellation could be automatic, e.g. cancel the subscription if the user hasn't logged in for 3 months.

<comment><USER90> The email with an easy action to take would be a good compromise.

Insurance's value is that any moment they are willing to pay out.

With subscription services, if you only use them occasionally, the smart thing is to let them expire and then resubscrive when you need their services. However the hassle in subscribing and unsubscribing is too high to make practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I've actually closed bank accounts to get away from subscription services. It really is an outrage. What more should it take than telling them you don't want to pay for their service anymore?

<comment><USER93> I've had a bank (Bank of America), tell me that the only way to stop a recurring, fraudulent ACH charge was to close my account and open a different one.

I did close the account, but saw no reason to reopen one with boa.

The kicker is that a few months later, I get a delinquent negative balance notice from boa. The ACH charge had struck again. I called and asked how in the world I could get an ACH charge on a closed account with $0 in it. The agent said that the account will automatically reopen!!! anytime someone tries to charge it.

They will also automatically charge you overdraft fees, and then an overdraft fee when the overdraft fee bounces, and then a negative balance fee... and an overdraft fee when that one hits.

Just telling the story gets my blood boiling again. Never ever deal with any large corporation if you can help it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Funny.. I actually had to call justfab.com today to cancel my wife's account. Took me one hour and three different people before they finally managed to shut it down. First attempt they hung up on me when I told them she was a mute. Second time I just told them it was none of their business why she couldn't talk on the phone. The account was registered with my credit card in my name but they still wouldn't let me cancel or even have my credit card removed from the account. Shit company...

</comment><comment><USER71> Frontier is like the easiest company to cancel with. I called and asked to cancel and they didn't even bother with retentions.

Meanwhile stamps.com and SiriusXM were by far the two most difficult with Terminix and ADT coming in a close third.

I usually just tell them I'll issue a chargeback if they bill again and that USUALLY works. It's why now if I can I'll use paypal so I can just easily cancel the payment plan. For stamps I had to have chase stop all payments to them which seemed to eventually work.

</comment><comment><USER95> It was about time. Anyway, the subscription model is kind of a shitty model for things that are not like Netflix, Spotify or some good designed SaaS.

I mean all that entrepreneur wannabes that copy to "Box of X every month" or "A simple SaaS that took me 5K to hire a freelance to do it but I have a niche" model. Please forget about it. I just want a handful of good subscription services in my life. Because I tend to forget I'm paying them.

</comment><comment><USER96> Another way to get out of subscriptions is to change your billing credit card to one generated by a service like Privacy.com. Then just close the card out.

Some sites/services are getting more savvy about pre-paid cards though (DigitalOcean won't accept one). I tried to use a burner card on a snail mail advertisement offering a $50 gift card to sign up for a trial of a magazine subscription. Didn't work.

<comment><USER20> Some cards also offer virtual card numbers, which you can put a time and dollar limit on. I have a 2% back Citi card that happens to offer this handy feature.

<comment><USER97> I have a Bank of America card with the same feature.

In some ways I'm glad it's not more widely used, or merchants might start banning the BINs the virtual cards use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> In the UK the easiest way is to just cancel your direct debit. This usually promptd the business to cancel your membership and usually follows up with some letters to demand extra payment. You could safely ignore these letters, even if it comes from a credit collection agency, and the court will side with you if you explain the complexity in getting out of these contracts.

</comment><comment><USER99> Tried to cancel an Upwork account, a message said I should call a number in USA. I called and a message told me I should call between x AM to y PM business days.

It is somewhat expensive to call from Brazil just to hear a recorded message saying the call was useless. In the end I was able to cancel using their web chat. The experience just confirmed my opinion about the company.

</comment><comment><USER100> I hate to say and use it, but my best tool in situations like this is disposable credit card numbers via the privacy app. I make a best effort to close the account, and if that doesn't work I cancel the temporary credit card I used to sign up for the service.

Make sure to get your cancelation attempt in writing (email, etc) because some places will still try and collect.

</comment><comment><USER101> You subscribe online - you can cancel online. Now replace "online" with any other way you can make a contract.

</comment><comment><USER102> As long as it's not a Spotify subscription :)

<comment><USER103> Spotify lost me as a customer when they forced me to use some ridiculous chat to explain why I was cancelling my account.

I was actually cancelling to re-sign-up using a non-Facebook account as a paid subscriber..

Add silly friction and you get -1 customer.

<comment><USER104> When did this happen to you? I've been considering the same, but switching accounts hasn't yet been worth the hassle.

<comment><USER105> You should be able to just disconnect your facebook account, and login via email, no?

<comment><USER103> You'd think so, right? Nope:

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Change-from- Facebo...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Change-from-Facebook- login-to-an-actual-spotify-account/td-p/53605)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> This is a good law, but I'm genuinely curious...is this really such an issue? Personally, I can't remember the last time (maybe ever?) having this issue. Maybe I don't have a lot of subscriptions. Maybe I don't cancel often. Maybe I come off on the phone as not budging an inch. The last time I recall having even the slightest bit of an issue was cancelling my AOL service ~18 years ago and even that wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be.

Are the individual experiences shared in the article (and here in the comments) exceptions or the norm? Even cancelling my last gym membership was a breeze.

<comment><USER107> I once hornily punched my credit card number into a camsite to get "200 free coins". After using them all (I gave them all to one cam girl after feeling bad for her), I tried canceling the subscription.

The <form> around the <button>cancel</button> was literally commented out in the html.

I forgot about it, got charged 2 weeks later, and issued a chargeback. Never got charged again.

<comment><USER40> Watch out your credit score for a few months now. Some online merchants in CNP environment have power to put a negative remark on your credit if your credit card processor (Visa/MC/etc) deems they have higher trustworth score than you do. I seen it happening to people. Your score will not go down,; however there will be derogatory flag that could make it harder for you to get new credit card, etc. I seen those on peoples files for up to 18 months, and then gone.

Edit: here is the phrase that may show up on your credit report: "Account information disputed by consumer, meets FCRA requirements"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> Wow, just the right article at the right time: today after seeing SiriusXM charges of ~ $20 monthly for subscription, to my huge surprise, I searched for online cancellation, only to find none exists. I called them to cancel and indeed ended up not canceling, rather getting a promo deal. I really love SiriusXM while driving, but that lack of online cancellation completely annoyed me.

</comment><comment><USER109> I've found simply emailing them and asking for a call back to be surprisingly effective, or I in a few cases i stop paying them by changing the billing to a card that is about to expire. And if necessary the phrase "I will be contacting my state attorney general's office, consumer fraud division, what was your name again?" is the atomic bomb in getting things resolved.

</comment><comment><USER110> WSJ is notorious for "you have to call us to cancel".

However I bypassed this by subscribing with amazon where i can cancel subscription online.

<comment><USER111> I canceled my local newspaper subscription (had to repeat "cancel the account" a dozen times whenever the CSR started speaking until they figured it out), subscribed through Google Play, and took 2/3 off the monthly cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> I hate calling and going through the hoops and even then what proof do you have you cancelled?

I called a place recently and asked to cancel, first question was.

"Did you read the cancellation date!?!"

Yeah I did and I know you aren't because you didn't even ask my name yet...

So they look it up and ask again what I want, I tell them to cancel it again....

"Ok I updated it"

Damn it....word game city population me.

</comment><comment><USER113> If you registered online or are getting emails, you should be able to unregister online or through email. Period.

</comment><comment><USER114> This is how the internet will get better as a hole. There's no way for companies to track lots of different states requirements, so they implement all the requirements for all the states (and EU). I hope that more small states create laws with giant consequences.

</comment><comment><USER115> This would have been a welcome change when I tried to break my marriage with Verizon. 3 phone calls later and 2 months passed they were still charging me for the my cell phone service and it took repetitive attempts to straighten things up. Bastards!

</comment><comment><USER116> Woohooooo, I hope this means I can cancel my Morningstar sub. They make it impossible.

</comment><comment><USER117> I've never been confronted with the "can't cancel service hell" but clearly it must be a problem if CA passed this law. I don't have cable TV. Where else besides cable does one experience this?

<comment> here-for-karma Gym memberships are particularly terrible at this in my experience

<comment><USER117> That was indeed that last one where doing a cancel was "involved". But it only involved sending a letter by certified mail, and all the info/details were on their web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> I agree with this law, as many of these sort of services are very difficult to cancel. Many gyms require "certified mail" stating you wish to cancel the renewal of your contract.

</comment><comment><USER119> Great. Pining users a week before an yearly renew would be nice law too.

</comment><comment><USER120> I've spent 4 months to find a way to cancel my complementary health insurance in France. They were sending me letters with 2 weeks delay asking me for other documents.

</comment><comment><USER121> I wish that Germany had such law. Self-prolongating contracts that can only be cancelled with a formal letter after N years of paying is a total disaster here.

</comment><comment><USER122> Brilliant. Freaking. Law. I hope this applies to scammy gym memberships, Comcast, Equifax, TransUnion (their scam of signing you up), newspaper subscriptions etc.

</comment><comment><USER123> had the same problem with Scribd recently. I've cancelled my subscription in the end of April, but still got a notification from PayPal about the money transfer in the end of May. I had to contact them per email and luckily they were very friendly and accommodating, they've cancelled my subscription on the same day and I've got my money back in two days.

</comment><comment><USER124> Do you think this law will require the government to offer online opt outs for their subscriptions?

</comment><comment><USER125> Not strictly equivalent, but one thing I like about GDPR is that withdrawing consent should be as easy as giving it.

</comment><comment><USER126> Comcast and Verizon will be upset

<comment><USER127> Cancelling comcast is only moderately hard.

Getting them to ACTUALLY cancel can require more than a single phone call.

<comment><USER128> The key is to do it in person. Show up at an office, return the modem, receive a receipt, and report any future charges as fraud to your CC provider w/ the cancellation and equipment return receipts as proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> My bank allows me to cancel my credit card online, which is good enough for me.

<comment><USER130> _My bank allows me to cancel my credit card online, which is good enough for me._

I tried to cancel a credit card in order to escape a recurring charge I couldn't cancel. I was informed by Chase that because I had a previous auto- bill relationship with that company, its charges would follow me to my new card, and if necessary, my bank accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER131> This is awesome. Is anyone else old enough to remember trying to cancel AOL?

</comment><comment><USER132> Will this apply to bank accounts and credit cards? That would be fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER133> Scum like WSJ still practice the call to cancel timewaste practice

</comment><comment><USER134> Will this be true for gyms as well?? That would be a game-changer.

</comment><comment><USER135> Is there not a service in the US that does this on your behalf?

</comment><comment><USER136> I can't see an email or button being any different than the telephone. I would prefer being able to cancel online. But I don't see forcing companies to offer that as being all consumer protectiony.

</comment><comment><USER137> This is great. It was so hard to cancel Adobe subscription

</comment><comment><USER138> Does this apply to B2C only or also B2B?

<comment><USER59> It doesn't matter. Though, to be fair, most B2B sales aren't actually completed online. For example, if you deal with Salesforce, you complete the sale in an offline process. This law states that an online purchase should have an online cancellation. It doesn't apply to "tech" \-- it applies to the sales process. So a guy selling you insurance over the phone -- they aren't required to allow online cancellation. However, if you purchased the product/subscription online, then you should be allowed to cancel online. Basically, the venue of the sale needs to be equivalent to the venue of the cancellation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> Does this apply to Comcast?

</comment><comment><USER140> You know what happened the last time I canceled a magazine subscription in Germany? I sent them an email, and got the confirmation back one day later. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER141> Perfect! California leading the way, cancelling subscriptions shouldn't be an issue at all, sadly business use fraudulent ways with it.

</comment><comment><USER142> Are you actually deaf? Or is lying to get exceptions that are meant for the disabled actually legal?

<comment><USER143> "exceptions that are meant for the disabled "

Since when was the ability to cancel something online _meant_ for the disabled?

Either you or a loved one is disabled, and that's why you're so sensitive (if so, I cut you some slack). Otherwise, I have no clue why you're throwing such a hiss about this. Many businesses (like cable companies) are being complete assholes by making it hard for you to cancel their service. Sometimes you have to lie and act unethically to get back at people like that. Hey, you wouldn't have to if they were ethical in the first place! They started this whole prisoner's dilemma! Me? I would love to cooperate and be honest all the time!

<comment><USER144> If more people do this, the scammers may stop supporting this workflow and force deaf users to get their friends to call.

<comment><USER145> Wouldn't that actually be illegal? Deafness is a medical condition and I doubt "get a friend to do it" would be a suitable accomodation.

<comment><USER144> >Our workplace is illiterate, thus we cannot process your emails.

<comment><USER145> That excuse isn't going to fly when they get sued for not accommodating a disability. If anything, it'll cause a lawyer to pounce on the case like there's no tomorrow.

<comment><USER146> Pretty sure the grandparent comment was missing a /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Businesses will likely comply to presert access to California customer business. They will build web frontends for proper account management (cancellation). And they will go out of their way to disable those frontends for non-CA customers, because they crave the money they are stealing.

<comment><USER147> Even so, outside CA the law will go a long way towards removing plausible deniability, and that's something.</comment></comment>


Android overtakes iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/android-overtakes-apple-in-us-smartphone-market.ars

<comment><USER2> Android OS is run on multiple phone while Iphone is just one phone, not a great comparison.</comment>


Follow-up: OGG has now been removed from the HTML5 spec. - <AUTHOR> http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=1142&to=1143 <comment><USER2> If they had only limited the spec to include Ogg Vorbis it would have sailed through... The problem is that most people companies have no idea what the difference is...</comment>