Confirm your email is valid, and then add it to the list of "continue to spam" accounts.
Dailyburn@mylastname.io
When they start spamming I set up a filter to hard block anything going to that address.
Good lord! This is my second "opsec" reply on this - what a statement on how shitty it is to try and engage in commerce when you need to cover your tracks like you're committing a crime...barf.
A cable provider sent me a bill for $300 of equipment I had returned three months earlier and I was only lucky I kept the receipt from returning the equipment that I could prove I had done it. Since the items had been scanned into their systems on return I could only assume malice or complete incompetence.
Not an email. Not a phone call to some retention agent in a call center. A signed letter via postage.
From the tales I've read in my local city sub, I got lucky in that the billings did in fact stop quickly; others have had resort to threats of legal action after numerous letters, some even sent via certified mail to get the charges to stop.
I don't feel that I'm being paranoid.
Services generally have two business models:
- Spread a large cost over monthly payments so that customers will spend more than they otherwise would.
- Trap a customer, either via coercion or convenience into keeping a service they don't really want.
For the business, the benefit to service offerings is clear: regular, reliable income. To the customer, there is often no benefit.
This is like saying don't buy food from restaurants because it may have prepared it unsafely or overpriced.
Overpriced is a real problem and the steps to make the price obvious to consumers is very difficult. But we solved the safety by mandating safety standards and labeling backed by real penalties. This law seems a lot like the latter and will make it easier for users to take advantages of services with the safety that they should be able to expect.
Section 4 deals with changes to terms of service.
https://legiscan.com/PA/text/HB2511/id/2569740/Pennsylvania-...
While the rest would enjoy the freed up real estate and the money saved.
Am I properly capturing the nuance of your argument? Feel free to re-echo another round of hearsay into the chamber.
Maybe you can dig more into the philosophy you have where securing profitability entitles you to the protection of those profits via legislation.
long story short I have many Echo Dots (free for “new” customers) lying around in the house now.
I believe for most gymgoers, a primary purpose of going to the gym is to hang out with your gym friends.
If you just want exercise, you can do body weight exercises for free; a couple hundred dollars is overkill.
Hmm, does one sign up for an automated monthly subscription for health clubs in the US?
If you stop paying without cancelling the contract (which they have ridiculous terms around), they sell you off to a collection agency which then proceeds to harass you until you pay. A friend recently went through this experience and warned anyone against the big-name gyms. (Looking at you myFitness)
Apple Card allows you to generate a new card number, but it replaces the existing number. And you either have to tie your bank account to them to pay, or use your card number (which you might change) on payment correspondence.
Were I a VC, part of my model to identify industries ripe for tech disruption would be to find those that get legislative sweetheart deals that don't benefit the taxpayer.
edit: Pennsylvania Health Club Act
[1] https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/PDF/1989/0/0087....
For example, my cable company peppers its web site with ways to “upgrade” your plan easily online. Great, guess what’s missing: an easy way to downgrade anything, e.g. to fewer channels or slower Internet. Obviously they do this for exactly the same reason as the call-us-to-cancel crap but it is just different enough that they could probably keep doing it and still be in compliance with a poorly-written law.
And on the off chance something actually requires talking to a human, it is well past time to end this wait-hours-on-hold crap. Why can’t I log into my profile on the company web site, type in my phone number, describe my issue and then say CALL ME whenever the hell you manage to find an employee who is free to discuss? Furthermore, such calls could be punctuated with texts, e.g. “thank you for contacting us, please expect a call in about 10 minutes” or whatever. That stuff would have been straightforward to implement 10 years ago, much less now.
The Apple model (if followed) would be as follows:
Subscription terms in exact same font as trial terms (ie, no newspaper $1/week offers with the silly super fine print) right next to trial terms.
Required notice in advance of subscription renewals, particularly annual or other long term renewals.
Click to cancel (after login / authentication etc)
Alert to cancel on disuse / uninstall - Apple will actually suggest cancelling a subscription if you do things like delete an app.
Clear subscription terms indicating auto-renewal or one time purchase.
Cancel anytime and use through end of current term, with end of term disclosed (you can still use through XXX).
No requirement to cancel within some days of end of term or 30 days before end of term (some do no earlier than 90 days, no later than 30 days before end of term).
If I can't find your cancel service page within five minutes of searching; I just close the card and am done.
In normal relations, when you pay you get the goods or service, and when you do not pay you do not get it, without presumptions. If you buy a carrot - or more relevantly, newspapers - everything but the cash is redundant: not everyone would accept to subscribe to a different model, if not on very exceptional services.
What is it with health clubs?!
It's an interesting industry for certain.
I can say that making it hard to cancel for most small gyms isn't because they want to engage in shady business practices, it's just making it easy to cancel takes work, and it's a very low priority for a gym owner.
The easiest solution for an owner to implement is to "contact for cancellation."
The FTC issued a statement about ramping up enforcement against consumer entrapment last year: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/10/...
From the FTC statement, they require companies to:
* Disclose clearly and conspicuously all material terms of the product or service, including how much it costs, deadlines by which the consumer must act to stop further charges, the amount and frequency of such charges, how to cancel, and information about the product or service itself that is needed to stop consumers from being deceived about the characteristics of the product or service. The statement provides detail on what clear and conspicuous means, particularly noting that the information must be provided upfront when the consumer first sees the offer and generally as prominent as the deal offer itself.
* Obtain the consumer’s express informed consent before charging them for a product or services. This includes obtaining the consumer’s acceptance of the negative option feature separately from other portions of the entire transaction, not including information that interferes with, detracts from, contradicts, or otherwise undermines the consumer’s ability to provide their express informed consent.
* Provide easy and simple cancellation to the consumer. Marketers should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to buy the product or service in the first place.
Are there any loopholes or bad behavior this might enable? Just something to keep in mind and consider, but on the surface I'd have to say that this does sound pretty good.
I think people have already touched on it potentially pushing certain companies out of PA.. which in theory reduces competition which is bad for consumers. So that’s one example of how this legislation that’s designed to protect consumers could end up hurting them from another angle.
Another thing I’d wonder about is: if laws like this were to catch on.. does it start to disincentivize subscription-based business models? We’ve seen such a shift towards subscriptions.. but would that potentially change dramatically?
Yes; if you're a company that doesn't like Click to Cancel, and your company's Pennsylvania business is small relative to your total business, the logical choice is simply to stop serving Pennsylvania citizens.
What do you think might happen?
I've seen "subscription forms" that don't actually process anything, they just save the info in a database for someone to manually do stuff with later. These companies will now have to work out how to do a cancel button.
Arguably, they should have to anyway, and it's not likely to be a big issue, but these types of legislation are often used to make a "moat" for established players that new ones find hard to cross.
Eg. You have to click the "learn more" link and then log in separately to a support forum where you will be DM'ed the one time use link for cancellation, which will only be valid for 5 minutes and require verifying your email and SMS number
Devil's advocate: Would this (or existing states' legislation, like California's) have any means of protecting against e.g. a non-CA user just changing their location to CA and immediately canceling? It sounds like an easy loophole for non-CA folks.
i'm guessing pretty much only CA enforces it and generally to make $ the way police do from ticketing.
credit cards are the market solution here. they work. virtual cards are even better. more effective and efficient legislation would be to simply enforce processors to accept and not differentiate virtual mastercard / visa / amex cards!
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/state-sales-tax-jurisdictions-in-t...
It's a fairly populous state at over 4% of the US total, I can't imagine national companies nixing PA.
So it really depends on the business and how much information they have about you, and if they are dirty enough to send you to collections for it.
A gym is likely going to send you to collections. An online SaaS is more likely to just cut you off and cancel the account.
Can't you Americans just send a certified letter informing a business of your intent to cancel and asking them to send you a final bill (if any) to settle payments within a specified time limit? That should cover you legally?
never sign up for a gym that needs your ssn. red flag.
In my home country we've had a national system for electronic invoices for ~10 years which allows you to receive invoices to your bank account. You can remove any such entry at any point in time. You also see all scheduled payments ahead of time and need to sign them before the due date, using a 2fa system that isn't tied to the bank itself. It's not perfect, and even feels a little aged today, but it's so much better than here in the US.
The only way to do it is as a chargeback but chargebacks are after the charge and come with a whole mess of pre-requirements as well as if you do it too often your provider will kick you off.
EDIT: Fit4Less is southern Ontario
That's not to say that asking your bank to block Merchant X isn't useful, but the bank can't guarantee that the merchant won't be able charge you again via a different payment processor/etc., and is why some banks are hesitant to offer this functionality.
It would work simply. If you purchase a month/year, whatever & you're set up with autopay, once the subscription you have purchased ends, the next time you use the service you would have to approve continuing the subscription at the same terms with a single click.
No click? No pay.
I would also like it to require a second link on the same interstitial to review the terms of the subscription, and that it would be required that if there were any term changes from the previous purchase (new legalese, price variances, or service options added or removed) that they would also have to detail those in brief.
I've done a lot of subscriptions and purchases and have never had a problem with them, including getting things sorted in a few odd cases. Apple has support phone numbers with real people in a surprising number of countries.
You can setup ask to buy if you have a kid and are worried about them purchasing accidently.
Everything NBC / Universal / Comcast gives me an ick vibe...maybe its just me?
Like in the civil war! Did you go acquire stamps and paper so your children and grandchildren could also cancel their gym subscriptions?
(For anyone who can watch content from Netflix and likes comedy, do yourself a favor and watch Happy Face).
/play: soft bluegrass music
/narrate by Peter Coyote:
My Dearest Abigail,
For so long now, I have not seen your sweet face, nor any other at the gymnasium. I have tried mightily to dissolve the union of my membership, but to no avail. My biceps grow skinnier by the day from our long estrangement. Please, I pray for the day I can be released from this torment, this contract.
Most Sincerely Yours, Ephraim Hill
BUT... when I came back, I noticed a new wall in the hallway. They'd blocked off a hallway, and essentially sold (probably just long term leased?) about 20% of the building to a different entity (health related). They just had too much open space and no use for it. Was a bit of a shame, but it helped them keep their books afloat.
FWIW, I've always heard horror stories of gyms locking people in to unending payments. This place, while an extra few $ compared to some others in the area, is always month to month, and I've cancelled in the past, then came back. Never had an issue with billing/overbilling/etc, which seems... both trivial (of course that's how it should work) and impressive (seems to be in a minority of gyms) at the same time.
Some systems e.g. doctors, banks often still insist on phone calls so if I can present as a phone call on their end but it is chat interface for me, that is ideal.
I had thousands of dollars of prepaid training with 24 Hour Fitness in New York City when they potted that LLC into bankruptcy. Class counsel negotiated a $50 gift card for anyone with claims over $200, or something stupid like that. Bought home equipment and work with my trainer over Zoom.
TL; DR Even in highly-regulated markets, the protections are B.S.
Also better music, relaxed dress code and light chores in between sets.
So when a company chooses the more complicated route to minimal compliance, that's strong evidence that the regulation in question is effective at reducing their illicit gains and would be effective elsewhere.
1. that it may be cost effective just to do everywhere
2. that federal legislators will take note that it is popular
A lot of new laws in the US gain popularity at the state level before becoming national law.
I’ve had it happen a couple of times. It’s a minor inconvenience to switch over any subscriptions to a new card, but it has never cost me a penny.
It'd basically put the industry out of business.
Also I think HN and the technosphere in general is a little blind to the cost/benefit analysis of privacy for most consumers. People here have intimate knowledge of the technology and what can be done with information, so that's where they focus. Simple fact is there's a lot theoretical damage that could be done, but relatively little damage actually being done on an individual level for most consumers. Unless you're famous/important enough to be targeted by someone with resources, odds are even with zero privacy protections you'll get lost in the noise, or at most suffer trivial damage (having to cancel a stolen credit card or something)
I went through a phase where I tried to lock down my identity as much as possible, installed anti-fingerprinting browser extensions, forbade all cookies I didn't explicitly approve, individually selected sites to approve in NoScript, etc. It chewed up a ton of time, and when life happened and I was forced to re-prioritize my time and stopped maintaining it... nothing happened. It was the digital equivalent of installing steel shutters/doors and reinforced door frames so you can withstand a SWAT team with a no-knock warrant. Simple fact is the odds of encountering a SWAT team with a no-knock warrant are so low that it's statistically not worth the effort unless you're actually an outlaw.
> Statutes in Colorado, South Carolina, and Indiana exempt ALEC, specifically by name, from having to register as a lobbyist and report lobbying expenditures.
You're being more than a bit hyperbolic & disingenuous. I pay $15/year for a grocery list app that solves several problems for me. That is, I pay money for concurrent access, web-scraping that works, and an organisational system to help me feed my family.
This is a great value to me: the $1.25 a month that I pay for my grocery list app has made my life easier.
If it takes 2 hours to cancel it, it could definitively be a net negative though.
I pay $40/year for Remember the Milk, a SaaS, and it's one of the most valuable ways that I spend my money - I easily get more than $40 a month in increased productivity (assuming a $20/hour personal time rate). Speak for yourself.
I'm definitely not really suggesting that people should never use any services. Just that in general, these should be viewed with suspicion, and you should have an exit plan: you could find out nefarious things about your service, or the service could be modified leaving you high and dry.
Just go out for a jog. Fresh air is far better for you anyway than stinky gym air.
I've been going to gyms for years. Have never spoken more than a single sentence to anyone there and 99.5% of the other people I see there are also training and not socializing. In fact I can specific remember one pair who were socializing in the gym once; I saw them about 10 months ago, it was very irritating and so unusual that I still remember it now.
Bodyweight workouts can't come close to the effectiveness or satisfaction of a proper set of weights.
If a business is so small that this would be hard to manage, then they're probably not big enough to have MBAs rubbing their hands and implementing impossible to cancel systems. If a business is so big that it can afford to pay call centers to deal with their intentionally Kafkaesque cancellations, then they can afford to deal with the regulations. They can't as easily afford to lose 12 million customers.
Easy canceling is far, far easier to make than the stuff these regulations target. No honest mom and pop shop is losing sleep over this.
1. dumbbells
2. screw a pullup bar into the ceiling joists
3. burpees
Were you not able to cancel the plan you didn't want and sign up with the plan you did?
If that wasn't an option (ie, you wanted the better plan right away), quickest might be to request a refund of the bad plan and then sign up with the right plan.
If you request a refund the same day of purchase I've not had a problem with that (but it hasn't happened often). I had a somewhat similar situation, and just noted that it wasn't clear that X was not included, had no problem getting a refund. I then signed up as desired.
That said, devs should have an upgrade option that charges difference ?
So lesson learned, never order a sub through Apple if you can avoid it.
Lots of ways to work it. EG 1/2 price for off hours membership! Act now!
It's kind of weird how liquidity is such a general concept that goes way beyond money.
Uber but for lobbying
https://www.theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-powered-l...
Sending the charge to collections and having you incur more stress and undue charges would be incredibly foolish on their end.
Any online store dealing with gun or gun-adjacent stuff already has been dealing with variations of these for years; knives that are illegal in certain areas, etc.
Home Depot has to block shipping gas-powered lawn equipment to CA now.
Clearly there is plenty of big gym money bouncing around. Exceptions in laws don’t write themselves. I’m cynical but I’m also right.
The CEO of Planet Fitness was a contributor to Trump's campaign fund in 2016. I think you're underestimating how politically connected these groups are.
(/s, just in case)
In fact most contracts I've seen allow for termination by writing.
I use the past tense, because getting older means my allergy has abated. It only gets bad if I mow the lawn, so now I wear a mask doing that.
A mask does help, which I’ve been wearing for… obvious reasons but exercising in a N95 is rough.
I'm sure you've already considered it, but move north were there are seasons and no pine trees :-/ The rain in Seattle tends to wash the pollen out of the air, too.
For me its grass. Even walking in grass with shorts on is a no-no.
The fact is you don’t really know how gyms would be affected en masse by such a law. The only thing we really know for sure, is that people would have an easier time not using services that they don’t want to use. I don’t really understand who could argue against such a change. Arguing against it is like arguing for some weird mini welfare for gyms on the backs of random members of the population. If we want that, then maybe we should just pass laws giving gyms money from the general municipal/state budget. It would accomplish the same thing and be much more fair and honest.
I haven't examined their books myself.
Like I wrote, I'm not making a value judgement here, just pointing out the consequences.
The business model may still be the same in Sweden. It's just that people are too lazy to cancel, not that they cannot cancel. I never had trouble canceling any of the several gyms I attended over the years.
If what they said was actually true, they _should_ go out of business. If their business depends on them exploiting the legal system to thwart their users’ clear will, they are immoral actors and deserve the economic difficulties that would be bestowed upon them.
Edit: to you edit
> The business model may still be the same in Sweden. It's just that people are too lazy to cancel, not that they cannot cancel. I never had trouble canceling any of the several gyms I attended over the years.
So basically what you’re tacitly admitting is that a law allowing cancelation might actually be _fine_. It might even turn out fine for your friends. I guess if that’s your position, then I don’t really have any more argument with you.
Basically where a lot of education funding comes from. (Lotteries)
Or are you always reading all the terms and conditions print on all the software you install?
If so... that could make it worthwhile. :)
Luckily none of them are that severe, but it’s just so many things… I got allergy shots for a few years in my teens which helped a lot, so it isn’t normally that much of a problem, but I’m also a bit asthmatic so exercise outdoors is a big trigger.
(The secrets people hide in their garages!)
How could you possibly have concluded we're in agreement? This was his initial post in this thread:
> 10x more expensive. I bet that'd do wonders to the willingness of customers to sign up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31068220
I fundamentally disagree with this and made it quite clear in the following posts. This disagreement is basically the whole premise on which this exchange was had.