It doesn’t matter whether it’s about terminating an online contract or refusing the storage of cookies: companies come up with many tricks to make such steps particularly difficult for their customers. While the conclusion of subscription services, contracts & Co. is often done with one click, cancellations and rejections often require a minute-long discussion with unmanageable menus and buttons that are misleadingly worded. Some providers are taking this game so far that consumer protection is now getting involved.
Customers feel taken advantage of
Many people therefore feel exploited and tricked in view of the complicated termination and rejection options. Dealing with the complex processes often results in users giving up and abandoning the process. According to the VZBV, the method of massively lengthening processes and making them as uncomfortable as possible is particularly widespread. A scam that, according to consumer advocates, is also used by Amazon to prevent its Prime customers from canceling their contract. Although the online retailer has streamlined the process over the years, there are still manipulative tendencies in the termination process.
In the course of the cancellation dialog, Amazon offers four possible answers to continue the initiated process. Three of them cancel the process, only one confirms the desire to cancel the subscription. Amazon described the cancellation process to Der Spiegel as simple and transparent. The company pointed out that it even offers a reminder function to inform customers of the possibility of termination in good time before an automatic contract extension.
Awkward cookie rejection
At Web.de, the VZBV complained about the unnecessarily complicated refusal to store cookies. According to this, users would have to scroll through a long and confusing dialog and always ran the risk of unintentionally giving their consent. Lovescout24, on the other hand, allows you to subscribe to its services via an app. A termination, on the other hand, does not work that way. According to the company, this is due to the terms of use of the Google Play Store, which are due to change in April 2022. Then the termination problem would also be superfluous.