Discord sued by users claiming Nitro subscription is too difficult to cancel
Discord sued by users claiming Nitro subscription is too difficult to cancel
Discord is being sued over Nitro, their subscription service, being too difficult to cancel. The suit claims their practice is anti-consumer.
Okay I've done the free discord nitro a couple of times and i gotta say... It was surprisingly easy to cancel. Billing and subscriptions tab in discord ---> nitro subscription cancel service button. Thats it. It's hardly as bad as the rest of them, and so it is a little surprising seeing them go to court over it.
Not surprised.
They keep offering these "Free Trials" of Nitro, but then they wanted me to put in a credit card in order to claim it?
Last I checked free means I'm not handing over shit.
But hey I know what's up, they just want me to forget I have Nitro, bill me for a month when I do, and then make it difficult to cancel knowing that I can't just tell my bank to dispute the charge because then they'd ban my account.
That's why the second the Free Trial needed a card, I just backed out of it.
When are we switching to Revolt?
it's not hard, though? I live in Turkey so I don't get protected by EU
Even then, it's still a single button press
People are barely literate these days, I'm not surprised.
Reminder for everybody to never install Discord. It functions as a desktop web app, and you can even use it like so on your phone. You shouldn't even give Discord your phone number, tbh, and you should never pay them money.
I keep trying to remove my phone number from my Discord account, but each time I do "suspicious activity" is found on my account and needs my phone number to verify.
Can they sue crunch fitness next?
Any place there is a way to sign up for a service, there should be a way to cancel the service. Make a pop-up that interrupts you every time you open an app asking you to sign up? You need to keep that pop up and ask if you want to cancel every time.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime trial the other day, and in order to dissuade me the site switched to French...
Maybe just a bug (I tried again and it was in English) but the hoops sites make you jump through to cancel a subscription is ridiculous. Constantly asking you if you're sure, offering discounts, swapping the position and colour of the buttons... The Humble Choice one is particularly bad, and the final screen tells you you're cancelled and the prominent button signs you right the fuck back up again.
If you can sign up in one click, you should be able to cancel in one click.
You should be able to cancel ALL of this shit from your credit card provider/bank apps. One click, gone, bye-bye.
That was probably just a fluke but Amazon does freak out after you cancel. It asks you to renew with a popup, a prominent shipping option, and embedded windows when you buy things without Prime.
You can cancel Billing Agreements in PayPal. It's quite convenient
Do be aware that doing it this way will probably lead to your account with that business being terminated.
Fine for somethings that you never want to go back to anyway.
Good! Holy fucking shit is insane at the amount of predatory crap in software these days!
It's literally become a fucking science on how to manipulate people by wearing them the fuck down with pop-ups, sign-ups, notifications, and "related" content. Anything besides giving the user the opportunity to do what they fucking want to do in the first place.
Honestly, Lemmy is a breath of fresh air. It's also insane how straightforward and easy it is to use, especially considering the reputation the fediverse has for being "complicated."
Open source software seems to be the only way to be free of dark patterns. Why use products that are actively against you?
The Reputation comes from people who have never tried it and are looking for an excuse why they don't use it.
It's Not more complicated than E-Mail
This is only a problem if you subscribe to nitro in the first place. Rookie mistake!
I enjoy the higher streaming quality and server boosts. Discord makes it very easy for my ttrpg groups to gather weekly not to mention the many other communities it facilitates. It's even partly responsible for me and my partner having a successful long distance relationship. The service is worth paying for, imho.
You can fake a Nitro subscription for free higher quality streaming. Look up
Vendord, it hardens Discord for better security, adds themes, and plugins. One such plugin is fake Nitro.Edit: Vencord. Got autocorrected.
Also adding I have only used fake Nitro for streaming quality. So I have no idea if it works for emojis or whatever other Nitro perks there are.
To clarify about the fake nitro plugin of Vencord/Vesktop:
It's not Nitro, it just enables some features you get with nitro, mainly better streaming quality and being able to "send" emojis from any server (this is all it does, cant use any emoji reacts nor send bigger files or server boost).
Also
About the emojis, the custom/other server emojis are sent as image links which discord will render but it is not a native discord emoji and will format differently when used inline.
It also does nothing for custom emoji reacts.About streaming, Discord uses webrtc, that usually means P2P streaming which in turn means that the streaming client can send whatever they want (as long as the receiving clients understand it) and discord servers can't say no. It's not server authoritative communication, discord without nitro just hides the UI options, vencord gives them back.
The only reason I would pay is for the higher quality streaming, but I think the price is too steep for that, if they had a cheaper plan with just the streaming perk, then I would really consider subscribing.
You don't understand I NEED to spam my blushies emote everywhere.
I've thankfully never given discord a dime!
I know apps don't like having subscriptions through Apple/Google where they take 15-30%, but it does make it easier to cancel sometimes
how is it too difficult to cancel? you literally just go to manage subscription and click cancel and it ends at the end of the current term....
Is it the same in every country though?
All subscriptions should automatically cancel if you stop paying.
That's a bit circular though because they just keep billing your credit card.
The process described and shown by the screenshots does seem a bit much for a cancellation. Suing feels disproportionate when I first hear it, but are there many other recourses to force it to become more user friendly?
Based on what I'm reading in the post (since I don't use Discord), it's still obstructing the cancelation flow and making the user go through more steps, which is illegal in California.
offtopic but related: android privacy settings are scattered across many hidden menus.
Google is just such a bunch of pricks.
Eh. There's parts of that in Android. The real culprit is that they do not fund the AOSP project enough. It's just incompetence and stupidity combined with an inability to change that.
and a lot of the permissions you can only disable one by one, 3-4 taps for each of the dozens of apps, with needing 2 taps even just to see if the permission is granted for the app
and sadly, calyx and such forks don't fix it either
i got a trial then cancelled it once, sure, subscribing was easier than unsubscribing but it wasnt nearly as bas as a ton of other companies, namely amazon.
These guys likely haven't tried canceling a gym membership lmao
Maybe it's because I live in California and we have rules about this shit to a degree but I remember it being as simple as logging in and saying "end this shit bitch"
If that changed/isn't the case elsewhere then yeah fuck em burn it
I cancelled mine last month, it was literally a couple of clicks. I got some ads about "all the things I would be losing" for some time after and that was it.
This lawsuit is specifically about them breaking California law, so it still isn't simple enough I suppose
I had the same experience with my first trial last month.
It wasn't that hard to cancel. People are just dumb.
Now if you want a pain in the ass subscription to get rid of, I'll say Amazon that requires you 4 - 5 clicks to get rid of it as they're pleading with you to stay.
It wasn't that hard to cancel. People are just dumb
If a subscription is harder to cancel than it is to sign up, that's anti-consumer. It's not really anything to do with anyone's intelligence.
It's not harder to cancel than to sign up though. It's a one or 2 clock process to cancel and a whole lot of card details entering to sign up.
I mean technically it is harder to sign up to Discord Nitro, you have to enter your payment details. Where cancelling is just a few clicks.
No, it absolutely does have something to do with people's intelligence. Because if you can't seem to follow the prompts there to cancel? Yeah, you're kind of dumb.
It's different than in Amazon's case where sometimes they'll flip the buttons on you, tricking you to resume. That kind of thing is anti-consumer.
Yeah but the thing is California law makes it pretty simple. It must be around as easy to cancel as it is to subscribe
If you're able to subscribe to Nitro by clicking a button in your hot bar you must be able to cancel Nitro via a similar method. It's one of the main reasons that Sirius XM allows canceling via a button if you have your residence set as California
With Discord Nitro they have pop-ups everywhere advertising you to try to get you to subscribe and all it takes is clicking the pop up and then hitting subscribe (if you already have a payment method saved), if you're looking to unsubscribe you have to going to your settings find your Discord Nitro subscription hit the cancel button find the cancel button on there please don't go button find the cancel button on the discount page that they give you to try to convince you not to go and then confirm it with an are you sure (unless they removed that one). It's not a very streamlined process
Yes, Amazon is the worst! My echo dot asked me if I wanted to sign up for Amazon music, I said no, the echo dot misheard me and signed me up. Then I had to spend 10 minutes navigating the stupid Amazon website to cancel, making sure I click the correct greyed out button otherwise I'd have to start the process over again. Super anti-consumer behavior but what else would you expect from Amazon.
My echo dot asked me if I wanted to sign up for Amazon music, I said no, the echo dot misheard me and signed me up.
People in 1960s would've deemed this sentence as deranged lol. You're talking to a machine and it misheard you and took your money? Are you pulling my leg?
The thing will just ask you and start taking your money if it thinks you said yes? I see so many ways this can go wrong, but then again, maybe that's is what amazon wants.
I have never had nitro but I did cancel Amazon prime easily.
Bullshit. I had to chargeback my credit card to cancel it, it was insane
You want one that’s a pain to cancel have a look at nowTV as well, sign up for one package, checkbox at bottom that’s hard to spot (and refuse)under the big “Exclusive offer” they throw in another package, double monthly then after that they’ll add in a free gift of 4K, then charge you after first month. All of which need to be cancelled separately, and also they make it almost impossible to delete your payment info.
They signed up for Discord Nitro, the bar is kinda low.
Idk where they live but pressing cancel can't be that difficult surely.
Unless they changed that.Friendly reminder you can cancel your trial version / free month if you have activated one recently, and you'll keep the perks until your trial runs out.
Glad they are going for this, although it seems a bit weird that they aren't going for bigger players that have similar or worse tactics.
I never saw a reason to give my not-do-hard-earned money to discord, but I have done so elsewhere online, and I will continue to do so.
My approach is always the same: I use this one card I have that is by default blocking online purchases. But I can through my bank app allow online purchases for the next hour. Works great for those "free" trials that require your card details, hoping you'll forget to subscribe.
Huh? Every trial I have had, it's been like two button presses to cancel.
The state of lawyers who didn't make the jump to Truth and Safety Overlord is looking pretty sad.
For as far reaching the negatives are for Apple’s policies on in app purchases, this is one spot where they are advantageous.
It’s easy to cancel Nitro if you use in app purchases on iOS/iPadOS.
Are these users spending their off time sampling lead paint chips? It took me less than 5 minutes to cancel my subscription when I decided I needed to save money last month.